The Strange Death of Europe

And afterward Moses and Aaron came and said to Pharaoh, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel says: ‘Let My people go . . .’”   Exodus 5:1a  NASB

Go – A new Gregorian year begins.  This wasn’t always the case.  Until 1582 the Julian calendar was the common civil calendar.  Even today, some religious societies (Judaism included) follow different calendars.  But for most of the world, today heralds the beginning of a new Gregorian year.  Adjustments had to be made because the Julian calendar didn’t account for the exact rotation of the earth around the sun.  Now we adjust with Leap Year days.  Since Western culture adopted the Gregorian calendar, most of us count our lifetimes and our history on the basis of this Roman Catholic edict.  The adjustment caused by the change from Julian to Gregorian time produced some very odd results.  For example, the birth of Jesus according to the Julian calendar was the demarcation between BC and AD, but in the Gregorian system, Jesus was born in 4 BC, an oddity resulting from recalibration.  We might even say that our measurement of annual time is more doctrinal than scientific.  Nevertheless, today is a day for reflection—and reassessment—as the West renews the pagan myth of eternal return.  In this case, doctrine changed the way we count.

With that in mind, let’s examine another fundamental Catholic doctrine that has enormous consequences for all humanity.  It is also about beginnings; in this case, the origin of sin.  Through the influence of Augustine and Greek philosophy, the Church adopted what is now called the doctrine of original sin.  Briefly put, this doctrine claims that Adam acted as the symbolic head of all subsequent humanity, and that his sin was passed on to every human being so that each one of us is born guilty.  That is to say, we somehow participated in the original sin and that stain stays with us from the moment we are conceived until God alone removes it.

You might think that this ancient doctrine has little relevance today.  After all, Augustine believed this stain was passed on through sexual transmission, an idea soundly rejected in the modern world.  But the doctrine of original sin isn’t so easily discarded even if the transmission isn’t physical.  For example, my Italian friend notes, “Every Italian knows he is guilty. He just doesn’t know why.”  The idea of original sin—and original guilt—is now part of the culture even if the Church is no longer front and center.

Does this matter?  Well, there are additional consequences for civil society.  One of those is “national guilt.”  What happens to the psychology of a people whose historical culture embraces the idea that human beings are essentially flawed, that is, born guilty?  Douglas Murray, writing about the current decline of Europe, makes the following observation:

“Embedding the idea of original sin in a nation is the best way to breed self-doubt.  National original sin suggests you can do little by way of good because you are rotten from the start.”[1]

The religious history of European culture implanted this idea of flawed humanity.  Two world wars confirmed this doctrine.  The contemporary result is guilt absolution by political means.  One way to assuage national guilt is an open border policy toward those who are perceived as suffering.  Murray argues that Europe’s mass immigration (and the cultural chaos it produces) is the direct result of attempting to relieve this guilt complex.  Of course, this is political forgiveness, not spiritual forgiveness.  In the end, it doesn’t work.

“Contemporary Europeans may not be the only people in the world to feel they have been born into original sin, but they certainly appear to suffer from the worst case of it.  Today’s Europeans expect themselves, long before anybody else raises it, to bear specific historical guilt that comprises not only war guilt and Holocaust guilt, but a whole gamut of preceding guilts.  These include, though are by no means limited to, the abiding guilt of colonialism and racism.”[2]

According to this view, political forgiveness means welcoming the world’s “suffering” into our nation without regard to cultural clash, moral and spiritual disparity, or economic impact.  What matters is feeling guilt relief.

I have always contended that every idea has a history, and in this case, the idea of open borders has a very ancient religious history, a doctrinal origin that begins with Plato and Augustine and ends with Merkel and Biden.  What seems very clear is that political solutions to religious problems don’t work.  What also seems clear is that Judaism never embraced the idea of original sin, and Israel’s experience with mass immigration apparently has very different results.  Of course, most immigrants to Israel share a common culture, and perhaps that’s the real reason it works.  If you have no intention of assimilating, then, frankly, you don’t belong in the new home you’re pretending to adopt.  Even the covenant requires incorporation which is one of the reasons why Christians can never really be Jewish-Christians.  Mass migration without assimilation spells disaster for both cultures, as Europe has unfortunately learned and America is about to experience.  There’s a very good reason why God removed the Hebrews from Egypt in order to save them.  The verb is šālaḥ, and it means “to send away.”  God didn’t really say, “Let My people go.”  He really said, “Send My people away—away from this culture and these ideas.”  And there’s an equally good reason why the Golden Calf syndrome resulted in the death of everyone who was initially removed.  They never actually left Egypt.  They just carried Egypt with them toward a new land.  God did not allow that.  Apparently modern politicians have neither biblical understanding nor historical savvy.  “There’s nothing new under the sun” applies equally to tragic mistakes as well as inventive successes.  Original sin might be the underlying dysfunction that propels human beings to welcome those who don’t want to belong, but politics can’t overcome doctrinal disasters.  Spiritual problems require spiritual solutions.

Topical Index: migration, original sin, assimilation, Exodus 5:1a

[1] Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (Bloomsbury, 2017), p. 168.

[2] Ibid., pp. 162-163.