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Nearly 2000 years ago He foresaw
something that neither of these modern literary prophets could understand.
The root of man’s cultural deterioration is neither scientific
technology nor political totalitarianism. It is the loss of an essential
ingredient of human stability—a special kind of love known in the New
Testament as agape.
Speaking of our time when “the end
of the world” would be near, Jesus said: “Nation will rise
against nation. ... There will be famines and earthquakes in various
places. ... many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.
Because of the increase of wickedness, the love [agape] of most
will grow cold” (Matthew 24:7-12*).
This priceless ingredient of agape
love once rescued ancient civilization from chaotic despair. When Caesar
ruled the known world and made the Mediterranean a “Roman lake,”
mankind had already sunk into a frightful depravity caused by
hopelessness. Never was humanity more inhuman.
For the most part, the masses were
slaves. Oppressors and oppressed flocked to the amphitheaters to watch
gladiators duel to the death with wild animals or with each other. Staring
at people dying in violence was as much fun to Roman crowds as a football
game is to us. Roman restaurants had something unknown in our gourmet
dining palaces: a vomitorium where sated diners could empty their stomachs
in order to eat more. Little wonder that many Romans, jaded by their
pleasures and sadism, coveted suicide. Into such a frightful world of
cruelty and despair came this new idea of agape, a love embodied in
the life, death, and resurrection of an obscure Galilean who was the Son
of God. Jesus brought to view in His life a love that overturned all human
values, because it revealed dimensions of God’s character of which no
one had ever dreamed: God’s Son actually died as a cosmic Outcast nailed
on a Roman cross! People couldn’t stop talking about it.
He had revealed a love that went as far
as hell and out the other side, actually redeeming lost humanity as a
race. God Himself was seeking man. Each human being was personally the
object of that divine love. Slaves, outcasts, and despairing lords and
ladies alike knelt down together, discovering a new basis for
self-respect.
And with self-respect came a new sense of
humanity toward man. Attendance at the gladiatorial combats fell off;
crucifixions lost their appeal; vomitoriums were forgotten; the
once-despised Man of Galilee became widely known as the world’s Saviour,
and His cross became its most honored symbol.
* Bible quotations are from the New
International Version.
This New Idea of Divine Love Rescued
Civilization
From What Would Have Been Global Suicide
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