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.
Well, critics often argue that much of what Christians think of as biblical truth and morality today are mere inventions of late 20th century American conservatism.
So, Christian sexual ethics, they're products of 1990s purity culture, claims about the exclusivity of Christ, those are remnants of Western ideological imperialism. And of course, the pro-life movement, that was invented by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson to get Ronald Reagan in office in the 80s.
However, the first Christians were known and often attacked for many of the same beliefs and same practices that Christians are today, just without the lions. In fact, just like the creeds of the early church clarified what Christians should believe, there are other writings from that time that clarify how Christians should live. For example, Justin Martyr's beautiful description of the Christian worship service would fit what most of us still experience each Sunday today. Quote, on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together in one place and the members. memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read.
As long as time permits. Then, when the reader has ceased, the President verbally instructs and exhorts the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president, in like manner, offers prayers and thanksgivings according to his ability, and the people assent, saying, Amen. And then there's the epistle to Diognetus, written by a Christian to a non-believing friend in the second or third century. He described the Christian's way of life this way: Christians dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners.
As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country. Every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all others. They beget children, but they do not destroy their offspring.
They have a common table, but not a common bed. End quote. And probably the clearest example of this early teaching is the Didikae, a second century summary of Christian morality. It commanded the church, among many other things, basically to be pro-life, quote, you shall not murder a child by abortion, nor kill that which is born, end quote. And this command and the fact that the early church lived by it is a key reason for the explosive growth the early church experienced.
You see, in the ancient Greco-Roman world, abortion and the killing of infants through a practice called exposure was considered both legally and socially acceptable. And most of the babies that were left to die were little girls. In his book, The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark described how Christians would search out and save these little girls that had been left to die by their pagan families. After a few decades of this kind of life and death dynamic, there was a shortage of women within pagan culture for pagan young men to marry.
So many of them, believe it or not, ended up going to church so that they could find wives. Also, because Christian women did not have abortions at the same rates as pagan women, a particularly brutal practice at the time, they also had higher fertility rates.
So, in the end, the explosive growth of Christianity across the empire was really about math. God used the obedience of early Christians to change the world.
Now, of course, if we could take a time machine today and go back and speak to any of these baby rescuers and ask if they realized just how significant their obedience was going to be in the history of mankind, my guess is they'd be puzzled.
Well, I don't know anything about that. They'd probably say, I'm just trying to help her. And that's why the Christian life can never be reduced down to just random acts of kindness. God orchestrates history and among the things he uses most is the obedience of his people. Of course critics will keep telling us to get with the times, but it was precisely by being countercultural that Christianity rocked the Roman Empire the way it did.
Ordinary people living out extraordinary faith, that's what transformed the world. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast.
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