Daily Help

(Book Installment)

The Duty of a Man:
Keeping a Family in Jesus Christ and the Bible

Chapter 2: Whatever Became of Jesus Christ?

Reading the Bible opened my eyes to truths that used to be commonly understood in America. Vestiges of those truths are still around…hiding in plain sight.

Knowing What Time It Is

I don’t know what year you’ll be reading this book, but it’s 2023 as I’m writing it. Why is it 2023 and not some other number? Because one man made so great an impact on the human race that calendars were re-written to acknowledge him as the centerpiece of history. This was logically consistent with the ancient and widespread practice of marking time by referring to “the such-and-such year of King so-and-so.” Jesus of Nazareth came to be regarded as the reigning monarch of the entire world, and it was deemed appropriate to change calendars accordingly. But that change didn’t come right away.

Jesus lived in the 1st century. The Roman Empire alternately tolerated and persecuted Christianity before making it the state religion in the 4th century. Yet these two centuries I’ve mentioned by number weren’t called by those numbers until the BC-AD system of dating was developed and adopted. That system was introduced in the 6th century AD and had found significant acceptance by the 9th century. By the 15th century, BC-AD was used throughout western Europe. This was a sign of the widespread knowledge of Jesus Christ and his life at that time. This is, of course, but one metric by which to measure Jesus’ impact – but it’s one that says a lot.

The “BC” stands for “Before Christ” and the AD stands for the Latin phrase “Anno Domini,” which means “in the year of the Lord.” The full original phrase was “anno Domini nostri Jesu Christi,” which translates to “in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ.” All of human history was being divided into that which occurred before and that which occurred after…Jesus of Nazareth. And the presence of the word “our” in that Latin phrase is profound. But how many people these days are saying “2023” (or whatever year it is as you read this) with the Lord whose year it is in mind? Fewer than ever. Why? 500 years of secularism.

The Rise of Secularism

Secularism arose in the wake of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation as a way Christian societies could avoid religious wars. The idea was that Christian denominational differences, by common consent, would be ignored in public matters. Everyone would stick to the basics – like Jesus and the Bible. This was the original “separation of church and state” that we had in America. It was by no means a separation of God and state, for the Declaration of Independence sought rights endowed by the “Creator…[and]…Supreme Judge of the world,” while the Constitution was ratified “in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven.” In colonial America, the Bible was so commonplace that it was the book by which most people learned to read.

Over time, as the percentage of Protestants in the population declined, America’s pluralism expanded to include other religions…and even agnostics and atheists. Eventually, given the lowest common denominator in that mix, secularism came to mean “leaving God out of it” – freedom from religion instead of the First Amendment’s freedom of religion.

Under 21st-century secularism, even the strictly historical aspects of the most influential man who ever lived are routinely kept out of public school and public discourse for fear of privileging Christianity. Therefore, what has become of Jesus Christ in America is that he and the gospel that bears his name have been largely forgotten. Some reminders are in order.