The Values That Made the West Great Came From the Bible
Right now there is a tremendous amount of debate about what values our society should embrace.
There are some that are promoting the benefits of “conservative values,” there are some that are promoting the benefits of “liberal values” and there are others that are promoting the benefits of other types of values. But if we really want to make western society great again, the truth is that we should return to the values that made western society great in the first place. Those values are the reason why western nations were the most prosperous and most civilized nations on the entire planet for centuries. And once other nations started adopting those same values, they became more prosperous and more civilized too.
The values that I am talking about are the values that we find in the Bible.
All throughout history, civilizations that have chosen to do things God’s way have been blessed, and civilizations that have chosen not to do things God’s way have been cursed.
Just consider the United States. It was founded by people that loved the Bible, and throughout our history it was primarily made up of people that loved the Bible. Of course that has changed in our day, and as a result our society is now a giant mess. But at one time we were the most blessed nation on the entire planet by a wide margin, and that didn’t happen by accident.
Centuries of experience have taught us that capitalist countries tend to be more prosperous than countries that practice various forms of collectivism. A lot of people tend to think of socialism and communism as relatively modern movements, but the truth is that there have been collectivist societies for thousands of years.
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In fact, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were both greatly inspired by hunter-gatherer societies that practiced “primitive communism.”
Primitive communism is a way of describing the gift economies of hunter-gatherers throughout history, where resources and property hunted or gathered are shared with all members of a group in accordance with individual needs. In political sociology and anthropology, it is also a concept (often credited to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels), that describes hunter-gatherer societies as traditionally being based on egalitarian social relations and common ownership. A primary inspiration for both Marx and Engels were Lewis H. Morgan‘s descriptions of “communism in living” as practiced by the Haudenosaunee of North America. In Marx’s model of socioeconomic structures, societies with primitive communism had no hierarchical social class structures or capital accumulation.
Needless to say, societies that practiced “primitive communism” never became great.
But even today, there are primitive tribes all over the globe that practice various forms of collectivism. It doesn’t work, but they still keep on trying.
Of course the same principles also don’t work when entire modern nations try them. In the Bible, from the very beginning we see buying, we see selling, and we see property rights being respected.
There is a reason why so many capitalists are fond of the Bible and so many collectivists are not. The Bible encourages private ownership, private enterprise, individual responsibility and hard work. Needless to say, even those that do not believe in the Bible benefit when they embrace the same economic values.
Just look at what has happened to China. In the years following the communist revolution, millions died from starvation. But once the Chinese moved in a more capitalist direction and started promoting private ownership, private enterprise, individual responsibility and hard work, China became a global economic powerhouse.
The Bible also places a very high value on family. In the Ten Commandments we are told to honor our fathers and our mothers, and throughout the rest of the Torah we are given very specific instructions about how families are to operate.
Today, much of the population has rejected the Bible and the traditional family unit is relentlessly mocked. As a result, divorce rates have soared, birth rates have fallen to historic lows, suicide rates are at all-time record highs, alcohol and drug abuse is out of control, sex outside of marriage is rampant and the streets of our major cities are filled with violence.
Study after study has shown that kids that come from broken homes are far more likely to commit violent crimes, they are far more likely to get involved with drugs, and they are far more likely to end up impoverished. And societies that do not value the traditional family unit also tend not to value the lives of those that are the most vulnerable.
In ancient Greece and Rome, individual human life had no particular value in and of itself. The Spartans left weak children to die on the hillside. Infanticide was common, as it is common even today in many parts of the world. Fathers who wanted sons had few qualms about drowning their newborn daughters. Human beings were routinely bludgeoned to death or mauled by wild animals in the Roman gladiatorial arena. Many of the great classical thinkers saw nothing wrong with these practices. Christianity, on the other hand, contributed to their demise by fostering moral outrage at the mistreatment of innocent human life.
In ancient times, child sacrifice was one of the most common ways to get rid of unwanted children. When it was time to make a sacrifice to “the gods”, children that were not wanted were brought and put on the altar.
The same thing is essentially happening today, but we give it a different name. We call it “abortion”, and it is done behind closed doors in pristine clinical settings. Since 1973, more than 1.5 billion children have been slaughtered worldwide. So what makes us any better than any of the ancient civilizations that regularly sacrificed their unwanted children?
The Bible very strongly denounces child sacrifice, and it also very strongly denounces the various forms of sexual immorality that are exploding in our society today. For decades, the left has been pushing us to accept one form of sexual perversion after another. As societal sentiment has shifted, the right has eventually gone along with most of the changes that have been happening.
But God has not changed. He sees everything that is going on, and He has warned us over and over again to change course.
If we choose to keep going down this path, we will be cursed and the consequences will be extremely bitter, but if we repent and change our ways we will be greatly blessed.
God always gives us a choice, and the clock is ticking.
Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
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