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  "PageContent": "<h3>Ben Mann | Aspiring Author, Closet Cynic, Hardcore Nerd</h3>Charlie Kirk was murdered today.1 This tragedy brings to mind a recent conversation I had. I was talking to someone about the concept of morality in our post-enlightenment, new-atheism, materialist culture. When expressing moral concepts in this worldview, the go-to maxim here seems to be that of tolerance, which I’d sum up as, “You’re free, but get along.” Or that “morality,” whatever that is, is an evolved survival response. The suggestion seems to be that if morality is a materialistic and naturalistic phenomenon, we are suggesting that it is also and must be inherently relative and open to further development or evolution.From what I see, the only problem with this is what happens when we put this to the test. And with my science-fiction predilection to exaggerate the present to put it to the test, the test here is perhaps as simple as asking what happens when this view is threatened. Because within their own tribes, for Joseph Stalin or Pol Pot, or Mao or Adolf, there certainly was both freedom and a sense of getting along.3 They got along with those who held their worldview. The challenge came when their world encroached upon another. For when our “tolerance-first” culture sees the tanks begin rolling in, there are really only two choices. Either be rolled over and die, or else stand up and resist. If we truly are expressing a materialistic and naturalistic morality, then the only valid option is the latter. Survival of the fittest dictates that the morality of tolerance be expressed not with two clauses but three: (1) You’re free, (2) but get along, (3) or else. The last clause decides all arguments, settles all disputes, and therefore dominates all. Or, in other words, “might is right.” Power is to be consolidated and wielded, lest it be lost.Charlie Kirk was a church kid.4 He adhered to an altogether different worldview. That worldview accepted that despite Charlie’s and your and my imperfections, that there exists outside of all of humanity an objective moral standard to which we are being held accountable. The Christian worldview audaciously claims that the creator of life itself stepped into the world, and in the person of Jesus demonstrated what humanity is not and yet was created to be: He spoke difficult truths into dark places, offered help to whomever would turn to him for help, and who ultimately so offended a broken humanity and its dominant worldview that he would be publicly executed for his words.What’s more, the Christian worldview suggests that humanity is not intended to be subject to the same materialistic, evolutionary, “survival of the fittest” adherence to power that we observe in the animal kingdom and seem to have applied to ourselves. Rather, having been created to be different to the animal kingdom, humanity chose from the beginning to turn away from its creator and sustainer, and so death and rebellion has been inherited by us all. Observation and experience suggest that death is final – people stay dead. Yet in its core belief that Jesus – who did not inherit that rebellious nature – rose from the dead, Christianity makes a radical proposition: death has no power over those who are perfectly in keeping with their creator’s will. Thus, having neither inherited nor chosen the rebellious nature of humanity, and having experienced a death he did not deserve at the hands of humans who were afflicted by the same brokenness that afflicts you and me, Jesus rose again to life. He alone, of all humanity, is in the position to offer life to whoever will turn to him. Christianity proposes that humanity is in a completely different category – and was created for a different purpose – than the rest of the world in which we live. Of course, such a perspective is likely to be irritating to some. The late Douglas Adams opened his novel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe with the memorable quip:The story so far:In the beginning the Universe was created.This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.5Amusing as this is, I suggest it captures something about our culture. The notion that humanity might be subject to a higher power is – to anyone who sees his person or tribe as the highest power – fundamentally offensive. Christianity’s opposition to the dominant cultural view of humanity’s place in the world, it would seem, is equally offensive.It’s high time we ask hard questions of our culture and its dominant worldview. If we’re all just atoms bouncing into one another, if survival of the fittest is the underpinning principle of our species, and if humanity is just an insignificant blip in the history of the universe, then the murder of Charlie Kirk is just as insignificant and unremarkable. The killing of one human by another becomes merely as meaningless and unremarkable as life itself. But if humans are, astonishingly, divinely appointed to some greater purpose, then we need to step up and ask some hard questions.I haven’t written on this blog in a while. It’s probably less a case of being time poor and more that we live in an era where blogging seems to be going the way of the dinosaurs, leaving me wondering what to do with it. I have some other articles and topics I’d like to post on – like this one – which will only further reduce any remote semblance of focus my blog has had in the past. As a consequence, I expect I will push through some changes over the next few months which will result in the current blog being relegated to an archive on the site, allowing me to instead periodically add articles focused on specific topic areas. Sure, I recognise that simply by virtue of my having authored an article there will always be some connection between any post, regardless of topic. Whether I’m posting fiction or about fiction, or an essay on history or theology, or a devotion or sermon notes, there will likely always be some sort of existential theme. Nevertheless, for some readers, some categories are going to appeal more than others. The new format should make that clearer.In the meantime, let’s go way further than mere tolerance.",
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