Last night I was watching "The Dark Ages" on the history channel. The were discussing the events leading up to and then arising from this time period. They then began to discuss the rise of Christianity and so fourth. It was very interseting but 1 thing really bugged me...They kept calling the church the Roman Catholic church.And we all know that between 400 AD and 800 AD there was 1 church THE Holy Orthodox Catholic church. not the "roman catholic church" as they kept calling it. I can't stand when TV takes what could have been an educational piece and loads it with inaccuracys.
This is an example where we do know better. But in general, the stuff on the History Channel just reflects what is taught to most people in public school (maybe even
you). Has anyone picked up a public school textbook and studied it with adult eyes from an Orthodox perspective? That IS, in general, what they teach - so that stuff will appear everywhere, not just on the History Channel, which only reflects the generally false history that we are taught (and worse - we therefore think we know it). The very terms: "Dark Ages", "Enlightenment", "Age of Reason", etc. imply or flat-out state things that simply aren't true. The (public-school approved) books I have on hand speak of only one Church, and assume it to be the Roman Church, even where Rome is not specifically mentioned, and two points that are consistently hammered in are:
a) Christianity rose as a religion 'for poor people', because 'it promised a better life after death', and
b) that Catholic Church sure was corrupt in the Middle Ages!
Basically, they do present facts - only the lights in which they are presented is the worldview of the authors - which denies the truth of Christianity. There is and can be no such thing as "an unbiased textbook".
The next bit of bad news for us is that this applies to most of the history that we (think we) know. I've discovered quite a bit, most especially after reading G.K. Chesterton over the past four years. I've been forced to drastically revise my view of history and to re-assess a lot. For me, Chesterton's explanation of the Punic Wars in "The Everlasting man" was a slam-dunk that floored me - because it would never be published in modern public school texts, and yet it explained everything where the school books basically explained nothing (The same thing goes for the importance of women's suffrage - a golden calf of modern history teaching - the answers are assumed because a certain cant is repeated over and over, until we are programmed to believe that organized religion is merely a tool to manipulate people and Susan B. Anthony and Margaret Sanger did great and wonderful things.) I thought I knew something, and it turned out that I didn't.
We call that time "The Dark Ages" - but if you consider (just as an example) how people of wealth and power dress, compare the colors of any ruler with the drab black and gray suits worn by ours. The "Dark Ages" turn out to be more cheerful than we thought. We live in a pretty dark age ourselves. It all depends on the lights in which something is presented - the worldview; the view of what is (ultimate) truth.
