As I studied these matters and attempted to find solutions, I worked backwards through time, seeking the origin of our dilemma. It quickly became obvious that we as humans have different perspectives on the universe, and that meant I had to determine which of those paradigms affected our situation and in what manner.
First, there is the humanist perspective. We are but animals, void of souls, and morality is mutable. We live and die, and returning to dirt is our fate. The mantra of this viewpoint is “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.”
Second, there is a traditional Judeo-Christian-Muslim view: We have souls and are related to a supreme being who created all things. The oldest system of this is rooted in the Hebrew culture and there are societies today that adhere more to those precepts, namely the Amish, Mennonite, and other Anabaptists that focus on closed societies and strict rules of behavior that emphasize simple living.
There is a Hebrew example in history, which is largely represented by the Muslim community today. They organized society to deal with our human nature, believing that they were responsible for their wickedness and had the ability to pay for it through a system of sacrifices. For the purposes of this exploration Muslims are a version of the Hebrew society we will explore.
Then there is the Christian view that Christ paid for the sins of humanity. This society, formed by the early practitioners, view human nature as sinful also, but they adopted a culture of self-denial and abuse as their solutions for dealing with that sin. The premise is that since Christ paid for their sins already, they are unworthy. They diverged from the Hebrew culture when they began proselytizing the gentile nations and adopted the belief that prosperity is wicked, and to suffer is righteous. For those who disagree with that tenant, I will speak to that argument in this paper as I believe it is the root of humanity’s current challenges.
Of course, there are other religions and how they view the world, but in the modern era, the great preponderance of the world is influenced by the history of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim experience. Even socialism and communism resulted from the path of influence exerted by the early Christian church.
As I stated, I began this study with the observation that we are destroying ourselves, which led to the question: “What went wrong?” I decided to look at two different societal solutions, Hebrew and Christian. What became more and more apparent during my study, was that the Hebrew/Muslim model focused on harnessing human nature and directing it through social structures for the purpose of increasing productivity. We might not like the specifics of some elements of that society as it is expressed, but neither can we deny the deplorable things Christians have done in the name of their own faith.
As difficult as it is for Christians to accept, Islam is growing rapidly and when you look at the pinnacle of their society nations, are among the wealthiest, most secure societies on earth. These successful nations have refused to admit their cultures’ bad examples into their society, isolating cultures like Boko Haram, ISIS, and the Taliban from their banking systems or immigration. This has been a big point of the request for these nations to take refugees from Gaza. They have refused them whereas the Christian nations have opened their doors and welcomed the dregs of the Muslim world, even allowing them to hold public office and influence the culture. In the references section there is a link to an interview where the matter is discussed. What we can’t deny, is that Muslims are the only culture in the world today that is not on a path to extinction. Ultimately, survival MUST be a metric of success. The death of a culture can hardly be evidence of its value
The early Christian society viewed human nature as evil and something to be eliminated by punishing people for what is natural. That path usually involved denial and castigation, frequently resulting in horrific acts of unchristian conduct. When we step back and look at where the past 2,000 years have led us, we are faced with an undeniable fact. Every culture on earth that originated through Christian influence is facing a mathematical and biological course to extinction. This can be easily demonstrated using a common spreadsheet. Take the population’s reproduction rate, factor in the age of mothers at the time they currently give birth, and human gestation periods, there is a point where the birthrate falls to a number where the population can’t recover. We are past that time in every culture on earth except one, and that culture’s metrics are still falling.
I want to be clear that my exposure of human constructs is not a rebuke of faith or of God. This work is purely looking at organizations of human activity and the results of those efforts. We need solutions and those always come from understanding the base issue.
Likewise, this paper isn’t meant as a specifically Christian message, but I encounter certain arguments so often in that community that I feel the need to expose the errors we have embraced. The deeper I dove into the subject matter, the more obvious it became that beginning in the second century, Christian and Jewish leaders began teaching behaviors and practices that changed our naturally inclined society into one that denies our nature and even describes it as evil. That was not the message Jesus came to deliver, and the error resulted in a dramatic change in how we conducted our family affairs, social structures, and our view of what is morally right and wrong.
One of the many results is that people are driven to do natural things out of public sight, whereas they didn’t have to do that before. One of the tenants of our faith is that you can’t avoid your nature. We have stopped dealing with it and now simply deny its expression. What was righteous is now clandestine.