What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?
by D. James Kennedy
Thomas Nelson, 1997.
ISBN: 0785271783.

What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? Some people answer this question by saying the world would have been a better place without Jesus. One of those people was Friedrich Nietzsche who said, "I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth."

He said, "The Christian Church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul."

Of course we must keep in mind that Nietzsche was the person who supplied the racist philosophy which Adolph Hitler later applied in a practical way to annihilate 16 million people including six million Jews. What Nietzsche was decrying was the conversion of Teutonic Friedrich Nietzsche warriors, "blond beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and masters" to Christ. Later Hitler tried to realize the dark vision of Nietzsche.

Today, many people think we are in the "post-Christian" era, and indeed it seems that way when bigotry is outlawed against all races, creeds and sexual perversions, and seems permissible only for attacks on Christ, Christians and Christianity. Even an historian for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), an organization thought by many to be the bastion of liberty for all, was quick to attack the faith. Charles Lam Markham, in his book The Noblest Cry, said, "If the…pagans of Greece and their Roman successors had had the wit to laugh Judaism into disuetude, the world would have been spared the 2000-year sickness of Christendom"

Communism was supposed to be the great liberator of humankind, with Marx calling religious faith the "opiate of the people". Yet Communism’s secular humanism was a great moral step backward with untold millions being murdered by Stalin, Mao and lesser tyrants, and hundreds of millions enslaved by a political system which sought to exclude Jesus Christ.

It is these and many other points which are discussed by D. James Kennedy and his co-author, Jerry Newcombe in their book, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? (Thomas Nelson, Nashville). The authors do not spend too much space lamenting the critics, but focus on the positive contributions of faith in Christ to world culture. The authors discuss 12 different areas where Jesus Christ has made a profound difference in world culture and to individual lives. Here are three areas where the authors make important points:

Raising the status of women and children. Prior to the coming of Jesus Christ, women where nothing more than possessions. Greeks, Romans and Chinese so devalued women that girl-children were often killed at birth. A wife was the property of her husband in Greek and Roman cultures. A Hindu wife was burned alive upon the death of her husband.

Christless cultures aborted babies or sacrificed their babies to pagan gods. Roman could kill his own children at any age without fear of retribution by the authorities. Abandonment of children was common and early death or enslavement were usual results. However, when Jesus Christ came he changed the perceptions of people. The fact that God would come to earth and die in their place as sinners had a sobering effect on people. When they saw that God valued them so much to do this, they reflected on their obligation to value others.

Universal education. The authors point out that every school we see is a visible reminder of Jesus Christ. Before Christ, education was only for the privileged, but the Christian impulse changed all that. Universal education was not a single idea, but grew out of the desire to learn about Jesus Christ and to read about him in the Gospels, and to provide advanced training for the clergy in the earliest universities. Early Christians realized that faith and ignorance could not co-exist and training was conducted for all classes of people in every age group. Only in recent times have schools and universities become public and secular.

The rise of science and art. Believers in Christ have been at the forefront of developments in science and art. The Greeks started thinking about things in non-theological ways, but they never brought in a scientific age. It wasn’t until the rise of the Reformation that it hit home that all things in the natural world were attributable to the glory of God and that he had given dominion of all things to humans. It was at this point that the proper synergy emerged to explore nature in new ways. Many of the greatest scientists were believers in Jesus Christ including Johannes Kepler (Celestial Mechanics), Blaise Pascal (Hydrostatics), Isaac Newton (Gravity), Charles Babbage (Computers), Louis Pasteur (Bacteriology) and many, many others.

Art and music have also benefited from the Christian impulse. After the era of persecution, Cathedrals soared, iconography flourished, and later, during the Renaissance, Michelangelo and a host of others painted and sculpted to the glory of God. It was during the Middle Ages music matured after a Christian monk named Guido of Arezzo invented musical notation.

What about the old cliché of those who are against Christ and say, "More people have been killed in the name of Christianity than any other cause." The authors deal with this head-on by discussing the excesses of Christianity including the Crusades and the Inquisition. Rather than merely sweeping these matters under the rug, they explain the historical context of these events, why they occurred and how they were stopped.

This book should be required reading for all Christians, especially those in high schools and colleges who hear all the old time-worn arguments against western culture as if they were unshakable truths. The fact is, without Jesus western culture would probably be much like what we see today in Afganistan and other Muslim lands. That's something important to think about.

- DLH