Western culture is, Dr. Os Guinness says, at a tipping point, or what he calls a “civilizational moment” and how respond will determine if our civilization continues or declines and falls.
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #234 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
Contemporary culture seems bent upon embracing ideas, attitudes, values, and practices that earlier cultures considered lacking in common sense.
This goes right to worldview. You see, religion is not just another feature of culture. Religion determines our culture. Scholar Henry Van Til once said, “Culture is lived religion” or “religion externalized.” What you believe about God, life, and truth determines how you evaluate and what ideas, attitudes, values, and practices you embrace, thus how you live and create culture.
The prime reason contemporary culture pursues its pell-mell race toward decline is that the current cultural zeitgeist, or “spirit of the age,” jettisoned the idea of moral absolutes for moral relativism.
People say, there is no truth, apparently without the self-awareness to understand they are attempting to declare, what, a truth. People say, live your truth versus live the truth. There’s a big difference.
Western culture and civilization is at a tipping point, what Christian apologist and cultural commentator, Dr. Os Guinness, now in his eighties, calls a “civilizational moment,” a period when culture loses touch with its original purpose and dynamism.
“Guinness identifies the root of the issue: people don’t hold to truth because they fail to hold to the Truth—that is, Jesus Christ, from whom all truth flows.”
Dr. Guinness is the featured presence and narrator of a new film, “Truth Rising.”
The film is produced by Focus on the Family in partnership with the Colson Center. “Truth Rising examines the decline of Western civilization, addressing contemporary societal issues, and underscores the hope found in Christ, encouraging you to step into your God-given calling to be a catalyst for renewal.”
I was privileged to attend a private showing of this film at Cornerstone University where the university president, Dr. Gerson Mareno-Raino, joined Colson Center president John Stonestreet presenting the film.
The film asked whether decline in the West is inevitable. “Historian and philosopher Will Durant, author of the epic eleven-volume series The Story of Civilization, famously said, “From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.” Civilizations, historically speaking, do rise and fall. Our museums and history books are full of legends and artifacts from once-dominant civilizations that are now reduced to ruins. These all were, at some point, detached from the ideals, institutions, and activities that gave them life and led them to flourish. Now, they are no more.” Can Western civilization survive, or is it already in decline heading toward fall?
The film features Jack Phillips, a Denver baker who faced legal challenges due to his refusal to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, Chloe Cole who relates that her attempt to transition from a biological female to male was a tragic mistake, also Katy Faust, the founder and president of the child-advocacy group Them Before Us talks about being targeted by ideological opponents and how she decided to stand up against them, and former Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali recounting her flight from Somalia and fundamentalist Islam, and how she eventually became a Christian and an outspoken advocate for women.
Today, identity politics radicalism is working to dismantle every value that made it possible for the West to flourish in the first place. Our institutional structures have been profoundly weakened in just the past fifty years. Every institution, as the film presents it, has nearly collapsed, compromised by stupidity and ideology. If you wonder what may be coming for the United States, just look at some of the countries in Europe which Somalian-now naturalized American cultural commentator Ayaan Hirsi Ali says, “look more like Mogadishu,” by which she does not mean race but lawless chaos. In the West, the gravity of the moment is severe, and it is quite literally, later than we think. Guinness believes we are faced with a choice: renewal, replacement, or decline, and for now, decline is in the lead.
Guinness notes in the film and in his recent books that the British (1688-1689) and American (1765-1783) revolutions were rooted in the Bible, understood human nature, and thus established governments based upon separation of powers and checks and balances, all to advance human freedom. But the French revolution (1789-1799) was utopian, anti-religious, anti-Christian and thus given to violence and manipulation. Contemporary Western and American culture can renew its commitment to the ideals of its founding or can continue to pursue values more akin to the unfettered licentiousness of the French Revolution. If we do the latter, we are on a slippery slope to chaos then tyranny.
The film noted that American culture and really all of Western civilization are beset by Marxism, sexual revolution of the 1960s, and Islamism. These are our greatest challenges today because none of these ideologies believe in truth, and therefore not only cannot sustain freedom but will work against it. Ayaan Hirsi Ali noted that the Marxism we deal with today is a kind of “cultural communism,” constantly propagating the narrative of oppressor vs oppressed, and white males are the ultimate monster.
One of the sad things about this is that even a cursory review of history provides overwhelming evidence that these ideologies are corrupt, they fail, they only maintain power through coercion and eventually killing. One commentator said the only way woke Marxism can make any sense is that it must decontextualize from history.
But today the West has been so badly beaten and bruised by the Marxist long march through the institutions, the so-called progressives or leftists in politics, and their sycophants in the media, that many people simply do not know history, do not know that in the West people have always mattered and that this is not true elsewhere, so the West is losing confidence in itself.
The West is weakened spiritually. So now the average citizen is terrified to tell the truth, if he or she even knows what the truth is. This is the magnitude of the crisis.
But ideas have consequences. No God, people say? Then no truth. Or, we hear, “It may be true for you but not true for me.”
No truth? Then there is no morality, science, education, law or order or justice or mercy, aesthetics=beauty or art, trust, purpose or vision or aspiration or meaning or achievement, respect for life or individual dignity, civility, freedom. There is only division, confusion, lawlessness, chaos, insecurity. Post-Truth culture – possibly a new Dark Age. This is America 2025.
But we are not defeated, or at least we should not feel that we are. Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer said, “there are no little people,” by which he meant that everyone matters, everyone is given life and the opportunity to live as unto the Lord, everyone is able to speak truth. This is our opportunity and responsibility.
Today we are experiencing a war on reason and reality. At every turn we are bombarded with messages of untruth, lies from the Father of Lies, Satan himself. We are in spiritual warfare, a spiritual desert, and people are thirsty for the truth.
We know this when we see the revivals taking place on university campuses. We know this when we read of youth who we thought were spiritually gone to a far country never to return but liked the prodigal son are now seeking spiritual authenticity. We see a spiritually bankrupt and empty culture that does not know how to deal with political violence and yet is searching for meaning.
Scripture says, “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth” (Eph. 6:13-14).
I highly recommend this film, “Truth Rising,” which is available free on YouTube. It is a somber look at reality, but it is not without hope for we are not without hope.
The film is call to action, yours and mine, at this civilizational moment in our culture.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. For more Christian commentary, see my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com, or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2025
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