Thanks from Europe—a continent in deep trouble

A German reader sent this note:

I am an ardent reader of your site, which I found only recently. You help people to free their thoughts and force them to take a logical approach to the problems the West is concerned with. At least you helped me to do so, and as I learn from your commenters, I am not the only one. I would really like to comment sometimes, but my English is not good enough to express complex thoughts as clear as I want to and as I express them in my own language. The translations are always somehow more shallow than the original. But reading is no problem and I enjoy it.

Thank you for your great work.

Best wishes

Lilli

PS: You are surely NOT anti-woman. To state so is silly feministic blah-blah.

LA replies:

Thank you. It means a lot to me when a reader in Europe says the kinds of things you say about freeing one’s thoughts, because Europeans are mentally so much more under the power of the left than Americans are. There really is nothing like American conservatism (in any of its variations) in Europe.

Lilli replies:

Unfortunately this is true.

The cultural and political gap between America and Europe is widening more and more. Even the American conservatives, whom you call “liberals” and who really are, are considered by many people as evil, far right and even to be as dangerous to world peace as Iran. And they are indeed less liberal than European conservatives are. Sometimes I am glad that we speak different languages (with the exception of Britain), so that most Americans can’t read the leftist anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-“imperialistic” nonsense written in blogs and forums. I fear it would be shocking.

Europe goes superstitious and hostile towards Christianity and Western identity, feeling to be morally superior in doing so. I think this is not due to Islam but rather to a leftist brainwash lasting for several decades (and I have been its advocator myself for many years), and this is the reason for embracing Islam. I am so thankful for the Internet in general and for your site in particular. I am not optimistic concerning Europe’s future. I just hope America will survive as a Western country.

LA replies:

What you say is very troubling.

The American left is quite crazy too, unable to make a rational argument. But the total bigotry that has taken over Europe against the U.S. and Israel is the most disturbing thing. It’s such a large phenomenon, and so baseless, that I don’t think it can be explained in rational or even human terms. I see it as a kind of possession.

For example, the fact that most of the continent of Europe actually thinks that tiny Israel is the source of all the problems of Islam including terrorism. In America it might be the far left and far right that believe that; in Europe it seems to be virtually everyone who believes it. When an entire society, an entire continent, embraces grossly false and irrational beliefs, turning evil into good and good into evil, it’s in serious trouble.

I also truly believe that in Europe today, more than any place and any time in history, we have an example of what happens to a people when it seriously rejects God, and I don’t mean just ordinary unbelief or mild agnosticism, I mean an entire culture becoming anti-God and anti any higher truth, and thus embracing non-existence and death. By the same token, never has there been a clearer example of a society that must turn back to God to save itself. I truly believe that if the Europeans realized how lost they are, how doomed, and if they realized that needed to return to God, and if they did so, they could save themselves, not just individually but as a civilization.

Ben W. writes:

You write about Europe and Europeans, “If they realized that needed to return to God, and if they did so, they could save themselves, not just individually but as a civilization.”

I’d be curious to find out, in concrete terms, how (1) Europeans individually and personally would return to God, and (2) Europe collectively and nationally would return to God.

I’m aware how Israel in the Old Testament did so, and how in people did so in the New Testament (Book of Acts). In both cases contrition and prayer were called for. How would it be done in Europe?

LA replies:

I’ve seen this in a thought-dream, years ago: If the people of Europe realized that they had alienated themselves from God, and that God exists, and if they got down on their knees and said, “Father, out of my arrogance and ignorance I have separated myself from you, and I am on the way to hell. I don’t want to live this way. Forgive me my sins, and show me how to follow you and be with you,” then Europe would be saved.

The current suicidal state of Europeis so clearly the consequence of the Europeans’ rejection of God that I think if they turned around and prayed to God for forgiveness, in one moment Europe could turn around.

Ben replies:

I agree with you. My fear is that individuals and nations sometimes cross a line and no return is possible. Since the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, European culture and philosophy has become so anti-theistic that the European psychology no longer can grasp concepts of transcendence. There would have to be a seismic thunderclap of enormous proportions to unmoor the European mentality and spirit.

LA replies:

That’s a powerful statement. I can’t dismiss what you said.

But that’s why I’ve always said that Europe will only change course (if it ever changes course) as a result of serious loss and suffering. They have to be psychologically melted down. The Muslims will do that for them.

Ben writes:

2 Chronicles 7:14 has always been a favorite verse of mine—it addresses both the individual and the national:

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

Lilli writes:

I have just noticed that our exchange continued with other readers. If you are interested I’d like to add some of my thoughts.

Maybe Ben is right and we have really crossed the line from where no return is possible, certainly not for all European individuals but for society as a whole. I am the kind of “mild agnostic” Lawrence mentioned above, but I was brought up in a devout Christian family. Like many others I renounced Christianity in my early twenties, thinking this being due to my own “intelligence” and “awareness” that it is an old-fashioned superstition, not suitable for a modern, enlightened human being. Today I am in deep doubts about this. I tend to think I was brainwashed. But that’s how propaganda works, isn’t it? If you recognize something as propaganda, it’s worthless. Only if you think it emerges from your own self, it is effective.

But for agnostics like me and even more for sensible atheists there arises a paradox, that seems to be insoluble. I remember a pastor in my youth who said: “Christian belief is more than only ‘thinking it’s true’.” That’s certainly correct. But ‘thinking it’s true’ is an indispensable condition for Christian belief. If you don’t believe there is a God, who is more personal than only some transcendence and who listens to and answers prayers, you can’t pray to Him and beg Him to make you believe.

I deeply respect Christianity and Judaism and give both of them much credit for being able to form good and strong societies. Indeed I would like to live in a more religious society such as the U.S. But a Christian society is not formed by agnostics who respect Christianity but by … Christians. So Europe couldn’t return to Christianity even if there were many Europeans who think like me. That’s my insoluble paradox, I have been struggling with for some time. I’d like to live in a Christian society but I am not able to form one.

But moreover there are barely none who think like me in Europe. Thus this paradox will probably not arise for society as a whole. Our problems are more serious than only that, I fear.

LA replies:

That is superbly well stated. But I think the dilemma you have articulated applies to more than just a few people.

What it really comes down to is modern people’s loss of what was normal for all human beings and all societies throughout human history: the experience of the divine, whether the divine is experienced within the cosmos (as in all the pre Hebrew and pre-Greek societies), or transcendent to the cosmos (as in Greek philosophy and the Bible). Because they don’t experience any truth higher than the human being, they also can’t believe in God. I don’t know what the “solution” to this problem is, other than a new opening of people to truth, or a new effusion of truth into humanity, as has happened from time to time in the past.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 13, 2007 10:38 AM | Send