Moral Evil in History

Social conservatives and social progressives alike seem to think that rampant homosexuality, contraception, abortion, sexual immorality, and other issues of the modern age only arose over the last hundred years or so. Moral evil is thus portrayed by its defenders as a sign of the progression of civilization, and treated by its opponents as something new and un-heard of.

They are wrong. The ancient world was rife with infanticide, human sacrifice, homosexuality, and a host of evils. And these evils were largely defeated by Christianity, and have only recently arisen again in force.

Moral evil was rampant in the pre-Christian world. The Carthaginians used to throw babies into fires as human sacrifices. The Romans used to leave babies outside to starve to death. The Greeks celebrated homosexual relationships and concocted potions to prevent conception and kill unborn children. The Jewish people were a rare exception in the ancient world – more accurately, THE exception – in not accepting these evils as normal.

When Christianity came into the world, Christians fought these evils, knowing them to be incompatible with the law of God. And they largely succeeded in ridding the culture of these vices. They existed, but were treated by Christian society as the perversions they were. 

But in this modern age, vice is celebrated as “progress” and “liberty” from the forces of oppressive and outdated Judeo-Christian morals. And Christians have forgotten their roots, and are unaware that this battle has already been fought and won by their forefathers in faith.

Modern morality represents a retreat back to the forces of barbarism and pagan nonsense that Christianity overcame in ancient times, not a path to progress.

Nor is the modern world necessarily undergoing an inexorable march to moral depravity. Christians won the battle over the forces of barbarism in ancient times. We can do so again.