Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. The Christian idea that humans are made in the image and likeness of God is the source. The only source in human history, in fact, for universal human dignity, human rights, and human value. As philosopher Luke Ferry wrote in his book, A Brief History of Thought, and I quote, Christianity introduced the notion that men were equal in dignity.
an unprecedented idea at the time, and one to which the world owes its entire democratic inheritance.
Now, of course, Christianity received its understanding of how God created people in his image from the Hebrew Old Testament. A commitment to the doctrine of the Amagode requires that Christians oppose every idea that reduces humans to some other identity.
So Christians reject LGBTQ ideology and critical race theory. because each says something that's not true about the human person. In the same way, Christians must reject anti-Semitism. Especially in the wake of Tucker Carlson's soft-pedal platforming of Nick Fuentes. Hateful views about the Jewish people have been prevalent on the political left.
and have now emerged also on the political right. These views have to be repudiated, no matter which side of the political spectrum they're found. What will happen now in the wake of this interview may well determine whether Fuentes and his Groper movement is mainstreamed or is pushed back beyond the shadowy margins of the conservative movement. Either way, Christians must be first and foremost committed to the biblical description of the universe and the human person over and above political loyalties. Thus this growing anti Semitism coming from the political right must be soundly condemned.
Whether from the political left or the political right, anti Semitism is morally evil. Chuck Coulson used to say that ideologies can be best understood based on how they answer a question. What's really wrong with the world? Throughout history, anti-Semitic movements have answered that question with a who, not a what. Columnist Rod Dreyer recently offered this summary of Hannah Arendt's definitive post-World War II analysis of anti-Semitism.
which occurred in the context of the Nazi rise to power during her generation. Quote, the basic argument Arendt makes is that anti-Semitism provides a scapegoat that can unite a badly fragmented society around a common enemy, even if it is detached from reality. Jews become the all-purpose enemy. whose existence explains society's troubles with deadly simplicity. The more popular it becomes, the more society becomes conditioned to think of individuals as faceless collective groups.
Moreover, anti Semitism exploits the willingness of atomized people, devoid of meaning and structure, and their willingness to believe any fiction that restores purpose and order to their lives, and it justifies terror against the other as a way of restoring the lost order for which people long. Yes, the greatest evils in human history all began, including the Holocaust, by identifying a group of people as the problem with the world. In the gulag archipelago, Alexander Soltzenitsen answered those who demonized a specific group of people this way. Quote, if only it were so simple, he sarcastically said. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.
But, he continued, the line separating good and evil passes not through States, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. In Greuper ideology, the evil and irrational hatred of certain groups, especially the Jews, is offered in place of a Christian understanding of creation and the fall. If the biblical understanding of the Imago Day has been the most consequentially good idea in human history, then racialized ideas about people have been the worst. They must not be tolerated. They must not be platformed.
They cannot even be left unchallenged. At least in terms of overall numbers, these are the bad ideas in the history of the world that have claimed the most victims. In the end, in this fallen world, we will find enemies both to the left and to the right. That's because there are people who themselves are made in the image of God who have been taken captive by what Paul called hollow and deceptive philosophies or elsewhere spiritual forces of evil. Our job, Paul said, is to destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God.
And we do this in hopeful prayer, that God, he said, may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil. who has captured them to do his will. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. For a copy of this commentary that you can download or share with others, go to breakpoint.org. And if these daily worldview commentaries are a helpful part of your worldview diet, please leave us a review wherever you download your podcast.
Join the Colson Center at Cornerstone University on November 12th for the screening of Truth Rising, a groundbreaking documentary about courageous faith in this cultural moment. Truth Rising helps Christians see how critical this civilizational moment is, believe they have a role to play in it, and embrace their calling to be agents of renewal wherever God has placed them. This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Register today at colsoncenter.org/slash Grand Rapids. That's colsoncenter.org slash Grand Rapids.
