This was in my inbox today, and though I don’t know who Elhanan ben-Avraham is, I do recognize the wisdom in his words. I don’t see a need to add any commentary because it pretty much speaks for itself.
When looking about the planet these days and taking stock of the daily outrages occurring among humans from the mass Islamic murders in Sudan to their slaughters in Baghdad to the late-term abortionist’s table in the USA, one might consider the validity of the above question. Considering the crime and drug use and school shootings and suicides among the young even in prosperous America, aside from genocide and rampant immorality leading to AIDS epidemics especially on the African continent, worldwide acts of brutal terrorism, the fear of nuclear nightmare from the hands of madmen, and the mass destructions of humanity by humanity in the last century alone, one might ponder if we are actually in days much like that of biblical Noah, and to expect some kind of divine flood to extinguish humankind from the planet. A dear friend of mine who is a physician, and with whom I have been debating the issues of the kingdom of G-d for some thirty years now (to only some avail), recently made the statement, “…the loss of homo sapiens will not be a great moral loss for the universe. Let the Creator start over again”, revealing the vacuousness of hope in the depths of the soul of even the very best of men.
Certainly the Creator will start over again, according to the visions of the biblical prophets. But meanwhile, let us consider a simple thought, and historical fact, that has been plunged beneath the roar of the wave of rhetoric crashing against Judeo-Christian values, morality, and worldview in what is potentially becoming the Post-Christian West. Much of the history of humankind has been not unlike what we have observed above, but for a lack of clever modern technology to make the destructions more efficient. Prior to the introduction of Judeo-Christian values among the nations, it was common to use the merciless slaughter of humans as weekly entertainment for other more fortunate humans in places like the Roman Colosseum. Infanticide (especially of female infants) was daily occurrence in ancient- and not so ancient- societies, in the former the sacrifice of infants being encouraged to placate the anger of various pagan gods. Women were possessions and instruments of pleasure and reproduction in the hands of men, and the weaker or less fortunate populations were but utilitarian tools in the hands of strong rulers to further their own wealth and the glory of their kingdoms.
But then a simple Idea carried quietly for generations in the hearts and scrolls of a small people called Israel, the Hebrews, the Jews, an Idea purportedly delivered from their all-powerful and yet invisible creator G-d, was published to the pagan nations through the advent of that extension of Judaism: Christianity. That Idea, carried out to the nations by the Jewish disciples of the Jew Yeshua (Jesus), was that there is but ONE G-d who is the Father of all humankind, who has a Jewish Son whom he has sent to save humanity, and that very humankind he has created he did so in his own image. Only in the Judeo-Christian Idea do we find that Humankind is created in the image of G-d, and male and female created he them. This simple, elegant, and childlike Idea was totally revolutionary to that brutal world that it was spoken into, a world of multiple gods and goddesses who were all too human in their behaviour, who demanded worship and honor, but no change in lifestyle (in fact encouraging debaucheries in their names and temples). This simple Idea that all people are created in the image of their Creator who is a Father to them suddenly added eternal value to human life. The Idea eventually caused the cessation of the bloodletting of the Roman Colosseum, stopped the horrors of infanticide and created orphanages for the castaway infants, hospitals for the sick and aging, elevated the status of women to equal heirs to their Father/Creator, and finally conquered all the other ideas of Rome.
The Idea that humankind is created in the image of G-d gave intrinsic value to human life. And the Idea of the physical resurrection of the dead also introduced by the Jews and published at the same time to the nations through the report of the historical, physical resurrection of Yeshua the Jewish Messiah in Jerusalem, also added infinite value to human life. This scattered the pagan idea of reincarnation to the winds. Suddenly humans were no longer recycled ancestors in fear of returning again as a cow or a cockroach, but were dear and beloved sons and daughters to their Father and Creator. Men and women were of eternal value to their Creator and Father, who loved them and commanded them to love one another. And revealed to them also that death is neither the final station for them.
The Judeo-Christian Idea is at the foundation of the Great American Experiment, built upon the words, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”- a revolutionary, but inherited, Idea indeed. And one that would finally lead to the abolition of slavery, and to nothing akin to such ideas as were perpetrated on the world stage by such Atheist dictators as Stalin and Mao and Hitler, whose ideas would reduce the value of humankind in the Twentieth Century to the cruel slaughter of millions upon millions of people for the sake of such hopeless ideas.
What gives intrinsic value to human life, and from whence did the Idea of its value arise? Let us all as humans be quick to consider before we join the chorus of mockery of the Idea of Judeo-Christian values as we are witnessing today in Western culture, lest the vacuum left by the aborting of that Idea be filled with the less sympathetic child of another idea that could reach our own door one day.
G-d forbid.
Ahh, but God still is choosing us.. flawed as we are for his metanarrative…this is the good news.
We may be only a millisecond on the cosmic clock, but we have value because God gives us value.
We must be careful in Christian circles not to become nihlistic in our worldview. When we let it creep in we loose that one thing that is worth fighting for…the lives of others.
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This simple Idea that all people are created in the image of their Creator who is a Father to them suddenly added eternal value to human life.
As a practical matter, I disagree. People who placed value on human life would have done so even without this Idea. People who didn’t would have found a loophole, as they do today in places like Northern Ireland.
As a theoretical matter, I’d argue that, if the soul lives on after death, that substantially undermines the evilness of murder. If all you’re doing is speeding someone to Heaven, what’s the fuss? Only that it will annoy God if you do it without the permission of His prophets.
and to nothing akin to such ideas as were perpetrated on the world stage by such Atheist dictators as Stalin and Mao and Hitler
Hitler was an atheist? Then why the “Gott Mit Uns” motto? Why did he take as his flag a religious symbol? You may wish to read through this quotes page for further pointers.
My feeling is that Hitler’s overt religiousness was likely just a means to an end. However, this also applies to Stalin and Mao. They opposed religion not because it was false but because the religions of Russia and China had too much interest in the status quo to support a revolution.
The Judeo-Christian Idea is at the foundation of the Great American Experiment, built upon the words, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
The only reason that description of God is so nondenominational is because the founders knew the consequences of placing one faith in charge of another. That rather undermines this Idea’s claim to stop people killing each other.
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