The ISIS Christian Union & a Blind Britain

So… we heard at the begining of the week that a Christian Union (for Yankee readers that’s a Christian student club) was disbanded at an unnamed British college under the government’s new anti-extremism laws. Yesterday, David Cameron said that such an act was ‘ludicrous’ and that people needed common sense in applying these new laws meant to battle intolerance, hate speech, extremism, etc.

The trouble for Cameron – and for most of the secular, philosophically anchorless West – is that there is no longer any consistent measuring stick that we can use to measure what extreme is. When we throw out what is absolute, we have all the strength of a dried leaf to face the destructive. In place of Christianity, we try to teach ‘British Values’ in our schools. But what worthwhile ‘values’ does Britain have that didn’t grow out of its once held Christian world-view? Before the gospel came to this country we were running around naked, worshipping frogs and eating each other. #BritishValues 

Ironically, arch-atheist Richard Dawkins recently and reluctantly quipped that only Christianity as a movement has the ideological strength to confront the growing tides of radical Islam. Even he realises that no Islamic terrorist group is going to be persuaded to lay down their weapons upon a reading of his ‘God Delusion’.

Cameron – and most of secular Britain that his comments represent – is simply blind to how dangerous Christianity is to all other world ideologies. Cameron and those like him see Christianity as a toothless movement: safe and boring – but nostalgic enough to warm the heart of their grandmother.

There's a reason that Islamic countries burn copies of the Bible and imprison or kill Christian leaders and converts. It’s because they see clearer than most Westerners. There’s a reason that early Christians were fed to the lions in Rome. We are proclaiming that Christ is King over all world powers, that he will one day judge his creation and that -through his death on our behalf - only he can forgive of sins. The Romans rightly saw the early Christian movement as one that ‘turned the world upside down’ (Acts 17.6). 

Cameron – and most of the UK – is blind to what Christianity is. ISIS, the Taliban and most of those in power in the Islamic world see much clearer. Christianity is best understood from the inside – as a believer. But if you are not an insider, then the best view is from a distance - like one observing a mountain. The worst possible position from which to have a clear view of Christianity is from just outside on the door step – which is where the UK is now.

Those who disbanded the unnamed Christian Union may just be getting far enough away to see properly. 
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