I really think the post-WW2 consensus best explains what has paralyzed the West for so long.
A proposition that's been floating around the conservaphere the last few years can be summed up like this:
The West replaced Satan with Hitler, Hell with the Holocaust, and God with Civil Rights Law.
Was WW2 a demonstration of man's utter depravity? Yes.
Was the Holocaust evil? Yes.
Was it the worst event of the 20th century?
No, I haven't become an antisemitic looney toon like the basement-dwelling neckbeards on social media. I haven't lost my marbles like certain conservative podcast hosts. And to Roman Governor Festus in the back, I haven't gone crazy like the Apostle Paul from my "great learning."
Simply suggesting that World War 2 was not the most important, or even most horrific, moment in human history is anathema in the West. You simply cannot say it. We are still too close to the horrors ... and we don't remember the horrors that came long before we were born.
I grew up in an era where you still heard the stories firsthand. In high school, right before his death, my class personally sat down to hear from Joseph Beyrle, the only soldier to serve with both the U.S. and Soviet armies. Having been captured by the Nazis after parachuting into Normandy with the 506th, Beyrle was sent to a prison camp, but escaped half a year later. He managed to hook up with a Russian tank division and fight his way back toward American forces.
The stories and sacrifice of such heroes is burned into the consciousness of a nation for generations. To question anything about the war or our involvement or the cultural beliefs and norms that came out of it is still, to this day, considered a bit treasonous. It simply isn't the type of thing you talk about in polite company.
But as a 30-something now surveying the mess modern American culture is in, I have to look back at the last great struggle that shaped the West.
The antisemitic trolls like to make everything about World War 2 because they're weirdly obsessed with the Jews and fancy themselves Hitler fans (Hitler likely would have shot most of these internet anons on sight).
But an honest person should be able to note that the Western world changed drastically after the war - much of it for good! - in order to understand how we got here and where we go next.
Here's what I think would have been helpful to tell my great-grandparents and grandparents back in the 1950s:
World War 2 was not the end of history.
It may not have been vocally put like that, but this was the collective belief that underpinned much of what happened in the West after the war.
The West, still feebly adopting the label "Christendom," was fractured, but the pieces still continued moving with inertia in the same direction. It was time for a change, both in culture and perspective.
Those who saw the horrors of the war reacted differently to it. Some associated tradition and the very belief in God with those horrors. They gave into fatalism and disbelief, but also the Gene Roddenberry notion of a world full of educated global citizens that would reach for the stars.
On the other side, the horrors of the war pushed many people into the embrace of Christian missions. If this was the beginning of the end of history, then they had a limited time to share the Gospel. Western Christians poured their energy into reaching the "Global South," launching a missions movement unlike the world has ever seen, to reach every people group with the good news of Jesus Christ.
I worked for a family that dedicated its resources to such a mission. Every year, I analyzed and vetted close to 200 missions partners around the world, involving tens of millions of dollars. This was good, and still is good, and is being used for the glory of God's Kingdom.
But I also saw a lot of rot within Christian missions. There were sordid things happening. Money and influence led some public leaders astray by sexual sin, like the late Ravi Zacharias, but there were deeper problems. Many of them. Some of the mismanagement in Christian nonprofits would make the corruption between USAID and NGOs seem tame in comparison.
The fundraising frenzy for the Global South was mirrored by development agencies in the secular world. Everyone was focused on helping underdeveloped countries and communities get education, healthcare, food security, and variations of democracy and/or the Gospel.
Much of it was noble, but the West threw the baby out with the bathwater.
If these are the end of times, why do we need to build nice things for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren at home?
The West continued its slide into moral rot and physical decay, even as faithful believers gave all they could to launch more seminary programs in rural Africa. But beyond that, Western churches were loathe to participate in aspects of their own communities that would make them seem authoritarian or dogmatic. Churches wanted to decouple from anything that might be associated with the traditions that could be associated with The End of History, AKA Word War 2.
Churches veered far away from politics and cultural influence. Instead, they adopted a quiet, pietistic faith. This ultimately led to the idealization of persecution and suffering, thinking their abandonment of the public square was righteous.
Over the following decades, this led to pastors like David Platt and Francis Chan who promote poverty as a form of holiness, and lay Christians like Phil Vischer who think kindness and inclusion are the pinnacle of righteousness.
I grew up in Lutheran, Baptist, Reformed, and Evangelical Covenant churches. I imbibed dispensationalism through my pores. No one would have batted an eye at the lady who was chatting after service about the need to gather Jews back to Israel and build the Third Temple as the fulfillment of end times prophecy (with a copy of "Left Behind" under her arm, of course).
As I graduated high school, I too thought I was living in the end of times. God was allowing this brief period of prosperity before the inevitable end and I needed to pour my energy into missions as the highest calling before that time came.
In college, however, I became shell shocked by my American evangelical cultural blinders after living in Jordan for a summer. It really was jarring to go from living among Arabs for 3 months in 2009 to the tourist trap that is Jerusalem, where I saw fellow American Christians salivating over old rocks as if they contained magical power.
After graduating, I had my first panic attack. A newlywed, I had quit my job in order to fundraise for overseas missions. I didn't understand at the time why I was experiencing anxiety or why God would not take it away - after all, I was glorifying God by plunging myself and my wife into poverty, right? David Platt would have been proud of me for giving up the American Dream!
Fortunately, God is good and met me in my blindness, but I didn't push in my 20s to better provide for my family because I saw poverty for the sake of the Kingdom as a mission.
If I could go back a decade, I wouldn't tell myself to invest in Bitcoin as my first recommendation: It would be to hold true to the Apostle Paul's statement that "time is short," God's statement to the Prophet Jeremiah to seek the good of the city where he has placed us, the Apostle Peter's statement that "a day is like a thousand years" to the Lord, and the biblical command to provide for my children and their children beyond.
'A good man leaves an inheritance for his children's children,
but a sinner's wealth is stored up for the righteous.' - Proverbs 13:22'But if anyone does not provide for his own family, especially for his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.' - Timothy 5:8
'...we encourage you, brothers and sisters, to do this even more, to seek to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, so that you may behave properly in the presence of outsiders and not be dependent on anyone.' - 1 Thessalonians 4:10b-12
God is a master of generational thinking.
We stopped doing that in our churches. We stopped thinking about how to provide for our descendants ten generations down the line. We don't even think about our own children, for goodness' sake!
The truth about modern Westerners is this:
We don't want kids and we don't want to leave anything for the kids we do have.
May God in heaven above make us come to our senses!
And yet, because so many people are still alive who believe we are living at the end of history, I don't know if my own rambling thoughts will change anyone's perspective. Not even Christ himself seems to have changed many people's minds, despite clearly warning people not to be deceived in Matthew 24:.
You are going to hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, because these things must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these events are the beginning of labor pains.
...
But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
Eventually, the people who think World War 2 was the beginning of the end of history will pass away. Then something else will happen that will convince people that they are actually living at the end of history. Our time is not unique in this way.
As for me, I'll be over here quietly rolling up my sleeves to provide for my children and their children's children, working to ensure they have both a physical inheritance and the spiritual inheritance of a nation that glorifies God through its laws and the public square.
I'll let God take care of the labor pains.
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.
