A college campus can sometimes feel like a confessional without forgiveness.
A Western student rises during a seminar on world history, clutching a laptop containing cobalt from Congolese mines, to denounce “the evils of European colonization.”
Around the table, heads nod in solemn agreement. No one dares to point out that the student’s own worldview—steeped in the moral vocabulary of critical theory and identity politics—is itself a kind of empire, a creed seeking global dominance through guilt and coercion rather than gunboats.
The modern political left has mastered the art of moral inversion. It condemns the sins of long-dead Europeans for spreading Christianity and Western order across the globe, yet it spreads its own doctrines—DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), gender ideology, and radical secularism—just as aggressively, and often by similar means. Its evangelists do not carry Bibles or flags but policies, grants, and social media mobs.
They call this advancement upon civilizations “progress.” The older term is colonization.
The New Missionaries
The old colonial powers justified expansion in the name of civilization.
The new colonizers claim the same mandate, only their gospel has changed.
They promise enlightenment through inclusion, salvation through sensitivity, and atonement through perpetual apology. But the tone is the same paternalism once wielded by European empires—“We know what’s best for you.”
This ideological colonization manifests everywhere: in multinational corporations that withhold contracts from nations rejecting LGBT policies; in American embassies that fly the pride flag over foreign soil; in classrooms where Christian children are told to question their identity, their faith, and even their sex.
The left’s goal is not to coexist with other cultures—it is to overwrite them.
The Myth of Moral Superiority
This hypocrisy is not accidental; it is essential. The modern left sustains its power through the illusion of moral purity.
Its rhetoric of oppression gives it a perpetual claim to virtue, even when it bullies, silences, or coerces others.
The irony is breathtaking: those who preach liberation now rule through intimidation. Those who cry “justice” deploy bureaucratic machinery to punish dissent. Those who decry imperialism demand global obedience to their new moral order.
In this sense, progressivism is not a break from Western imperial history—it is the continuation of it under a new flag. The missionary has traded the cross for the rainbow, the pulpit for the university podium, and the creed of Christ for the creed of the Self.
Yet the essence is the same: a demand that others conform to the moral vision of the powerful.
A Consistent Inconsistency
The left condemns European colonization as if it were the world’s original sin.
Yet it refuses to confront the colonial empires of Islam, which spread by conquest for over a thousand years.
It denounces Western patriarchy while importing cultures that practice actual gender oppression.
It attacks Christian mission schools of the past but defends public schools today that convert children to secular orthodoxy.
It laments imperialism but exerts global control through NGOs, corporate boards, and supranational institutions.
These contradictions are not random. They flow from a single conviction—that moral authority belongs to those who claim victimhood. Having abandoned transcendent truth, the left redefines morality as power. Whoever controls the narrative controls the conscience.
The result is an empire of ideas without borders and without humility.
The Real Decolonization
True liberation is not found in replacing one master with another.
Christianity, unlike progressivism, does not conquer by coercion. It persuades by truth.
Its kingdom advances through repentance, not revolution; through faith, not force.
Christ’s command was not to colonize but to disciple—to call every nation to a moral order that springs from God’s character, not from man’s imagination.
The question before us is not whether colonization exists, but which kingdom we are serving: the self-appointed moral empire of secular progress, or the eternal reign of Christ, who alone rules with justice and grace.
The Myth of Moral Innocence
The modern left presents itself as the conscience of the world—an enlightened redeemer whose mission is to heal humanity of its past sins. Its rhetoric is confessional, yet its posture is self-righteous. Like a priest without grace, it offers forgiveness only through submission. The language of anti-colonialism, anti-racism, and social justice has become its liturgy. Its catechism begins with the same phrase: “We are not like them.”
A Recycled Moral Code
In the nineteenth century, European empires justified their expansion under the “white man’s burden.”
They saw themselves as the torchbearers of civilization, carrying literacy, law, and Christianity to “backward” nations.
Today’s progressives repeat this pattern with secular tools. They speak of “raising awareness,” “educating the ignorant,” and “liberating the oppressed.” Their goal is the same: moral improvement of the world according to their own design.
Yet this moral confidence rests on sand. The new progressivism assumes that Western civilization was evil only because it was Christian. The problem, they say, was not conquest but creed.
Thus, the solution is not humility but reversal—seizing the same moral authority once wielded by the church and wielding it in service to man rather than God.
This is what Francis Schaeffer warned of decades ago when he described humanism’s rise as a “proud rebellion against the Creator.” Having dethroned God, modern man must enthrone himself, and he does so under banners of compassion and equality.
The moral language remains Christian in flavor—concern for the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed—but stripped of any reference to sin, forgiveness, or divine justice. It is Christianity without Christ.
The Empire of the Virtuous
The political left now presides over a vast moral empire. Its institutions—universities, NGOs, entertainment, and corporate HR departments—function as chapels of virtue signaling.
To belong, one must confess inherited guilt and vow allegiance to the new moral order.
The rituals are familiar: the public apology, the diversity seminar, the performative allyship. These are not acts of repentance but demonstrations of loyalty.
Unlike true repentance, which leads to humility, this secular penance produces pride. The “woke” are not broken-hearted over sin but exhilarated by their enlightenment. They have traded the righteousness of Christ for self-righteousness. As the Apostle Paul warned, “claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22).
The Weaponization of Compassion
Compassion is a Christian virtue, but when detached from truth it becomes a weapon. The left invokes compassion to justify every new moral experiment—abortion, gender transition, euthanasia, unrestricted immigration—insisting that kindness means approval.
Yet their compassion is selective. The unborn receive none. Christians who resist are ridiculed, not loved. The oppressed are cherished only so long as they serve the cause.
This distortion springs from a deep theological error: the belief that man is basically good. If human nature is good, then suffering must come from external systems—capitalism, patriarchy, religion. Evil becomes structural, not personal.
Salvation, therefore, must come from social engineers, not from the cross. The result is moral arrogance on a civilizational scale.
The Return of the Missionary
The irony could not be richer. The left that despises Christian missionaries now sends out its own.
They arrive not with Bibles but with bureaucrats, not with sermons but with social programs.
Western governments and NGOs export progressive ideology across Africa, Asia, and Latin America—forcing compliance on matters of sexuality, abortion, and education as conditions for aid. It is moral imperialism dressed in the garments of compassion.
Pope John Paul II once called this “ideological colonization.” He was right. What Western progressives once condemned as cultural domination, they now practice with bureaucratic precision. The old empires sought to civilize the world by converting it to Christ; the new one seeks to civilize the world by converting it to the Self.
Moral Innocence as Power
Every empire justifies itself with a myth. The myth of modern progressivism is moral innocence—the conviction that its power is pure because its motives are compassionate. Yet compassion without truth is tyranny. When moral authority is claimed without moral accountability, coercion follows. That is why dissent from progressive dogma is punished so harshly: disagreement threatens their sense of righteousness.
True moral purity, as Scripture teaches, is not something man achieves but something God imputes through grace. The left rejects this, preferring a humanistic gospel where sin is political and salvation is social. The result is a civilization that confesses endlessly yet never repents, that condemns its ancestors while excusing its own oppression. It is a religion without redemption.
Selective Outrage: The Silence About Islamic Imperialism
The progressive imagination loves a simple villain, and none serves so conveniently as Christian Europe. Crusades, colonialism, slavery—all are recited like a creed of Western guilt. But mention the thousand-year record of Islamic conquest, and the room falls silent.
This silence speaks louder than any lecture on “tolerance.”
The Unspoken Empire
From the seventh century onward, Islamic armies expanded with breathtaking speed—from Arabia across the Middle East, North Africa, Spain, and eventually deep into the Balkans. The Ottoman Empire ruled portions of Eastern Europe until the twentieth century, enslaving millions through the devshirme system, which seized Christian boys to serve as soldiers and eunuchs. These were not exchanges of culture; they were conquests enforced by sword and tribute.
Yet few Western classrooms dwell on this. The term “colonialism” is reserved for British or Spanish ventures, never for the caliphates that reshaped three continents.
Why? Because to critique Islam’s imperial history would disturb the progressive narrative that portrays Muslims as perpetual victims of Western aggression.
Victimhood, in the modern moral economy, grants immunity from scrutiny.
The Crusade That Must Not Be Named
Ask a university graduate about the Crusades, and you’ll likely hear of European aggression against peaceful Muslims.
Rarely is it mentioned that the First Crusade was launched after four centuries of Islamic invasions, including the capture of Christian Jerusalem and the harassment of pilgrims. Western historians once taught this context; modern ones delete it in favor of a morality play starring Western guilt.
This selective memory is not historical oversight but ideological strategy. If the West is always guilty and Islam always innocent, then Western Christianity can be delegitimized while Islamic culture enjoys perpetual moral credit. The left thus uses history not to learn but to indict—and only one side has to defend itself.
From Sword to Sanctuary
Fast-forward to the present.
Europe, shamed into paralysis, opens its borders to millions from Muslim-majority regions while ridiculing anyone who raises concerns about cultural erosion.
The demographic transformation is called “compassion.”
But compassion without prudence becomes self-destruction. The left praises diversity yet punishes those who point out that unassimilated enclaves have produced social tension, crime, and the retreat of Western freedoms.
When Islamist extremists attack, progressives respond with ritual disclaimers: “Islam is a religion of peace.”
But when a lone criminal claims to be Christian, they indict the entire faith.
It is moral asymmetry masquerading as fairness. They fear offending Muslims but delight in offending Christians—because Christianity remains the true rival religion in the West, and Islam, for now, serves as a useful foil.
The Politics of Fear and Flattery
Part of this reluctance is practical.
Criticize Christianity, and you may lose a few donors. Criticize Islam, and you may lose your life.
The progressive world understands this instinctively. So it flatters Islam while slandering its safer target—the church.
Hollywood avoids Muslim villains, inventing “Christian extremists” instead. Universities ban Christian evangelism but defend the right of Muslim students to proselytize. Politicians attend iftar dinners yet mock the Lord’s Supper. It is cowardice disguised as inclusivity.
Yet beneath the fear lies another motive: ideological kinship. Both progressive ideology and political Islam share a hostility toward Western Christianity. Both resent the biblical claim of exclusive truth. Both aim to subdue the moral order that once defined Europe and America.
Their cooperation is temporary, but their common enemy is clear.
The Real Target
If the left truly opposed oppression, it would speak against the subjugation of women and female genital mutilation under sharia, the persecution of Christians in Muslim lands, and the execution of apostates.
Its silence on these atrocities reveals the truth: its outrage is not moral but strategic. The left’s quarrel is not with tyranny; it is with transcendence. It will forgive any empire except the one ruled by Christ.
In this, progressivism proves itself neither courageous nor consistent. It fears to name evil where evil might strike back, and so it projects guilt upon those who turn the other cheek.
That cowardice, cloaked in compassion, is the defining hypocrisy of our age.
DEI as Cultural Colonization
When European empires expanded their borders, they built garrisons, ports, and trade routes.
The modern left builds committees. The acronym DEI—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—functions as its flag.
It is hoisted not over captured territories, but over boardrooms, universities, and school systems. Behind its soothing vocabulary lies the same instinct that drove past empires: control of conscience and culture.
The New Bureaucrats of Virtue
Diversity, equity, and inclusion sound harmless enough. Who would oppose fairness or representation?
Yet under these pleasant words lurks a doctrine of coercion.
DEI programs do not encourage true diversity—the free exchange of differing convictions—but enforce ideological sameness. Their “inclusion” excludes anyone who dissents from progressive orthodoxy. Their “equity” rejects equality under law and replaces it with enforced outcomes determined by race, gender, or identity group.
Consider the structure. Every major institution now houses a DEI bureaucracy, staffed with officers whose job is not to mediate but to monitor. These bureaucrats define which words are acceptable, which beliefs are “harmful,” and which traditions must be erased.
The result is a climate of fear reminiscent of political commissars under Marxist regimes. It is not dialogue—it is discipline.
The irony is exquisite. The same left that once protested corporate power now rules through it.
Multinational corporations act as moral governors, punishing employees for “wrongthink,” lecturing customers on social virtue, and exporting the American progressive creed to countries that never asked for it.
The Global Export of Ideology
Just as the British Empire carried its legal and cultural norms into the colonies, DEI ideology travels through trade agreements, nonprofit funding, and corporate influence.
Western businesses operating in Africa or Asia are pressured to implement LGBT and gender policies alien to local cultures. NGOs condition medical aid or education grants on acceptance of “inclusive” curricula. This is not partnership; it is moral extortion.
Even developing nations recognize this. Leaders in Africa and Eastern Europe have begun to push back, accusing Western governments of “neo-colonialism.”
They are right. The empire of diversity functions by the same logic as the old imperial powers—it imposes a worldview through power, not persuasion. It simply swaps muskets for meetings and treaties for training manuals.
The Gramscian Blueprint
The intellectual roots of this colonization trace back to the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci.
Gramsci argued that the Marxist revolution would succeed not by seizing factories but by capturing culture—the schools, the press, and the arts. Once the “common sense” of society shifted toward Marxist values, political change would follow naturally.
DEI is Gramsci’s dream realized. It reframes Marx’s economic categories of oppressor and oppressed into identity categories of race, sex, and orientation.
Through this new cultural hegemony, it molds the conscience of a generation without firing a shot. Its success depends on moral manipulation rather than physical force, but the goal is identical: the redistribution of power and the subversion of the biblical moral order.
The Theft of Language
Language itself becomes colonized.
Words that once had clear meaning—justice, tolerance, respect—are redefined to serve the ideology.
“Justice” now means equality of outcome. “Tolerance” means approval of sin. “Respect” means silence in the face of lies. This linguistic conquest mirrors Orwell’s warning in 1984: control the words, and you control the thought.
A Christian student or employee quickly learns that to speak truth on matters of biology or faith is to risk being branded intolerant. Thus, they self-censor. Silence becomes the price of survival, and moral cowardice is baptized as professionalism.
The Church’s Challenge
This cultural colonization demands resistance not through anger, but through clarity.
The Christian understanding of equality rests on the image of God, not on group identity. True inclusion is the invitation of Christ to every sinner, not the erasure of truth for comfort’s sake. The gospel does not sort humanity by victim status but calls all men to repentance and grace.
When believers accept DEI language uncritically, they surrender the vocabulary of truth.
To love one’s neighbor does not mean affirming falsehood—it means speaking truth at personal cost. The early church faced Rome’s demand for conformity; today’s Christians face the HR department’s. The emperor’s edict and the diversity policy are cousins in spirit.
The Inevitable Collapse
Every empire built on lies eventually collapses. DEI’s promise of harmony cannot withstand its contradictions. It claims to celebrate diversity while demanding uniformity; it promises justice while practicing favoritism; it preaches inclusion while excommunicating dissenters. What remains is bureaucracy without virtue—a hollow empire sustained by fear and slogans.
The Christian must see through this mirage. The kingdom of Christ is not inclusive because it abolishes difference, but because it redeems it. The Lamb gathers people from every tribe and tongue, not under coercion, but by grace. That is the only diversity that will last.
The Gender Gospel: Replacing Faith with Self-Deification
Every empire needs a creed, and the new progressive empire has found one: gender ideology. It offers its converts a kind of spiritual rebirth—an opportunity to become a new creation, not in Christ, but in the image of one’s own desire. It preaches that the self is sovereign, the body is raw material, and truth bends to feeling. The result is not liberation but self-deification—a counterfeit gospel that worships the creature rather than the Creator.
The Modern Creation Myth
In the biblical account, “male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27). Human identity is a gift, not a project. The progressive narrative reverses this order. It claims that gender is a social construct, an evolving artifact of culture rather than an objective feature of creation. The self becomes a kind of demiurge, fashioning reality by naming it. “I identify as…” becomes the modern fiat lux—“let there be light.”
This myth travels the world under the banners of “human rights” and “healthcare.” Western governments and NGOs now pressure developing nations to adopt transgender legislation as a condition for trade or foreign aid. International agencies distribute educational materials promoting gender fluidity to children who scarcely understand biology. A century ago, Western colonizers imposed their maps and flags; today, they impose their moral confusion.
The Conversion Ritual
Every false religion has a rite of initiation. For gender ideology, it is the transition—social, medical, or surgical. The child or young adult is told that inner discomfort is evidence of being “born in the wrong body.” The catechism begins early, often in public schools. Teachers encourage questioning of gender, counselors affirm dysphoria without hesitation, and medical professionals prescribe puberty blockers as if they were sacraments.
The cruelty is that many children who undergo these procedures will later regret them. Their pain, however, serves the ideological cause. A mutilated body is the proof of conversion—the modern equivalent of circumcision without covenant. The message to the faithful is clear: salvation lies in self-reinvention, and anyone who questions the process is a heretic.
Blasphemy Laws for the New Religion
Every religion protects its sacred truths. The gender gospel enforces its own blasphemy laws through social and legal punishment. Refuse to use preferred pronouns, and you risk professional ruin. Quote Scripture affirming that God made man and woman, and you may be charged with hate speech in some countries. The language of compassion has become the weapon of censorship.
This new orthodoxy functions precisely as the old inquisitions did—rooting out heresy, demanding confession, and punishing dissent. Yet unlike the church of the Middle Ages, this system has no means of forgiveness. Once accused, the sinner is forever condemned. The irony is that while the left accuses Christianity of oppression, it has recreated a far harsher faith—without mercy, without redemption, and without God.
The Exploitation of Compassion
Progressives cloak this ideology in compassion, insisting that to affirm someone’s delusion is to love them. But love without truth is cruelty. A doctor who affirms a patient’s false diagnosis harms rather than heals. Likewise, parents or teachers who affirm gender confusion under the banner of kindness betray the very children they claim to protect. True compassion speaks reality even when reality wounds pride.
Jesus loved sinners without lying to them. He said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). Freedom, in the Christian sense, is not the power to redefine oneself, but to live in harmony with one’s Maker. The left’s notion of freedom—self-creation without limits—leads not to liberation but to despair. The body becomes the battleground between fantasy and fact, and the soul suffers the casualties.
The Global Crusade of the Self
The export of gender ideology mirrors the missionary zeal of earlier empires. Western diplomats lecture African and Eastern European nations about “trans rights,” threatening sanctions for noncompliance. American embassies fly pride flags abroad, signaling that moral allegiance to this creed is the new test of civilization. Developing nations that resist are branded backward or hateful, just as colonial subjects once were for rejecting Western customs.
This is not tolerance; it is imperialism of the mind. Where Christian missionaries once taught that every person bears God’s image, gender missionaries teach that man creates his own. The first message dignified the soul; the second distorts it.
The Idolatry of Autonomy
At its core, gender ideology is rebellion against the Creator’s authority. It insists that identity flows from will rather than design, that the body has no moral meaning, and that reality must submit to self-perception. It is the serpent’s lie retold in modern idiom: “You will be like God.” The promise of self-divinity remains as tempting—and as deadly—as ever.
A society that worships autonomy eventually destroys the very individuals it seeks to liberate. Suicide rates among those who transition remain tragically high despite the world’s applause. The soul cannot bear the weight of godhood. Only in surrender to Christ’s lordship does identity find peace. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17)—not because he reinvented himself, but because he was remade by grace.
The Church’s Calling
The church’s task is neither hatred nor retreat, but clarity. Christians must reject the false compassion that celebrates delusion while standing firm in gentleness and truth. We must reclaim the vocabulary of love, showing that dignity flows from divine creation, not self-definition. The battle is not between tolerance and intolerance, but between reality and unreality.
The gender gospel will collapse under its contradictions, as every false religion does. But the souls wounded by it will need the healing that only the true gospel can give. They will need a Savior, not an identity. And when that time comes, the church must be ready—with open arms and unyielding truth.
The Classroom as Colony: Capturing the Children
Empires have always known that the surest way to rule a people is to shape its children. Armies seize territory; teachers seize imagination. In the modern West, the classroom has become the colony—an occupied space where the faith and values of Christian families are quietly replaced with the catechism of secular progress. The blackboard is now the battlefield.
From Parental Stewardship to State Custody
In Scripture, the duty to teach belongs first to parents (Deuteronomy 6:6-7):
These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children.
But progressive ideology reassigns that authority to the state. School systems now speak of children as “citizens of the world,” implying that loyalty to the family or the faith that nurtured them is provincial and backward. Parents who question curricula on sexuality or race are treated as obstacles to enlightenment—sometimes even as security threats. The message is unmistakable: your child belongs to the collective.
The intellectual scaffolding for this inversion comes from Rousseau, who wrote that society must “take possession of the child almost from birth” to produce virtuous citizens. Modern bureaucrats have taken him at his word. Compulsory education, once meant to ensure literacy, has become a mechanism for moral re-education.
Curriculum as Catechism
The public-school classroom functions as the new pulpit. The liturgy changes with the political season, but its theology never wavers: truth is relative, morality is self-defined, and salvation lies in activism. Reading and arithmetic are subordinated to social engineering. The multiplication table bows before the pride flag.
Lessons on “diversity” teach children that identity is fluid; civics courses preach collective guilt for ancestral sins; biology is rewritten to fit ideology. A child who repeats what his parents taught him about God or marriage is told that “everyone has their own truth.” By the time he graduates, he has learned that conviction is bigotry and that neutrality is virtue.
This is not education—it is conversion. The very word education comes from the Latin educare, meaning “to lead out.” The question is: out of what, and into what? Increasingly, children are led out of faith and into confusion.
The Unholy Alliance
Teachers’ unions and political activists defend this arrangement with missionary zeal. They insist that students must be “protected” from the prejudices of their parents—by which they mean biblical morality. Laws designed to inform parents of their children’s counseling or gender decisions are denounced as attacks on “student privacy.” Privacy from whom? From the very people responsible for the child’s soul.
This collusion between ideology and institution mirrors the alliance between throne and temple in ancient paganism. Pharaoh demanded the Hebrew infants not because he feared their strength, but because he feared their future. Every empire that seeks to endure must break the transmission of faith between generations. The modern state attempts it not by chains but by curriculum.
Sphere Sovereignty and the Christian Resistance
Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch Reformed statesman, taught that God ordained separate “spheres” of authority: family, church, and state. Each has its limits. When the state invades the family’s sphere—especially in the moral formation of children—it commits a kind of political idolatry. Kuyper warned that such intrusion would turn citizens into subjects of the state rather than subjects of Christ.
Christian parents, therefore, face a solemn calling: to reclaim their God-given stewardship. Whether through homeschooling, classical Christian education, or vigilant engagement with public schools, they must not outsource discipleship to an institution hostile to their faith. The heart of a child cannot be left on the altar of bureaucracy.
The Fruit of Indoctrination
The results of this colonization are visible everywhere. A generation raised without objective truth now drifts between identities, simultaneously fragile and defiant. They march for causes they scarcely understand and despise a civilization they were never taught to appreciate. Gratitude is replaced by grievance. Joy gives way to perpetual outrage. It is the predictable harvest of education without wisdom.
Yet amid the ruin, a quiet counter-movement grows. Christian schools flourish, parents organize, and young believers rediscover that faith and reason are not enemies. The gospel still produces minds that love truth and hearts that love goodness. The empire of indoctrination is vast, but it cannot outlast conviction grounded in eternity.
The Hope of a Redeemed Imagination
The task is not merely to shield children from falsehood but to feed them with beauty and truth. When a child learns that God made the world in order and purpose, he gains armor against chaos. When he learns that Christ is Lord of all knowledge, he can discern propaganda from wisdom. The Christian imagination, once awakened, cannot be colonized.
Empires rise and fall, but the Word of God remains. The classroom may be a colony today, yet it can become a mission field tomorrow—if Christian parents and teachers reclaim their calling to teach the next generation the truth that sets free.
Globalism: The New Empire Without Borders
Empires once built roads and fortresses to hold their dominions. The new empire builds treaties, trade forums, and climate accords. It flies no flag but the logo of the United Nations, the European Union, or the World Economic Forum. Its weapons are not cannons but compliance documents, its soldiers are bureaucrats, and its conquest is ideological. Globalism is the empire that pretends it has none.
The Architecture of Soft Power
In earlier centuries, the British gunboat guaranteed the authority of the crown. Today, “international consensus” performs the same task. Behind the rhetoric of cooperation lies a quiet coercion: smaller nations are told that moral legitimacy requires submission to the progressive moral code—environmental absolutism, gender ideology, population control, and “reproductive rights.”
This power hides behind policy. A developing nation seeking investment or aid quickly learns that funding is tied to compliance with Western social agendas. Decline to liberalize abortion or redefine marriage, and the loans evaporate. Thus the former colonies are recolonized—not through force, but through finance.
The Tower of Babel Rebuilt
Genesis 11 records humanity’s first global project: a tower “with its top in the heavens,” built to unify mankind apart from God. The Lord scattered them, confusing their language to restrain their pride. Yet the spirit of Babel endures. The globalist movement imagines a humanity without nations, borders, or moral distinctions—a single market governed by experts, accountable to no people and certainly not to God.
The European Union embodies this impulse. National sovereignty yields to centralized directives that dictate everything from energy use to pronoun policy. Citizens vote, but their votes can be overruled by unelected commissions. The utopian goal of “ever closer union” masks a quiet contempt for self-government—the same contempt imperial governors once held for their subjects.
The Gospel of Sustainability
Every empire needs a moral justification, and the new one has found it in the word sustainability. Under its banner, global elites demand sweeping control of production, energy, and agriculture. Carbon becomes the new sin; the technocrat becomes the new priest who grants indulgences through carbon credits. The average citizen is told to surrender freedom for the planet’s salvation, while private jets line up at climate summits.
This movement borrows Christian language—stewardship, responsibility, redemption—but strips it of transcendence. Creation care becomes creation worship. Where Scripture calls man to rule the earth under God, globalism calls man to bow before the earth as god.
The Digital Dominion
The empire’s newest frontier is digital. Global institutions envision a world of centralized digital currencies, universal identification systems, and algorithmic censorship in the name of “safety.” What was once the village square has become a monitored plaza. The same ideology that silences Christian conviction on campus now polices speech online. The dream of a borderless internet has matured into a surveillance apparatus as vast as any ancient empire’s spy network.
The irony is that the architects of this system insist they are defending freedom. But freedom defined as “security from harm” quickly becomes servitude to whoever defines harm. The more protection they promise, the less liberty remains.
The Christian View of Nations
Scripture affirms both the dignity of every nation and the universality of the gospel. When Paul told the Athenians that God “made from one man every nation … having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place” (Acts 17:26), he declared that borders are not accidents but providence. God disperses peoples to restrain human pride and to preserve diversity of culture and worship. Globalism seeks to undo that dispersion—to recreate Babel’s unity without Babel’s repentance.
Christian internationalism, by contrast, is spiritual: one faith, one Lord, one baptism, across nations. It honors earthly distinctions while proclaiming a higher citizenship in heaven. The kingdom of God does not erase nations; it redeems them.
The End of Every Empire
History teaches that no empire lasts forever. Rome fell to decadence, the Ottomans to stagnation, the British to exhaustion. Globalism will fall to its own contradictions. It demands diversity yet enforces conformity; it preaches equality yet produces oligarchy. Its faith in human reason cannot sustain the moral weight of its ambitions.
For the Christian, the lesson is not despair but discernment. We are called neither to isolation nor to idolatry of the state, but to faithful witness within whatever empire we inhabit. As Augustine taught, the City of Man rises and falls, but the City of God endures.
Autonomy for Me, Obedience for Thee
No word is more sacred in the modern progressive vocabulary than autonomy. It adorns slogans, court rulings, and protest signs. My body, my choice became the chant of a generation. Freedom, we are told, means sovereignty over the self—total independence from external authority. Yet the same people who preach autonomy in one breath demand submission in the next. Their liberty ends where their ideology begins.
The Selective Sanctity of Choice
The contradictions are stunning. The same political movement that defends abortion as an inviolable personal right insists that taxpayers must fund it. The same institutions that cry “bodily autonomy” in defense of gender transitions impose health mandates, vaccine requirements, and speech codes without hesitation. Choice, it seems, is sacred only when it affirms the approved moral agenda.
This selective freedom exposes a deeper creed: autonomy for those who serve the revolution, obedience for everyone else. The principle is not liberty but control—control disguised as compassion, compliance enforced through shame and regulation. Modern man has exchanged the Ten Commandments for ten thousand bureaucratic ones.
The False Idol of the Self
At the heart of this double standard lies the deification of the self. In the Christian worldview, freedom is the ability to do what is right, shaped by truth and constrained by love. In the progressive worldview, freedom means doing whatever one desires, limited only by political expedience. But when every individual becomes his own lawgiver, society collapses into chaos. The state then steps in to impose order—not moral order, but managerial control.
The French philosopher Rousseau promised liberation from all external constraint, but his revolution birthed the guillotine. Every utopia of unrestrained freedom ends the same way—tyranny. When truth is abolished, power fills the void.
The New Moral Police
The left’s obsession with autonomy ends where speech and thought begin. Consider the compulsion of pronoun use, mandatory DEI training, or laws punishing “hate speech” defined so broadly that Scripture itself could be criminalized. You may govern your own body, they say, but not your tongue. You may reject God, but not their god.
The irony is almost theological. Progressive ideology cannot survive the very liberty it preaches. The open marketplace of ideas threatens its monopoly on truth, so it must regulate expression. The self is free to choose sin, but not to speak against it. This is freedom as the serpent defined it—freedom from God, not for God.
The Tyranny of Compassion
The enforcement of conformity is almost always justified by appeals to safety or kindness. People must be “protected” from offensive ideas, “shielded” from misinformation, “affirmed” in their chosen identities. The vocabulary of care becomes the language of coercion. “For your own good” is the oldest excuse in the arsenal of tyrants.
True compassion, however, never abolishes truth. Jesus wept over Jerusalem, but He did not rewrite the moral law to soothe its guilt. The left’s compassion demands that we call darkness light and light darkness—a mercy that leads to madness.
Freedom Under God
The Christian understanding of freedom begins not with self-sovereignty but with divine authority. “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). That freedom is moral, not political; it liberates from sin, not from law. The modern cry for autonomy is therefore not liberty but rebellion—a replay of Eden’s temptation: “You will be like God.”
When man dethrones God, he does not become free; he becomes enslaved to his passions or to the state that must restrain them. The irony of modern liberalism is that it produces the most conformist societies in history. Every opinion is permitted except belief in absolute truth. Every god is welcome except the true one.
The Path Back to Ordered Liberty
America’s founders understood what the modern left has forgotten: liberty requires virtue, and virtue requires faith. John Adams warned that the Constitution was made for “a moral and religious people” and would fail for any other. Without transcendent authority, freedom devours itself.
The only antidote to the chaos of self-worship is the acknowledgment of a higher Lord. True freedom is not the abolition of limits but the joyful recognition that God’s boundaries are blessings. Autonomy ends in isolation; obedience to Christ ends in peace.
The slogan “my body, my choice” will one day be replaced by the truth every knee will confess: “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). That confession, despised by the world, is the only foundation of real freedom.
Compassion That Cancels
Modern progressivism claims compassion as its crown jewel. It parades under banners of kindness, equity, and care. Yet its mercy has sharp edges. The same voices that plead for tolerance demand the silencing of those who disagree. The same activists who speak of empathy delight in public humiliation. This is not compassion—it is sentimentality weaponized into vengeance.
The Age of the Accuser
Every civilization has produced its moral enforcers, but few have done so with the moral pretension of ours. The ancient Pharisees guarded the law; the new Pharisees guard the hashtag. Social media has become a tribunal where reputations are sentenced without trial and repentance earns no pardon. The mob, convinced of its own virtue, cancels in the name of kindness.
This phenomenon is not political excess—it is theological inversion. In Scripture, Satan is called “the accuser of the brethren.” His power lies in endless indictment without forgiveness. Modern culture, having abandoned grace, imitates his methods. The mob must always find a new sinner to stone, a new offense to expose. The outrage industry never rests, because a movement built on grievance cannot survive reconciliation.
The Mirage of Moral Superiority
The left’s compassion extends only to those who affirm its creed. A criminal can be excused, a terrorist sympathized with, a violent protester lionized—so long as the narrative fits. But a Christian baker who refuses to decorate a cake, or a parent who questions gender indoctrination, becomes a target for public scorn. Compassion, in this new religion, is tribal. It serves the cause, not the person.
The irony is that the victims of cancel culture often display more forgiveness than their persecutors. Many respond with quiet dignity, refusing to retaliate. In doing so, they expose the emptiness of the mob’s moral pretensions. The Christian who forgives his accusers stands as a living rebuke to a culture that no longer understands mercy.
Justice Without Justification
The left’s obsession with “social justice” sounds noble but severs justice from justification. True justice flows from God’s nature; it is impartial, objective, and tempered by mercy. Social justice, by contrast, is collectivized vengeance. It divides humanity into oppressor and oppressed, assigning guilt by category rather than conduct. It seeks not righteousness but retribution.
When justice loses its transcendent anchor, it becomes whatever the powerful declare it to be. Today’s revolutionaries, like Robespierre before them, claim to act in the name of virtue while building guillotines of reputation. They cannot forgive because forgiveness implies moral authority higher than the movement itself—and the movement will tolerate no rival gods.
The Christian Antidote
Christian compassion is not sentimental approval; it is sacrificial love rooted in truth. Jesus did not affirm the adulteress’s sin, but neither did He condemn her to despair. “Go, and sin no more,” He said (John 8:11). That is mercy—grace that restores by confronting sin rather than denying it.
The world’s counterfeit compassion refuses to say “sin” at all. It comforts the rebel while persecuting the righteous. Yet true love requires truth. To affirm someone’s destruction for fear of offending them is not kindness; it is cowardice dressed as civility.
The Christian response must be both conviction and compassion. We must reject the cruelty of the mob while refusing the cowardice of silence. Paul’s command still holds: “Speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). Love without truth is sentimentality; truth without love is brutality. The cross unites both.
The Cost of Real Mercy
Real mercy costs something. It demands humility, patience, and courage. It means defending the person you disagree with when the mob howls for blood. It means believing that redemption is possible because Christ redeems sinners, not saints. The cancel culture cannot comprehend this because it has no gospel—only law, accusation, and exile.
The Christian must therefore be the last refuge of grace in a graceless age. We are called not to cancel, but to call to repentance; not to destroy, but to disciple. Our Lord did not build His kingdom by silencing His enemies but by dying for them. In a culture addicted to outrage, such compassion is not weakness—it is revolution.
The Empire of Empty Virtue
The left’s compassion devours itself. Having redefined love as affirmation, it cannot correct wrongdoing; having redefined justice as revenge, it cannot grant mercy. Its moral fervor, detached from divine truth, burns everything it touches—including those who once lit the fires. Every revolution ends by consuming its own. The guillotine of purity spares no one.
In the end, this counterfeit compassion reveals its true nature: power disguised as pity. The Christian must not be deceived. The gospel of grace remains the only power on earth that can reconcile justice with mercy, truth with love, law with forgiveness. All other systems either crush man under guilt or corrupt him with self-righteousness.
The left may cancel the faithful, but it cannot cancel the cross. The One they crucified still lives—and His mercy endures when every ideology turns to dust.
The War on the West’s Own Heritage
Every empire eventually turns its sword inward. When a civilization grows ashamed of its own history, it begins the slow ritual of self-erasure. The modern West—once the cradle of ordered liberty, scientific discovery, and moral philosophy—now prosecutes its ancestors. The movement called “decolonization” has become less about truth and more about vengeance. It is a cultural revolution disguised as repentance.
The Invention of Western Guilt
Western civilization is the only culture in history that teaches its children to despise it. Students learn of slavery in America but not of the Arab slave trade that lasted a millennium longer. They memorize the sins of Columbus but never the charity of William Wilberforce. They are told that Christianity produced oppression but not that it abolished gladiatorial combat, reformed law, and founded hospitals. The narrative is simple: the West is uniquely wicked, and redemption lies only in its deconstruction.
This selective guilt serves a political purpose. A society ashamed of itself will submit to any ideology that promises absolution. The language of “equity” and “reparations” functions as secular penance. Confession is demanded; forgiveness is never given. The result is endless moral blackmail.
Iconoclasm as Virtue
Statues fall, names change, books vanish. The purge began with Confederate generals and spread to Founding Fathers, missionaries, and philosophers. Even Lincoln, who preserved the Union and ended slavery, is not safe from the zealots. The impulse is not reform but annihilation—the destruction of memory itself.
This iconoclasm mimics every totalitarian revolution. The French Jacobins razed churches and renamed streets; the Soviets rewrote history books; Mao’s Red Guards destroyed artifacts from China’s own dynasties. Each claimed to build a new moral order by erasing the old. The modern “woke” revolutionaries follow the same script. They cannot build because they have first sworn to burn.
The Assault on Christian Foundations
The deeper target of this cultural demolition is not political but spiritual. The moral architecture of the West was built on Christian assumptions: that truth is objective, man is fallen, and law stands above rulers. Remove those pillars, and the structure collapses. The call to “decolonize” is therefore not merely an attack on history—it is an assault on the biblical worldview that gave history meaning.
Consider the irony. The same activists who demand inclusion and tolerance were formed by a civilization that made those ideals possible. Human rights, equality, and compassion for the weak are not inventions of pagan antiquity or postmodern theory—they are the fruits of Christianity. Without that root, the rhetoric of justice becomes hollow. As historian Tom Holland has shown, even the secular moral imagination of the modern world is inescapably Christian in origin.
Self-Hatred as Moral Currency
Western self-hatred masquerades as humility. Professors boast of their contempt for Western civilization as though it were a badge of enlightenment. Yet their freedom to do so exists only because the civilization they despise protects their right to speak. This is decadence—when gratitude dies and luxury is mistaken for guilt.
In reality, the very progress they credit to secularism was incubated by the Christian conscience. Science emerged because the universe was believed to be rational; democracy because every soul was equal before God; charity because love was a command, not a feeling. Erase the faith, and you erase the foundations.
The Christian Call to Stewardship, Not Supremacy
To defend the West is not to idolize it. Christian civilization has its sins, but unlike its rivals, it learned to repent. The Reformation, the abolition of slavery, the rise of human rights—all were born from self-correction rooted in transcendent truth. The gospel alone allows for repentance without self-destruction. It teaches that a people may acknowledge sin yet continue to build, because grace restores what guilt only ruins.
True decolonization, in a biblical sense, means removing sin’s dominion from every culture, not erasing culture itself. It means reform, not amnesia. The Christian does not glorify the past, but neither does he burn it. He redeems it.
The Endgame of Self-Erasure
A civilization cannot endure on apologies. When the West ceases to believe in its own worth, it invites stronger and less self-critical forces to take its place. Nature abhors a vacuum; so does culture. If Western heritage is erased, it will not be replaced by harmony but by tyranny. The question is not whether there will be gods, but which ones.
The modern left believes that destroying the memory of Christendom will usher in a secular utopia. History suggests otherwise. When the light of transcendent truth is extinguished, the darkness that follows is not equality but oppression. The ruins of every fallen empire whisper the same warning.
Reclaiming Gratitude
Christians must not join the chorus of self-loathing. Gratitude is a moral duty. We honor our forebears not because they were perfect, but because they carried truth through their imperfections. We defend Western civilization not because it is divine, but because through it the divine message of the gospel reached us. To despise that heritage is to despise providence itself.
The Psalmist sang, “The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance” (Psalm 16:6). That inheritance is not merely cultural; it is spiritual. Our task is to preserve it, refine it, and hand it down—not to bury it under the rubble of false humility.
The Christian Response: Truth Without Apology
The world is crowded with counterfeit gospels—each promising freedom, justice, or unity, and each failing for the same reason: they begin with man rather than God. Progressive ideology, globalism, and the cult of the self are merely the latest attempts to build a kingdom without the King. The Christian must answer them not with rage, but with reality. Truth is not arrogance when spoken in love; it is mercy in its clearest form.
The Courage of Conviction
Modern Christians live behind enemy lines of culture, but our task is not retreat—it is witness. The apostles did not win the Roman world by shouting at it, but by outliving it. They embodied a truth that persecution could not silence. When Peter and John stood before the Sanhedrin, accused of defying the authorities, they said simply, “We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). That must be our posture: calm, unashamed, immovable.
Truth must be spoken without apology because it is not ours to edit. The Christian who softens Scripture to gain social acceptance becomes like salt that has lost its savor—fit only to be trampled underfoot. The world will always demand compromise as the price of peace, but peace purchased by lies is only temporary. Better to be hated for truth than loved for deceit.
Recovering a Theology of Courage
Cowardice masquerades today as civility. Many believers retreat into silence, claiming they wish to avoid controversy. But silence in the face of falsehood is not humility; it is betrayal. The early church understood that love sometimes must speak like thunder. Athanasius stood contra mundum—“against the world”—to defend the deity of Christ, and his courage preserved orthodoxy for centuries. Our age requires the same steel in the soul.
Voddie Baucham often warns that we are living through a “fight for the faith once delivered to the saints.” The weapons of that fight are not carnal but intellectual and moral: sound doctrine, integrity, and patience under pressure. The modern church must be both hospital and fortress—tender to the wounded, unyielding to the enemy.
Truth as the Highest Love
The gospel is not a political program but a declaration of divine fact: “Jesus Christ is Lord.” That statement undermines every false empire, because it places all authority under His feet. It affirms that truth is objective, goodness is real, and human beings are accountable. This is precisely why progressivism despises Christianity—it cannot tolerate a Lord it cannot edit.
But truth is not harshness. When Christ faced Pilate, He said, “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37). That was both invitation and indictment. The church’s call is to speak that same invitation to a deceived world: there is truth, and His name is Jesus. That is compassion without compromise.
The Church as Counterculture
Christians must build parallel institutions where truth can live uncorrupted—schools, media, charities, and communities governed by biblical conviction rather than cultural approval. The early believers did this under pagan Rome, and it transformed the empire from within. We must do likewise: cultivate beauty, tell the truth, and live lives of gratitude and courage. The kingdom advances not through slogans, but through sanctified lives.
Albert Mohler has written that “a secular age demands a confident church.” Our confidence does not rest in numbers or influence, but in the sovereignty of God. The moral chaos of our age is not proof of His absence, but of His judgment—a reminder that idols collapse under their own weight. In that collapse, truth becomes visible again.
Repentance, Not Revolution
The left believes salvation comes through revolution—the overthrow of systems and hierarchies. Scripture teaches that it comes through repentance—the overthrow of pride in the human heart. Christ conquers not by coercion but by conversion. Where ideology demands conformity, He offers communion. The gospel alone changes the individual in such a way that whole civilizations are renewed.
The historian Christopher Dawson observed that every great Christian revival produced social reform, but never the other way around. Politics follows repentance; repentance never follows politics. That order must be restored if the West is to find renewal. The true battle is not in legislatures but in consciences.
Living Without Apology
To stand unashamed of truth is the greatest rebellion against a lying age. We must not apologize for believing what Scripture teaches about life, marriage, gender, or salvation. We must not blush at the moral clarity of the Bible or the exclusivity of Christ. These are not cultural preferences but divine revelations. The world will call such conviction “hate”; the Word calls it holiness.
We must also refuse bitterness. The goal is not to win arguments but souls. The apostle Paul told Timothy to correct opponents “with gentleness” so that “God may perhaps grant them repentance” (2 Timothy 2:25). Firm truth and tender heart—both are required. The age of outrage must meet an age of grace.
The Only True Liberation
Progressivism promises freedom through self-definition, but ends in bondage to self-deception. Christianity promises freedom through surrender, and delivers it. When man bows to Christ, he ceases to need approval from the world. He becomes immune to its flattery and its threats. That is the liberty no empire can conquer.
In the end, the new colonizers—armed with slogans instead of swords—will fail for the same reason the old ones did: they built on pride. “The kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). That is not a metaphor; it is the final headline of history.
The Christian must therefore live now as a citizen of that kingdom, faithful in small things, fearless in great ones, and joyful in the knowledge that truth—real, objective, holy truth—needs no apology.
Conclusion – The Empire of Dust
Every age believes its illusions are permanent. The Roman Caesars imagined that their empire would outlast time. The Soviet commissars believed history itself was on their side. Today’s global progressives think the arc of the moral universe bends toward their vision of utopia. Yet every empire built on lies turns to dust, because truth does not bend—it breaks its pretenders.
The left condemns European colonization as a moral crime yet practices a subtler and more total colonization: of language, education, morality, and even biology. It conquers not with soldiers but with slogans. It imposes its worldview through institutions rather than armies, but the goal is the same—to make humanity in its own image. Its gospel is self-worship, its sacraments are grievance and guilt, and its creed is ever-changing to suit the appetites of the powerful.
Meanwhile, it exempts its favored causes from scrutiny. It ignores Islamic imperialism, excuses cultural repression in authoritarian regimes, and flatters every ideology hostile to Christianity. The result is not compassion but confusion—a world lectured into exhaustion by those who claim enlightenment yet walk in darkness.
The Final Contrast
Christianity and progressivism are not rival political programs but rival religions. One says, “You are not your own; you were bought with a price.” The other says, “You are your own; name your price.” One begins with repentance; the other with resentment. One offers salvation by grace; the other by activism. One builds community through forgiveness; the other through fear.
The Christian view of humanity begins with realism—man is fallen—and ends with hope—Christ redeems. The progressive view begins with pride and ends with despair. That is why every leftist utopia eventually requires force; without grace, there is no mercy, and without mercy, only compulsion remains.
The Task Before Us
Christians in the West must learn again what earlier generations knew instinctively: that culture is a reflection of worship. The idols of today are no less jealous than those of Canaan, and they demand the same tribute—our children, our integrity, and our silence. Refusing that tribute will bring scorn, but it will also bring clarity.
Our calling is not to reclaim a golden age but to bear witness in a dark one. The early church did not defeat Rome by seizing Caesar’s throne but by outlasting him. So it must be again. Every lie, however loud, has an expiration date; every truth, however buried, will rise again.
The Hope That Endures
The gospel of Christ is not one ideology among many; it is the death of ideology. It does not need the world’s permission or approval. It will outlive its critics as surely as light outlives the night. The kingdoms of men—whether built by sword, slogan, or bureaucracy—will crumble. The kingdom of Christ alone is eternal.
In that assurance, the Christian can stand calm amid chaos. We need not envy the power of the moment, for it fades; we serve the King of ages. The left’s new colonialism will pass, as every empire of man does, but truth—real truth, incarnate in the risen Christ—cannot be colonized. It conquers by love, rules by grace, and reigns forever.
S.D.G.,
Robert Sparkman
MMXXV
rob@christiannewsjunkie.com
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