1 Hallelujah!
Praise the Lord, my soul!
2 I will praise the Lord all my life,
singing and playing to my God as long as I live.
3 Trust not in princes,
people who cannot help.
4 They exhale and turn to dust again,
the day the plans fall apart.
5 Blessed is he who has the God of Jacob for his helper
and puts his hope in the Lord his God.
6 He created heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them,
he is faithful for ever.
7 He helps the oppressed to their right,
He feeds the hungry.
The Lord sets free those who are bound.
8 The Lord gives sight to the blind.
The Lord raises up the humble.
The Lord loves the righteous.
9 The Lord protects the traveller.
He upholds widows and the fatherless,
but makes the way crooked for those who do wrong.
10 The Lord is king forever,
your God, Zion, from generation to generation.
Hallelujah!
Psalm 146, 1-10
On Friday, the Norwegian newspaper Class Struggle – “Klassekampen” – ran a major article trying to understand why the new right in Europe is turning towards God and why Christianity is being used by those defending the soul of Europe. The newspaper interviewed the editor of Dagen, Vebjørn Selbekk, among others. He was not entirely happy with this development and warns against turning the Church into a political project, whether it be right-wing or left-wing politics. He correctly emphasises that Christianity is not an ideological project and that everyone is welcome to believe in Jesus, regardless of whether you are Tommy Robinson or a communist.
The question few people ask is whether communism, Nazism, Wokeism’s radical gender theory or other religions and ideologies can be combined with the Christian faith and the understanding of reality that Christianity gives us.
To this day, we have agreed that we cannot be both Christian and Muslim or Christian and Communist at the same time. The reason is that these are schools of thought that provide different answers to the most fundamental questions. The difficulty is that we have almost stopped touching on such overarching questions. It’s as if we take it for granted that we all think the same way, but then we forget that Christianity has completely different answers to what society today considers to be politically correct.
Christianity is about far more than the belief in salvation and forgiveness for each of us. Faith in God revolutionised our civilisation. Christian law protected the child, the woman and the slave. It established the right to own property (it should be possible to give one’s own funds to the church) and gave us new laws relating to marriage. This is why conservatives are interested in our history. This is where they find their identity and can see how faith changed society. They see a line that goes back to the Master’s encounter with man. No-one becomes a Christian on their own, we have all been led by someone, and if you follow the tracks far enough back in time, we will all meet with him who asked his disciples to preach the gospel to the whole world.
It is therefore natural for conservatives to be sceptical of liberals who are indifferent to history, faith and its institutions, or communists whose materialistic view of humanity seeks to destroy them. This does not mean that conservative thinking is a guarantee of happiness, but conservatives want the state to be governed according to principles that guarantee that we allow God to be its necessary corrective. Psalm 146 reminds us of our responsibility for our fellow human beings. That is to say, the state must at all times consider whether it is fulfilling its obligations, both to the weak in society, born and unborn, as well as to the resourceful.
Conservatives understand that what best prevents an assault on individual liberty is when we allow our consciences to be guided by God. Where the National Assembly abandons faith in God, the understanding of truth and falsehood is easily lost. Majority decisions are left as moral truths, as we see in abortion and marriage legislation. This also means that the lie has to be defended, and thus slowly but surely the freedom that emerged when people recognised that they are accountable to God disappears.
The well-known English philosopher Roger Scruton believes that the health and continuity of society is therefore dependent on customs and traditions that preserve individual freedom. These traditions must be protected by institutions that accept that they are subject to something greater than ourselves, that is, the belief in a God who created us. This does not mean that conservatives cannot be wrong, but they should be more self-critical than other ideological traditions.
However, such a tradition can hardly be maintained in a society where those in power do not recognise the difference between Christianity and Islam, who believe that it is OK for a person to define their own gender, while ignoring the real ethical conflicts that cultural diversity can lead to. This is precisely what more and more people are realising and why they are drawn to the Christian faith.
It is true that Christianity is not an ideological project, it is something far more than that. Anyone who accepts Jesus Christ is bound to be overwhelmed by the love God has shown us and the truth he tells us about his creation. It is natural for believers to take this love and truth with them into political work, which is why Christians will normally be perceived as conservative. We do not believe it is possible to abolish the truths God has given us, and this is also the reason why Christians normally orientate themselves towards conservative movements.
Happy Sunday!