History is chock-full of pivotal moments, from Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon to Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler deciding to invade Russia, to George Washington turning down power. One moment eclipses them all—and most people at the time had no idea this moment would change the world forever.
Mankind has a virtually guaranteed 100% death rate, but one obscure carpenter-turned-rabbi defied the odds. He set off a chain reaction that didn’t just offer eternal salvation, but also inspired movements of compassion and invention that made life better for billions in the here and now.
I know I’m biased—I worship Jesus Christ as the Son of God and believe he will come again. But I also honestly think his Resurrection is the pivotal moment in human history, and not just because it offers eternal salvation to those of us who believe.
It’s hard for us to grasp just how painful most of human existence in the past truly was. Not only did people live for thousands of years without modern conveniences like refrigerators, microwaves, and washing machines, but high infant and child mortality was a fact of life—for the poorest of the poor as well as for the wealthiest and most powerful.
In Ancient Rome, when a plague began spreading, the wealthy quickly departed and the poor secluded themselves. Christianity spread, by contrast, in part because Christians started risking their lives to care for the sick; with a little help, many of the sick recovered.
Rodney Stark, a now-deceased social sciences professor at Baylor University and author of the book “The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success,” told PJ Media that without the Resurrection, “we would still be in a world of mystery and probably in a world of repressive empires.”
He argued that Christianity has been the driving force behind limited government, science, capitalism, the abolition of slavery, medicine, organized charities, and more—and Christianity would have been impossible without the Resurrection. In fact, the Gospels record that Jesus’ disciples scattered—and Peter even denied Jesus three times—but the Resurrection brought them together. According to church tradition, all but one of the apostles died painful deaths under torture, refusing to reject the faith.
The Roman authorities persecuted the early Christians, and this history arguably helped foster limited government.
Jesus told his followers to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” and to render the more important things to God. St. Augustine further developed this idea in his distinction between the “City of Man” and the “City of God.” Over time, Christians developed limits on political power and demarcated the sacred from the secular.
Christians also forbade the common practice of “exposing” infants, leaving babies in the wilderness to die. Instead, they established orphanages to care for the unfortunate and set up charitable institutions that further bolstered a civil society separate from the state.
Christian societies fought for justice. While slavery has been a near-universal human institution, Christianity eradicated it not once but twice: first in Medieval Europe and second, more lastingly, in the abolition movements of the 1800s.
While the New Testament does not require Christians to oppose slavery, outlawing the practice is the logical conclusion of key Christian doctrines. The Apostle Paul urged Philemon to free his former slave Onesimus, and Paul wrote to the Galatians that with God’s grace, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
Christian teaching also arguably fostered the development of scientific inquiry.
Stark explained that while many cultures considered the universe “far too mystical to be worth thinking about,” Christians believe “the universe was created by a rational God, and consequently it runs by rules and, therefore, it makes sense to try to understand and discover the rules.”
Great scientists emerged in the Western world as modern universities grew out of Medieval cathedral schools. While Aristotle—revered in the Islamic East and the Christian West—taught that the universe was eternal, and used deductive reasoning to reach conclusions about it, Christians believed that God could have created the universe differently, leading them to eventually discover how he actually made it.
Last, but certainly not least, Christianity arguably inspired the free market system that enriches our lives today.
The German sociologist Max Weber famously traced capitalism back to the “Protestant work ethic,” but Stark found an earlier source—the Catholic monasteries in the Middle Ages. These monasteries set up a complex network of lending at interest, helping to build the economic engine that enriches life across the globe.
Each of these achievements came slowly and with fits and starts, and non-Christians have also helped improve the world in myriad ways, but I find Stark’s argument convincing: Christianity inspired these positive historical trends.
Jesus urged his disciples to be the “salt of the Earth” and the “light of the world,” and Christianity teaches that the Holy Spirit dwells in the hearts of true believers. If so, we would expect to see Christians change the world for the better.
I’d argue that’s the major theme of world history, and it bolsters my faith that the Resurrection actually happened.
