The question that John had for Jesus, Are you he that should come, or do we look for another?, is, in a sense, a question that crosses the mind of every generation. The reasons for John’s question we have had cause to examine at other times. Sometimes we can prove the truthfulness of something by examining the alternatives. John Lennon wrote and sang, Imagine there’s no Heaven…..and no religion too…Well I can’t, simply because man is incurably religious: man worships something, man hopes for something, even those who would claim to be irreligious. And those who claim to be irreligious look for some code of ethics and morality by which to live their own lives and judge other’s behaviour. The only way I could imagine Lennon’s dream would be to have a world filled with only animals or robots.
Lennon’s song implied that the world would be a better place without Christianity, but what foolishness. I believe that if Jesus was not the Christ, there would have been no John Lennon, and perhaps none of us would have been here alive today.
If Jesus is not the Christ, “to whom should we go?” asked Peter (John 6:68). That is still a good question. There have been quite a few pretenders down through the years who have sought the world’s adoration, but they lack the Lord’s credentials. Arnold Toynbee (agnostic historian of the 20th century), spoke of the world’s quest for a Saviour. Guru after guru has been elevated only to fail and be found wanting. He says, eventually no humans were left in the race and only gods remained, and of these only a few have been prepared to put their title to the test by plunging into the icy river of death – and now as we stand and gaze with our eyes fixed upon the farther shore, a single figure rises from the flood, and straightway fills the whole horizon. There is the Saviour. Honest and startling conclusion from an agnostic, wouldn’t you think?!
But besides that, I want to focus on something else: how do you explain the impact for good He has made in every way over the past 2000 years? We may pick out some names of those who have made a difference in this world, but usually they were influenced by Jesus Christ. Take Science, for example. Many people do not know that modern science rests upon the shoulders of Christian thinkers. Religion is not the enemy of science, but true religion is the friend of true science. False religion is the enemy of true science. Respected scientist, Alfred Whitehead, said that Christianity is the mother of science because of the medieval insistence on the rationality of God. (cf. Gen. 1:1, 28). When you read a list of founders of various branches of science who were Bible-believers, you really have a list of “who’s who”.
Antiseptic surgery – Joseph Lister: Bacteriology – Louis Pasteur: Calculus – Isaac newton: Celestial mechanics – Johannes Kepler: Chemistry – Robert Boyle: Comparative Anatomy – George Curvier: Computer Science – Charles Babbage: Dimensional Analysis – Lord Rayleigh: Dynamics – Isaac Newton: Electronics – John Fleming: Electrodynamics – James Maxwell: Electromagnetics – Michael Faraday: Energetics – Lord Kelvin: Entomology of living insects – Henri Fabre: Field Theory – Michael Faraday: Fluid Mechanics – George Stokes: Galactic Astronomy – Sir William Herschel: Gas Dynamics – Robert Boyle: Genetics – Gregor Mendel: Glacial Geology – Louis Agassiz: Gynaecology – James Simpson: Hydrography – Matthew Maury: Hydrostatics – Blaise Pascal: Ichthyology – Louis Agassiz: Isotopic Chemistry – William Ramsey: Model Analysis – Lord Raleigh: Natural History – John Ray: Non-Euclidean Geometry – Bernard Riemann: Oceanography – Matthew Maury: Optical Minerology – David Brewster. All of these men were believers in Christ.
So as James Kennedy says to the common charge that creationists are not scientists, Creationists invented Science! People who think that pagan and atheistic science would have given us these advances anyway, remind me of the armchair critics who sit in front of the T.V. watching the football game and describing how much better they would do than those who actually made the team and are actually playing. Atheistic philosophy may have eventually stumbled upon modern science and give us the advances we take for granted, but as the scripture says, let not him who puts on his armour boast as one who takes it off.
At the time of Jesus, women had few rights. Grecian women were on the same level as a slave, whilst Roman women were regarded higher than that, they were not on a par with men, and for 1000 years the patria potestas law ruled, giving men the power of life and death over their wives and families. Emperor Valentinian repealed that law about fifty years after the Edict of Toleration. What brought it about? – Gal. 3:26-29: Eph.5: 1 Pet 3:7.
Aristotle described a slave as a living tool, just as a tool is an inanimate slave. However, Christians interacted with slaves as with free men and shared at the same table of the Lord. They followed the example of Jesus who was accused of keeping company with sinners. It’s true that reforms came slowly, but Christians were often not in a position to force social reform. When slavery was finally abolished it was Christians who were at the forefront of the fight.
We take the presence of hospitals for granted. We object to the government when they don’t provide the kind of care we want. Complaints about the Health Department are always rife. Historian Philip Schaff said, The old Roman world was a world without charity. Hospitals didn’t exist. It was early Christians motivated by the example and teaching of Jesus who cared for the sick. It was dangerous work, not only because of the threat of infection, but also because of authorities. For example, Benignus of Dijon in the 2nd century was actually executed because he dared to nurse back to health crippled and deformed children and saved babies from exposure. Persecutions limited what Christians could do in the first two or three centuries, but it wasn’t long after the Edict of Toleration in the early fourth century that the first hospital was established by Christians.
The same can be said for schools. Every time you slow to 40kph to drive past a school you are driving past a reminder of Jesus Christ. There was education before Christ but only for the elite. Education for everyone has its roots in Christ’s teaching. Even the great Universities of the world like Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and many others were started by Christian-thinking people, primarily for the purpose of educating students in the Bible. Of course, you could be excused for not knowing that judging by their attitudes toward Christ today. Dr. J.D. Douglas wrote, From the beginning the religion of the Bible has gone hand in hand with teaching….Christianity is par excellence a teaching religion, and the story of its growth is largely an educational one….As Christianity spread patterns for more formal education developed.
Time would fail us to tell of the influence of Christian thinking in the rise of capitalism and free enterprise which has done so much for the world, which socialism and communism never could do. Also the rise of what is erroneously called the Protestant Work Ethic (so called because it had its rise at the time of the Protestant Reformation when people began to pay closer attention to the Bible, a practice discouraged under Catholicism). We could go on to speak of the influence of Christ’s teaching in the rise of Civil Liberties, Benevolent Institutions, Democratic Government, and the Arts and Music. On this last point, author Cynthia Maus has said, More poems have been written, more stories told, more pictures painted, and more songs sung about Christ than any other person in history, because through such avenues as these the deepest appreciation of the human heart can be more adequately expressed.
But what about abuses? I guess that depends upon what you see as abuses. Nietzsche, in the late 19th century, bemoaned the fact that the cross has triumphed over all other nobler virtues. He said, The Christian Church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul. You see, Nietzsche held up as heroes a herd of blonde beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and masters. You don’t have to think too deeply to see that Hitler was his disciple, and he put into action many of Nietzsche’s principles and 16 million people died. He said, We are fighting against the most ancient curse that humanity has brought upon itself. We are fighting against the perversion of our soundest instincts. Ah, the God of the deserts, that crazed, stupid, vengeful Asiatic Despot with his powers to make laws!….That poison with which both Jews and Christians have spoiled and soiled the free, wonderful instincts of man and lowered them to the level of doglike fright. So I guess if you believe that might makes right, that Christian virtues are “sissy” virtues, and man is his own god, then Christianity is guilty of abuses.
Many, however, of the opponents of Christianity would appreciate the values of Christianity but would point to such excesses as the Inquisitions, witch hunts etc. But as David Martin, Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science has noted, There is a very crude form of critique of religion which has to do with the evil caused by religions. One thing that is very interesting is that when you get rid of religion, all those evils you thought were associated with religion re-appear, just as strongly and sometimes even more forcefully. So they were inherent possibilities of social life as such, not characteristics specifically associated with religion.
It is to be acknowledged that people have done things in the name of Christ which ought not to have been done – cf. Matt.7:21-23. Witch-hunts were conducted in Europe and America in the name of Christ, but they were stopped by people influenced by Christ. People who claimed to be Christians were involved in the slave trade, but it was men like Wilberforce and Lincoln under the influence of Christian thinking that ended it. And so on. It is true that wars are fought in the name of God, but when you hear statements like More people have been killed in the name of Christ than any other name, that’s a lie. The Inquisition is reported to have killed 30,000 souls, the Salem witch-hunts which most people have heard of killed 20 people and so on. But these sorts of figures pale beside Stalin who killed between 30 and 40 million, Hitler his 16 million (not counting the dead from the war) and Mao killed something like 70 million. And shouldn’t we take into account the number who have been killed by abortion year after year! The historian Paul Johnson said that the twentieth century state has proved itself the great killer of all time. Joseph Sobran wrote about those who focus on the sins committed in the name of religion: They will keep your eyes fixed in horror on wrongs committed centuries ago, because, as a friend of mine puts it, they haven’t noticed the twentieth century. But that one century is one of mass murder, genocide and institutional terrorism, the fruits of that phantom faith in the secular state that persists in promising “liberation” even as it attacks the most fundamental human attachments.
More than a century ago, James Russell Lowell was once at a banquet where the Christian religion was being ridiculed. He said, I challenge any skeptic to find a ten-mile square spot on this planet where they can live their lives in peace and safety and decency, where womanhood is honoured, where infancy and old age is revered, where they can educate their children, where the Gospel of Jesus Christ has not gone first to prepare the way. If they find such a place, then I would encourage them to emigrate thither and there proclaim their unbelief.
All these good things came about despite Matt. 7:13,14!!!!! Imagine if the world followed Christ, where would we be, and what life on earth would be like (cf. Isa. 48:18,19)! Truly, as Jesus said to His disciples, “You will do greater things than these” (John 14:12. This he said in reference to the miracles He had wrought. I find it remarkable that those who try to defend miraculous gifts today on the basis of this verse, cannot produce miraculous works on a par with Jesus, let alone greater. I would certainly consider their claims if they could just walk on water, or raise the dead. Miracles were a means to an end, not an end in themselves – and temporary in a little corner of the world. The greater, universal, and more lasting works that the disciples of Jesus have done bear witness to the truth of Christ’s identity. A religion that does not work in this life cannot be relied to work in the next. If Jesus is not the Christ, then who is He?