Western Civilization – Friend or Foe?

7/28/18            Hector  (video)             30

Despite claims to the contrary, it is still possible to have a civil conversation about controversial topics such as the role of Christianity and Western culture in the world, especially with people as cordial and transparent as Hector, 30, whom I met while out biking at the park.  In fact, I would call this sort of conversation a form of “civil disobedience” because it goes against the trajectory of society and allows people of different viewpoints to actually hear one another respectfully, rather than just wait for our turn on a soapbox.

Hector had grown up in a Catholic household but was turned off to Christian faith when he learned of the atrocities done to the indigenous peoples of his native Mexico, perpetrated by western imperialists and often in the name of the Roman Catholic Church.  He came to view western culture as a world-class conspiracy designed to subjugate the native people of the world, and began to admire the beliefs of central American empires and eventually looking to eastern religions.  He attended a Methodist church for some time, being attracted to their social justice agenda while choosing to ignore their Christian roots.

We talked some about whether western culture truly represents Christ’s teachings, and whether it is appropriate to reject Christianity on this basis.  Do the well-documented atrocities done in the name of Christianity actually represent the teachings of Jesus?  Did not the abuse of the political power gained by the Catholic Church with the fall of the Roman Empire heavily contaminate biblical Christianity with worldliness, and do we not “throw out the baby with the bathwater” by rejecting Christianity along with the imperialism that tried to use it for its own agenda?

Western culture has developed from a context in which Judeo-Christian revelatory knowledge from Scripture has intersected with the modern, man-centered humanist or secular approach to knowledge.  It has had to balance and/or mix these two often opposing world views and the hypocrisy that can occur as a result have left it open to easy criticism. 

As a high school history teacher, I told Hector how it is easy for many history teachers to make their classes interesting and hold their student’s attention by appealing to their student’s sense of rebellion against the establishment, painting alternative world views in glowing terms while portraying western culture as a vast, destructive conspiracy.  They find it easy to criticize western failures, and also easy to ignore its many accomplishments.

Christianity, too, is part of the foundation of western culture and becomes easy to criticize along with it, to the point that people like Hector who are searching for spiritual truth don’t even consider it.  Christianity gets eliminated as a possibility by people who pride themselves on keeping an open mind.  My challenge to Hector was that he consider the claims of Christ, and I gave him Josh McDowell’s “More Than a Carpenter” as one source of evidence overlooked or ignored by those who would insist on only a secular basis for testing truth claims.

(PS - Thank you to Hector for allowing me to record our conversation – it can be viewed HERE)