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Ideas, Consequences and Worldviews

In his Town Hall column Chuck Colson writes about the "birth dearth", the plummeting birth rates in most of the industrialized world.

Throughout Western Europe and East Asia, the birth rate is well below 2.1 births per woman—which is the minimum needed to maintain a stable population.

Environmentalist dogma argues that plummeting birth rates are a good thing: People cause pollution, we’re told. Well, officials in countries like Japan, Korea, and Germany now know better. In these and other so-called “advanced” societies, shrinking populations threaten their way of life and their cultural identity.

And it is their cultural identity, their civilization that is at stake. The depopulation of the Western World has given rise to a the replacement of native society by a more "fertile immigrant one."

But as last week’s bombings in London illustrate, turning millions of Islamic immigrants into "Europeans," however you define the term, is a dubious proposition. And in Japan, where racial purity is a primary cultural value, the population faces eventual extinction.

It’s hard to imagine a better example of the importance of worldviews, and specifically in this case, the Christian one. Steyn is right when he says that Europe’s decline is directly linked to its hostility towards Christianity. Its rejection of what Christianity teaches about the family has made the continent safe for another kind of family: four-legged ones who howl at the moon.

While Colson’s column ends superbly, I don’t think his statement about worldviews will receive the attention that it deserves. In our pluralistic society there is the false notion that competing worldviews can co-exist without changing the cultural climate of the land. There is also the false notion that all Worldviews are equally acceptable.

The rejection of Christianity in government and society necessarily leads to the acceptance of something else, some other belief system that supplants the truth that salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. The denial of God forces individuals and societies to look elsewhere for purpose and satisfaction, leading to misguided man-centered endeavors, such as money, power, relationships, etc. all of which are not satisfying at all and promote a life of personal slavery and a state-god instead of a civil government.

Gone also are the Biblical foundation for ethics that support the God given sanctity of human life. Consequently, it is not surprising that unbelief has led to the rise of terrorism, abortion, euthanasia, infanticide, mercy killing and assisted suicide.

The solution, then, is belief and belief in Jesus Christ.

HT: RegularThoughts

Posted by tim at July 12, 2005 12:34 PM

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