I asked this before, but when? Can you name a year? A decade? A century? When was this true?
-CryptoLutheran
I am not sure what you mean. I mentioned earlier how Christian values changed the Greco Roman way of doing things, changed social norms to be more about equality and human worth rather than the pagan norms of slavery, adultery, homosexuality and treating humans like animals.
Sure the Church fell away from this Christian values and incorporated worldly ideas such as colonialism and imperialism but we often came back to those basic Christian values. The church is not immune to corrupting Christs teachings. Even Gods own people the Isrealites fell away from Gods laws and then came back. That is our rebellious nature against God.
But we established these beliefs with for example the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights which was the forerunner of Human Rights that was taken up by most Western Nations. Then the Consitutions and Declarations of western nations that supported natural God given and unalienable human rights and value.
This was followed by Human Rights itself after the 2nd WW which was primarily created by western nations especially America and Britain and this has been the basis for many of our laws and polices in western nations.
Its not that Chrristian values came once and changed the west forever. They came in stages but were established in stone despite that we did not follow these at times they still stood and we came back to them over and over. They have stood the test of time.
THis is opposed to say China who went down the Communist road or Russia who supported hard socialism which denied human rights in principle. Or with Islam's own ideology that supports slavery, treating women badly or treating any belief opposed as infidels. We in the west allow free speech, freedom of religion, Rule of law regardless of status, equality regardless of race, religion and political views.
Freedom from torture, abuse, arbitray arrest, imprisonment, equal opportunity, anti descrimination, equality ect. These were established gradually as we realised that we feel short of Christs teachings so they did not happen all at once or caused us to automatically abide by them. They were truth principles we set from the early days but were gradually taken up as we learned from our experience.
The point is they were the truths we believed were set in stone and unalienable so we did not compromise these truths themselves but rather we fell short of living up them them. But its because we chose these particular truths as opposed to other cultures that we could fall back on is the point.
