Relevance

The French Revolution exposes less the strength of revolutionary forces and more the weakness and moral collapse of the royalists and the church. As pornography, occultism, and every imaginable perversion flooded France under the banner of “liberty,” the church softened by Enlightenment compromise proved too timid, too pietistic, and too eager for intellectual respectability to resist. Robespierre’s creed, “The people are the law,” replaced God’s law, and Christianity retreated into irrelevance. The parallel to our own time is unmistakable: today the public agenda is shaped by militant secularism while the Christian press echoes the world’s slanders and avoids serious theological thought. Many believers prefer sentimental “pap” to solid truth, valuing the safety of irrelevance over obedience to Christ’s crown rights. But irrelevance is not safety only a quiet path to the graveyard of history. Scripture calls us instead to awake from our slumber and rise from the dead, that Christ may give us light.