Part 2: Nothing New Under the Sun
By Laura Terrell
The following post is written by my friend and colleague, Laura Terrell. Laura holds a degree in Religion: Women’s Ministry with a Psychology minor (Liberty University). She is also a certified copyeditor (University of California, San Diego) and a published author. She is the editor of The Life I Now Live: Continuing Machen’s Historic Battle for the Gospel.
This post is the first of a three-part contribution to this blog series, The Gospel and Postmodern Substitutes. Specifically, she will be writing in regard to the repetition of societal problems throughout the course of history and how the propagation of the gospel message is the only hope for this world. We hope you enjoy gleaning from her insights below.
Blessings,
-Rich
Nothing New Under the Sun
“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” - Ecclesiastes 1:9, ESV
Twelve years ago, I received my bachelor’s degree in Religion with a minor in Psychology. Though I went to a Christian college, and am a Christian myself, I’ve always been fascinated by other religions. I’m equally fascinated by the lives of others, especially the mundane aspects that make up who we are as individuals, and yet highlight how similar we all are, despite our differences. In order to round out my degree—but more so to indulge my curiosity—I used up every elective I could on western civilization and anthropology classes. Since then I’ve devoured every documentary I could find on people and civilizations from the Fall to the modern day. In all of my studies, one undeniable fact has struck me far and above any other: we’ve always been this way. More specifically, we’ve always been sinners seeking after our own desires. And that quest for self-indulgence, when promoted by those in charge, inevitably leads to disastrous ends.
In all of my studies, one undeniable fact has struck me far and above any other: we’ve always been this way.
Of course, the moral quality of an overall society fluctuates over time.
Every society has periods of moral crisis, during which there is widespread profligacy and debauchery. Conversely, thanks be to God, they are also graced with periods of spiritual awakening and revival, during which he brings them back from the brink of disaster brought on by their own sin. Rich and I believe that America is currently experiencing our very own moral crisis, even as we speak, which is why he’s writing his book on Machen’s efforts to bring his own culture back to the basics of the gospel. It’s also why I’m so keen to help him get the book out there to you all… Because there very much is a chance of turning this ship around! The very fact that this has all happened before is proof of that. Yet, the fact that many civilizations have come to an abrupt and ugly end, precisely because they failed to turn around in time, is proof that a certain sense of urgency is called for if we don’t want our culture to suffer the same fate.
Now, I’m not saying that the fall of the American Empire—if I may be so bold as to make the comparison—is imminent. That’s not even my point, because I don’t think that’s even the issue at stake. More importantly, the souls of the majority of the American people are on the brink of destruction. They always have been. There have, of course, always been unsaved souls in this world. The difference here is that their wanton, oblivious dance to the brink of destruction is being applauded and expedited by the government’s all too ready sanctioning and normalizing of the profligacy and debauchery of a vociferous minority.
The unsaved populace’s wanton, oblivious dance to the brink of destruction is being applauded and expedited by the government’s all too ready sanctioning and normalizing of the profligacy and debauchery of a vociferous minority.
I want to make it clear, here and now, that the following is not hateful vitriol aimed at those with whom I disagree. Quite the opposite. Every word is intended as tough love aimed at waking up a culture that’s gone woke, because the alternative is unthinkable. Whenever I’m tempted to keep my mouth shut so as not to rock the boat I think about what Penn Jillette, famed magician and proud atheist, once said. When speaking of Christians who fail to evangelize like we’re supposed to, he said, “How much do you have to hate someone to believe that they’re going to hell and not tell them?” I shudder at the thought. So, in love, I have to tell it like it is.
If you will, I’d like to take you on a short theoretical archaeology tour throughout history as we compare aspects of our current culture to the ancient cultures of those those who have gone before us. Some cultures survived; some very much did not. But many who survived only achieved that end by a slim margin—and only at what would seem to be the last second.
Where It All Began
First, let’s take a look at the ancient history of a few of the major issues our culture is currently facing. Namely, these are abortion, transgenderism, and the public school system. Though seemingly unconnected, they are very much three parts of the same whole.
We’ll start with abortion. We won’t stay here long, because no. It’s murder. Stop it. Just stop. But as for how it started, the earliest recorded induced abortions date back to 1550 BC in Egypt. Most abortions at the time were non-surgical, involving more natural means, like strenuous activity, weight lifting and such. There were more horrific means, but I’ll spare you the mental pictures. Just know it was barbaric. Around 500 BC, royal concubines were getting abortions. Furthermore, Chinese folklore suggests that as early as 5,000 years ago the emperor at the time prescribed mercury to induce abortion. The famed Greek philosopher Plato (born circa 428 BC) allowed that midwives had the right to induce abortion early on in a pregnancy.
As for transgenderism, let’s start with the Bible. Deuteronomy 22:5 (ESV) says, “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.” That verse always puzzled me as a kid. I thought, “What’s the big deal if a woman wants to wear pants or if a man wants to wear a stupid Halloween costume dressed up as Britney Spears or something?” I was thinking in terms of benign innocence or joking around. But that’s not what this verse is talking about. Of course, in modern society there’s nothing wrong with a woman wearing pants, because there exists an article of clothing called women’s pants. The Halloween costume is harder to defend, but the point is it’s about intent—the intent to assume the identity of the opposite sex and broadcast that identity to society through the medium of dress. And it was necessary to warn against it as early as the time of Moses.
The following is highly speculative, given the fact that this information originates from a transgender source.(1) Therefore, it could just be transgender lore. Regardless, the fact there even is transgender lore is important to note.
By 200 AD it has been posited that cross-dressing was so accepted in the Roman Empire that there may have even been an emperor who thought he was a woman, named Elagabalus. And so he dressed and acted accordingly. What would now be termed his “dead name”—the name he was given at birth that corresponds to his true sex—was Varius Avitus Bassianus. But upon assuming the throne, he styled himself “Elagabalus,” after the ancient Syrian sun god Elagabal. (Keep track of all these sun god references. The subject will come up again in a later post.) Elagabalus tried to get the citizens to worship Elagabal, but that move came back to bite him three years later when he was deposed and executed. But in the meantime he established an all-female Senate, which proved to be entirely corrupt. This is probably because they were special interest hires instead of actually qualified people. Elagabalus was most assuredly not the only cross-dresser and possible transgender person in the Roman Empire—nor, indeed, in antiquity. However, he’s arguably one of the more influential ones, who most clearly shows the systemic acceptance of the lifestyle. Although this is almost certainly lore, what is most curious to me is that there is transgender lore in the first place.
And so we now arrive at school—public school, to be precise. In the interest of total transparency, I’ve never been to public school. You’ll have to ask Rich about that experience. But I heard enough horror stories as a kid growing up to never want to go there. Everything from widespread bullying to being taught the theory of evolution as if it’s stone cold fact to the rather permissive view of teenage, uh… socializing. I wanted no part of it. And that was back in the ‘90s and 2000s. Now it’s exponentially worse. The stories coming out of kindergarten classrooms these days are of things I wouldn’t wish on my middle school bully’s kid, let alone my own as yet non-existent kid.
To see how far we’ve come—and, believe me, we will go into far more detail on the current situation in a later blog—we first have to see where we started. The first formal school in recorded history dates back to 3000 BC in Egypt.(2) The ancient Egyptian education system was remarkably similar to American public school—classes in the arts and sciences, mathematics, reading and writing, even sports. There were two noticeable differences, though. It wasn’t free, and it wasn’t atheistic. Parents had to pay tuition, so only the upper class children received an education. And that education included classes on moral behavior. Granted, it was moral behavior as according to Egyptian pantheism. But that’s the point. It was inherently tied to religion. The country’s religion. (Side note: the king Egyptian god and supposed creator was Ra, the sun god. Keep taking those notes, people!) The reason it was inherently tied to religion was because they believed that wisdom was acquired through following a code of morality. Ah, wisdom. Wasn’t it nice when we valued that as a nation?
Fast-forward a few centuries and take a camel across the Sinai Peninsula and you’re in Israel. Wait, uh…Babylon. But with the Israelites. It’s complicated. Jewish formal education (that is, education outside the home) seems to have begun around the time of the Babylonian captivity.(3) This makes sense, given that the Babylonians were quite an advanced metropolitan society and would have had plenty of time and resources for formal education, as opposed to the nomadic Israelites who, up until that point, had been primarily focused on survival as a nation, keeping education inside the home. What we would call “formal education” today was pretty much reserved for the boys, and seems to have primarily consisted of teaching them to read and write. Most other education was still the responsibility of the parents and community, and was focused on learning a trade. Girls learned to keep house and raise children, and upon adulthood may have learned midwifery or some suitable trade such as textiles. But as for the boys, they needed to learn to read and write for one very specific and important reason: God. They needed to be able to teach and write about God. This led eventually to Rabbinic schools. Yet again, education was firmly and irrefutably tied to religion.
Education always has been, and always will be, tied to religion. If it isn’t founded in the true religion of Christianity it will inevitably be dedicated to the spread of some other religion. Because we were created to seek after God. Yet, in our fallen state we naturally rebel against that undeniable urge and try to fulfill the need by replacing the true God of the Bible with one false god or another. It happens every time.
And our time is no exception.
-Laura
Footnotes:
“Transgender Lives in Ancient Rome: The Case of the Empress Elagabalus,” Spectrum South, accessed August 10, 2022, https://www.spectrumsouth.com/transgender-lives-empress-elagabalus/
“Education in Ancient Egypt,” Classical Wisdom, accessed August 10, 2022, https://classicalwisdom.com/culture/education-in-ancient-egypt/
“Education in Ancient Israel,” American Bible Society, accessed August 10, 2022, https://bibleresources.americanbible.org/resource/education-in-ancient-israel
