Jesus’ fearlessness defined modern free speech

Read Hanne’s The Herland Report.

Fearless speech when facing abuse of power has long been a Western ideal. One may argue that it began with Jesus Christ’s harsh words of free speech to the hypocritical religious leaders of his time. He totally roasted them for their evil actions, publicly.

When reading the New Testament books of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John, Jesus’ words come across as penetratingly honest. His humility is defined by his willingness to fight injustice, regardless of personal cost. He does not hide the truth, neither in private nor in public, always helping the destitute and the unwanted. It is sobering to read how fearlessly he confronts “the high and mighty,” those who were abusing their authority, stating that doom awaits them as God is the protector of the widow and the fatherless.

The example Jesus set has exerted an extraordinary influence on the Western world down to its very core. Christianity “is the profoundest global revolution in history and the seedbed of everything that makes the West what it is,” says world-renowned author Tom Holland, in a lecture at the Edictum Conference in Romania. He is one of the many hardcore atheists who in recent years have turned to Christianity with a much more positive view of our religious heritage than before. Read my other articles linked at WND on the topic of famous atheists who have changed their mind and now speak of the need for a stronger respect for traditional Christianity.

It is simply impossible to exaggerate the importance of Christianity’s liberating power on the world. Our defining values stem from the Christian root and are deeply culturally contingent. One of the pillars of classical Western civilization was the idea that God loves everyone – it became the basis for the ideal of equality regardless of race, creed, status, gender. This is the birthplace of human rights, the sanctified human race. The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy has famously stated that we would never have human rights without the Christian idea that mankind is a blessed creation formed in the likeness of God. Man contains the very breath of metaphysical eternity.

Holland points out that it was Christianity that demonstrated the revolutionary concept of equality, repudiating the ancient Roman attitude of contempt for the weak. This new view of humanity was based on an unprecedented principle of equality that recognized the value of women, children and slaves in a way that contrasted sharply with the Greek-Roman definition of a citizen. As many do not know today, it was Christians that cared for the sick in the first hospitals, brought about the end of slavery, formed modern human rights, initiated the first women’s rights movements and founded the welfare state.

Christianity became the ultimate cradle of the modern Western free-speech movement, in which citizens are allowed to criticize corrupt leaders and express opinions without government restraints. It was, of course, also influenced by the Old Testament, in which God sent individuals who practiced harsh free speech to motivate political leaders to do what was right. The ancient Greek debate culture is also important.

Yet, when the concept was introduced in the U.K. House of Commons in the 1600s, it was to ensure that speakers were not interrupted in the middle of a political argument. It did not imply that “free speech” was the right to say whatever you wish, disentangled from good manners, politeness and civility. The current Marxist version of “free speech,” without the traditional, Christian moral constraints – as the right to be rude to others, lie about them as a political tactic and slander to subdue – was never a classical Western value. This is mob-driven, totalitarian bullying.

Karl Marx (1818-1883) clearly defined socialism and communism as ideologies that precisely aim at destroying the very structures of traditional civil society and its critical thinking. Marx hated Christianity. The founders of socialism prescribed intolerance against conservatives, dishonesty, the use of fear to subdue, clamping-down on free intellectuals and manipulating people to become the needed “useful idiots,” to achieve the goal of shutting down the light of Christianity in the West.

When the Christian moral codex is no longer treasured, society disintegrates into anarchy. Holland fears for a society in which the light of Christianity is extinguished. “You only start to value something when you start to lose it. As Christianity diminishes in the West, many do have a feeling that something is lost, that values we assumed were just hardwired into our brains, actually were culturally contingent and dependent on Christianity,” Holland says at the Edictum Conference in Romania. The lecture is well worth watching.