The Rise of Civilization

Daniel Greenfield penned an article a couple of weeks ago called "Where the Black Flags Fly." It describes, in a no-holds-barred fashion, what life is like under ISIS. Greenfield writes:

There's no morality out here. The men are careful not to look at a donkey or a woman while praying to Allah. But they have no sense of ethics. They will casually kill, steal, rape, break oaths and a commit a hundred other crimes before breakfast. 

If you're not a member of their family, you're fair game. If you are, you had better know your place and help with the stealing, kidnapping and assorted economic empowerment projects. 

Killing is easy. Self-control is hard. If there's no accountability, no local bigshot that wants infidel tourists and their dollars and will make the killer's family suffer, then he has no reason not to beat you, steal from you or drag you into a home in some slum somewhere and wait for the fabled wealthy infidels to pay him a king's ransom. 

If not he always cut off your head to raise the price on the next one. 

His life is cheap, but yours is even cheaper. 

It's best to understand that we are not dealing with a moral code that looks anything like our own. The nastier qualities of human nature, deceit, violence and greed, are practically virtues. Especially if they are directed at the right targets. 

There's a reason that Islam was born here. There's a reason that it still thrives here largely in its unaltered form. There is no civilization where the black flags fly.

Although the fertility cults have been replaced with the idolatry of the Kabah, there is really not much difference between the ethics and morality of the modern Middle-East and the culture described in Genesis at the time of the Patriarchs. We see the same type of deception and double-dealing. Jacob deceiving Isaac to obtain the birth-right; his daughter raped by a local potentate, and his sons slaughtering the village in return. The jealousy toward Joseph and his sale into slavery. Judah being deceived by his daughter-in-law, who poses as a prostitute, to get pregnant; and his willingness to have her stoned until she offers proof of his transgression. Etc.

But although this is a backdrop to the Old Testament, is not the story. Instead, we are presented with an ongoing attempt to impose a moral code that seeks to stop the killing and encourage self-control. Many progressives and atheists decry the seeming brutality of the Law of Moses, but compared to what was the norm, it was a seismic shift in what was expected of a society and its individuals. Parts of the law were brutal, but it was an attempt to tame savages--to transform an entire society into something better.

And it worked. The moral attitudes of Jewish society were much different--much improved--by the time of Christ over what they were at the time of David; and the time of David was undoubtedly better than at the time of the Patriarchs. And then Christ gave a higher law--a better law. No longer was self-control limited to actions, but also thoughts. He charged his followers to love their neighbor as themselves. It wasn't enough not to lie with a woman; his followers were expected to not lust after a woman in their heart. (As compared to ISIS' fighters, who apparently cannot control their lusts when confronted with an uncovered store mannequin).

Atheists and progressives fault Christianity's excesses over the next two thousand years, without considering that it tamed Europe (a continent just as bloody and barbaric as any other), and spread through Asia influencing and tempering many other societies as well. The Second Coming will represent another transformation and advancement.

Is the Judeo-Christian world perfect? No. But, as a whole, looking back at the long effort to civilize humanity, there has been nothing better. There is a reason we refer to Judeo-Christian ethics instead of Judeo-Christian-Muslim ethics, or some other combination.