Behind the idea of Christendom is the matter of interpretive filters for your history. When it comes to evaluating whether things are getting better, whether they are staying the same, or getting worse, we will make that call in the grip of our foundational assumptions. Under the category of staying the same, we would also include a pattern of random ebb and flow.
For Christians, to have a genuinely Christian civil order develop would constitute an improvement. But do improvements actually happen? Everybody grants that particular improvements might happen — for example, my headache might go away — but, taking the long view, do overall improvements happen as history unfolds?
The first thing we need to get hold of is the idea that the whole discussion is a matter of interpretative ideas in conflict, and not an interpretive idea on one side and “the facts” on the other. Arthur Herman has done a wonderful job of showing that the idea of decline is in fact an idea, and so it is actually a school of thought — and not a bare mound of facts gathered from the newspapers.
As an idea, it is capable of being refuted. As an idea, it should be possible for us to conclude that it is a bad idea. In our personal affairs, we all know the glass half empty people and the glass half full people. The former thinks of everything that could go wrong, and the latter thinks of all the possibilities. At some point in the proceedings, it should be possible to demonstrate to some gloomy gus that it did not, in fact, rain on the picnic.
Progress is a biblical concept. Things have gotten better, they are better now, and they will continue to get better. Better than what? Well, better than it was. God is telling a story, and we are that many more chapters closer to the eucatastrophic denoument of His story. As we progress through His narrative, we should be able to tell what is going on. We should be reading with excitement, looking ahead at what is coming.
To say that Christianity is progressive is not to borrow from the secularists. The traffic actually goes the other way. Evolution is a Christian heresy — a twisting or a bending of this Christian idea of progress. But of course, there is no way to account for progress in a cosmos without standards, but they try to anyway. As C.S. Lewis put it in his Evolutionary Hymn . . .
Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future’s endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.
When you don’t know where you are going, you can always make good time. When survival is the only prize at the end of the process, evolution could end with a world full of three-foot-long cockroaches, and we would be forced to call it good. Like all heresies, progressive evolution has to live off a host, which in in this case is the Christian faith. In the meantime, oddly, numerous Christians have abandoned this basic Christian narrative, and have adopted the idea of decline. It consequently seems self-evident to many Christians that things are getting consistently worse and worse.
Let’s run a little thought experiment, shall we? P.J. O’Rourke once quipped that he could refute those who didn’t believe in progress in one word, that one word being dentistry. Let’s add some other areas in which, taking an average, things are improving. Whether it is in standards of living, or literacy, or health, the last century has seen remarkable improvements. We can do this even while taking into account those portions of the globe that were run by homicidal lunatics, as well as the cozy places of American academia that were dedicated to the defense of said lunatics. Remember that we are not comparing things to an ideal Platonic state, but rather comparing them to way they were before.
And we are not looking at history in five year increments, but rather in 500 year increments. I would rather be alive now than in 1510, and I would have preferred 1510 to 1010. After all in 1510, I would have had the opportunity to buddy up with Luther, and in 1010 I would have been stuck as an advisor to Harold the Not Conqueror.
Now here is the thought experiment. If I say something like this in Christian circles, the response will come back that I am pointing to “earthly” improvements, not spiritual ones. Is this not a case of setting my mind on things below, clean contrary to Paul’s admonition to the Colossians? Not really. As Yogi Berra once put it, you can observe a lot by just watching. You want spiritual things? How about the astonishing rate at which Africa, China, and South America are being brought to Christ? Philip Jenkins has made the (pretty surprising) case here and here. But it is only surprising to those who have adopted the non-Christian, and unbelieving, “idea of decline.”
This is why I say that this is not “an idea” (optimism) versus “the facts” (realistic pessimism). All facts are interpreted in accordance with a worldview system. And I am saying that the biblical worldview system requires us to believing that living water flows out from Ezekiel’s temple until it brings life to the whole world, and healing to all the nations. I filter the evidence through that grid.
One last thing. It may be said that I am here evidencing a deficient sense of man’s sinfulness. But I protest — as much as I welcome criticism, this is mere abuse. I think a fair reading of how I look at the world will reveal that I believe that the supply of human and congressional follies are virtually endless. Sin is a giant, sure enough.
But when Joshua and Caleb countered the ten other spies, the point of disagreement between them was not over the size or reality of the Canaanite giants. It would have done the ten spies no good to claim that Joshua and Caleb had a “deficient view of giants.” And many years later, David knew the size and power of Goliath as well as anyone.
To say that Christ has conquered sin and the devil does not require us to maintain that the sin was trivial and the devil a midget in order for us to keep our gospel “believable” to skeptical outsiders. Great views of sin should lead us to great views of salvation. Great but fearful views of sin can lead to the additional sin of hanging back, hesitant in unbelief. And because we do not label that unbelief as part of this sin, our views of sin are clearly not great enough.
Jesus Christ, Lord of the next Christendom, won a great victory before He was enthroned where He is currently enthroned, at the right hand of the Father. We do not honor that victory by acting as though it passed through history the same way Jesus passed through the wall of the upper room, without leaving a hole. No, He left a hole, all right. History has never been the same, and can never be the same. Your great great grandchildren will live in a world that will be that much closer to the time when the leaves for the healing of the nations will be in the actual possession of every nation.