Three articles from Erick Erickson at RedState.com. First, he writes about Easter:
There are many candidates for most important day and most important week in human history. This week we remember what is arguably the very top of the top of the list. As secularism increases in the western world, more and more are dismissive of the reality of Jesus Christ. Consequently, they may choose to dismiss the importance of this week.
That’s narrow minded Christophobic thinking from some seriously self-centered individuals.
The reality is that whether you accept that Christ lived or not and whether you accept him as the Son of God or not, that so many for so long have accepted the significance of this week in history should not be ignored. The events of this week, culminating on Easter Sunday, fundamentally transformed the world in ways no other event in human history has.
The rise of the Christian, the Christian religion, governments connected to the church, and the missionary zeal have impacted everyone alive today in every country.
Second, well, the title explains it:
Christ in a Karmic Age
Every religion and philosophy has a version of the Golden Rule. Until Christ showed up on the scene two thousand years ago, the rule was almost always expressed in the negative — do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.
It is, if you will allow, a very libertarian philosophy. We can do X, Y, or Z because they do not harm our neighbors. It is the embodiment of karma in today’s culture. We think that we should be allowed to do that which we please as long as we do not harm others. We think that if we do bad things to others, bad things will be visited on us.
When bad things happen to us or someone else and we think the perpetrator has gotten away with it, the average person tends to think that at some point something bad will happen to the perpetrator. “Karma’s a bitch,” the saying goes.
Lastly, he addresses Christianity in the modern age:
Christians Side With Mammon. Mammon Sided with Barabbas.
An excerpt:
We’ve turned the American ideal of liberty into an idol we worship. The religious liberty in the first amendment is meant to protect the religious as they seek to draw people to them. But the world demands instead that the first amendment be used to draw the religious to the world and silence those who refuse to go along for the ride. In making an idol of our democratic freedom, the irony is that many evangelicals in America are abdicating the use of it.
What Christians in the United States of America, who’ve had it pretty easy for a long time in the USA, have forgotten or never learned is that the world is deeply hostile to the things, and people, of God. Remember, one thousand nine hundred eighty years ago tomorrow, the world chose to spare a criminal and crucify God himself.
Many young evangelicals who are making the decision that gay marriage conflicts with their personal beliefs, but it’ll be okay under the law, are making a compromise to avoid conflict and be liked by the world. “I’m not one of those Christians,” they think and often say.
