Gary North on Christians' Inferiority Complex
The following text is taken from North's Introduction to By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today by Greg L. Bahnsen, (Tyler, TX: ICE, 1985), xxi-xxiv.
Why have so many Christians, especially theologians and professors at Christian colleges, proclaimed such a monstrous social philosophy, a philosophy of "anything is politically acceptable except the Old Testament"? I believe that one reason above all is at the root of the problem: Christians have been afraid to exercise dominion. They have been bullied into submission by professional humanist guilt-manipulators who have persuaded Christians that Christianity, when applied to politics, has led to tyranny and war. As an example, they cite the 800-year-old story of the medieval crusades, where a few thousand professional soldiers went off to fight the Muslims. And who is complaining loudly today about the evil Crusades? Defenders of humanism whose various representatives have launched twentieth century wars and revolutions in which as many as 150 million people died from 1901 until 1970.
These same critics have complained repeatedly about the Roman Catholic Church's burning of the occult magician Bruno or Calvin's approval of the burning of unitarian Servetus (with the enthusiastic approval of the Catholics, who were also after him, and who tipped Calvin off when Servetus came into Geneva), four centuries ago. Compare these two events with the atrocities of Stalin, who killed 20 to 30 million Russians in his purges in the 1930's, including a million Communist Party members, plus an additional ten million who died unnatural deaths during the famines produced by his forced collectivization of agriculture. Then there is the continuing atrocity of the Soviet Union's concentration camp population, which has probably included about one third of the Soviet population over the years, with at least one percent of the entire population in the camps at any given time.
This slaughter took place in the 1930's without any significant criticism in the prestige liberal humanist press for the next twenty years. Malcolm Muggeridge, a reporter for the Manchester Guardian in this era, says in the first volume of his autobiography that Western reporters and liberals knew what Stalin was doing; they approved of his ruthlessness. Even in our day, some apologists still exist. ("Stalin, despite certain excesses, was a progressive force in his day, and we must understand that it is not easy to bring a backward society into technological maturity, blah, blah, blah.") Yet these same ideologues taunt Christians about the Salem witch trials in the 1690's, in which all of 20 people were executed, and which never happened again. In one year, Mao's policies killed 30 million Chinese. Spare Christians the guilt trips, please.
Christians have until recently been humbled into submission by state-licensed, profit-seeking medical psychopaths who tell us that abortion is a morally valid way to control population growth and to solve marital and financial difficulties. A renewed interest in biblical law will "unhumbIe" Christians soon enough. It already has.
People may ask: Wouldn’t biblical law lead to tyranny? I answer: Why should it? God designed it. God mandated it. Was Israel a tyranny? Or was Egypt the real tyranny, and Babylon? Tyranny was what God visited upon His people when they turned their backs on biblical law.
But to be practical about it, I cannot imagine a successful modern tyranny that is financed by less than ten percent of national income. I can easily imagine many tyrannies that are coercively financed by five to seven times the tithe. So can you. In this bloody humanist century, this takes very little imagination. A history book is all it takes. Or a subscription to the New York Times.
Why have so many Christians, especially theologians and professors at Christian colleges, proclaimed such a monstrous social philosophy, a philosophy of "anything is politically acceptable except the Old Testament"? I believe that one reason above all is at the root of the problem: Christians have been afraid to exercise dominion. They have been bullied into submission by professional humanist guilt-manipulators who have persuaded Christians that Christianity, when applied to politics, has led to tyranny and war. As an example, they cite the 800-year-old story of the medieval crusades, where a few thousand professional soldiers went off to fight the Muslims. And who is complaining loudly today about the evil Crusades? Defenders of humanism whose various representatives have launched twentieth century wars and revolutions in which as many as 150 million people died from 1901 until 1970.
These same critics have complained repeatedly about the Roman Catholic Church's burning of the occult magician Bruno or Calvin's approval of the burning of unitarian Servetus (with the enthusiastic approval of the Catholics, who were also after him, and who tipped Calvin off when Servetus came into Geneva), four centuries ago. Compare these two events with the atrocities of Stalin, who killed 20 to 30 million Russians in his purges in the 1930's, including a million Communist Party members, plus an additional ten million who died unnatural deaths during the famines produced by his forced collectivization of agriculture. Then there is the continuing atrocity of the Soviet Union's concentration camp population, which has probably included about one third of the Soviet population over the years, with at least one percent of the entire population in the camps at any given time.
This slaughter took place in the 1930's without any significant criticism in the prestige liberal humanist press for the next twenty years. Malcolm Muggeridge, a reporter for the Manchester Guardian in this era, says in the first volume of his autobiography that Western reporters and liberals knew what Stalin was doing; they approved of his ruthlessness. Even in our day, some apologists still exist. ("Stalin, despite certain excesses, was a progressive force in his day, and we must understand that it is not easy to bring a backward society into technological maturity, blah, blah, blah.") Yet these same ideologues taunt Christians about the Salem witch trials in the 1690's, in which all of 20 people were executed, and which never happened again. In one year, Mao's policies killed 30 million Chinese. Spare Christians the guilt trips, please.
Christians have until recently been humbled into submission by state-licensed, profit-seeking medical psychopaths who tell us that abortion is a morally valid way to control population growth and to solve marital and financial difficulties. A renewed interest in biblical law will "unhumbIe" Christians soon enough. It already has.
People may ask: Wouldn’t biblical law lead to tyranny? I answer: Why should it? God designed it. God mandated it. Was Israel a tyranny? Or was Egypt the real tyranny, and Babylon? Tyranny was what God visited upon His people when they turned their backs on biblical law.
But to be practical about it, I cannot imagine a successful modern tyranny that is financed by less than ten percent of national income. I can easily imagine many tyrannies that are coercively financed by five to seven times the tithe. So can you. In this bloody humanist century, this takes very little imagination. A history book is all it takes. Or a subscription to the New York Times.
