TO SWEDEN AND BEYOND!

Sweden, ahh Sweden, look at the caption on this picture and then visit my last blog post where I talk about Tim Keller’s quote.

The explicit idea here is that a country that has a majority atheist population can prosper just as well as one with a religious one. Implicit here though is again this common misconception that all religious people think that all non-religious people are inherently evil. What we Christians forget to remember is that all people are made in the image of God and similarly all people are affected by sin. We are all in need of a Savior, even those of us who already believe and worship Him still need Him. This is what the biblical worldview teaches and affirms. That should not make us Christians arrogant at all; rather it should implore us to be humble, and spur us on to show our gratitude for salvation and new life in the Kingdom of God by showing others that there is another way of thinking, living, and acting.

I could turn this into a question of whether atheists can be good but let us save that for another post (to give an immediate answer to this question just to wet your appetites, I would argue “yes” and there have been good atheists, but the question then becomes, how does one good (let’s say selfless) atheist justify why his friend a bad (selfish) atheist should live his way? How can he call his way “good” and the other way “bad”? What moral system must the good atheist borrow from another religion or worldview to make such a claim? But I digress…

Sometimes I honestly wonder if posters like these are just made to make people laugh in their cubicles or if people would actually use these to build a worldview without noticing the other side of the coin.

With that being said, let us return to Sweden.

Sweden is a part of Europe and being part of the Western system of thought, prizes individuality highly. One of the guarantees of European Constitution, the International Declaration of Human Rights as well as our own Bill of Rights is that of Freedom of Religion. The entire country of Sweden could become Hindu, atheist, Christian, Muslim or any other system of thought and ideally they would not be bothered from anyone within or without its borders.

Here’s the kicker. What worldview created the idea that man was worthy enough to have these rights? What system of thought gave man the inherent dignity and self-worth? Europe at one point was the central hub of Christianity and hundreds of influential Christian thinkers came from within its borders. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Wesley just to name a few, and even at the highest point of what historians call the Enlightenment, there had to be this uniting of trying to get ride of the idea of God yet somehow retaining the idea that humanity has inherent worth. James Sire in his book The Universe Next Door writes that there were many naturalists and humanists that still retained the Christian system of morality, but it was when people began to the godless foundation of naturalism to its logical conclusion did they find that they nothing left on which to stand. So they either had to retain the borrowing of another system, or try to create a moral system from a by-definition immoral foundation.

From this outworking you get someone like Fredrich Nietzsche who said freedom is nothing more than a herd mentality and that without God, supermen would be needed to play God in a society and if you have someone thinking they or the government they are a part of gets to play god, then that means it is they who decide(s) who lives and who dies and they who then decides who is even worthy of life.

Enter Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and so many others. This herein lies the crux of my argument. A country like Sweden in the midst of Europe that for centuries had laws based on the Christian worldview retained those same laws that Christianity gave them like freedom, hence atheism had the chance to rise. Look at the former Soviet Union or communist China for a contrast. When tradition is thrown out the window, and all competing worldviews are eliminated and made illegal except Marxism which is based on naturalism, that is when you have disaster, economic downward spirals, and massive bloodletting by the millions. That is when you have the “wasteland” that the above poster describes. The Soviet Union tried to build a utopia and failed, now that country has been run like a mob state. The only reason why China has become the economic powerhouse is because it is really only communist in name only. It has allowed capitalistic practices under Dong Xao-ping which would have never been allowed under Chairman Mao.

When atheism is put into public policy and made the political philosophy that drives your government, that is when the “wasteland” appears. So, honestly, don’t look at Sweden. It may be atheistic but people still have the freedom not to be.

(An interesting question here resides: If religion is supposedly on its way out the door as hardcore atheists would hope, and it will continue to erode away as long as man has the freedom to choose because man is by nature good, then why is it that both Christianity and Islam are growing rather than shrinking?)

Don’t look a Sweden. Try taking a look at history instead.