Organisms in the plant and animal world will generally seek to kill off anything that threatens their ability to thrive. This includes eating other organisms in order to live. In this dangerous world, everything comes under the all-consuming instinct to dominate and thrive.
When human societies discard Christianity, they invariably default to the behaviour of the plant and animal world.

Vishal Mangalwadi was imprisoned a number of times in India because he promoted the education and social wellbeing of the poor. Some high caste Indians in authority felt that he was threatening their exclusive claim on status and power, so they locked him up. One police chief even promised to kill him if he continued to help a poor community repair roofs that had been shattered by a hailstorm.

When Christian principles are absent, you get the killing fields. When Christian principles are absent because the church has been corrupted or muzzled, Auschwitz happens. When Christian principles are absent, it becomes expedient to kill thirty million people through starvation in order to institute a collective farming ideology in China. Without the morality, hope and principles of Christianity, humanity falls back into the harsh pragmatism of the animal and plant kingdom.

This Machiavellian pragmatism allows you to do anything that is necessary to stay in power. It allowed a French queen and a Pope [for goodness’ sake!] to conspire together to murder tens of thousands of Huguenots on St Bartholomew’s Day in 1572. It allowed laws to be passed that resulted in the murder of six million Jews. It allowed thirty thousand people perceived as a political threat to “go missing” in Argentina between 1976 and 1983.

If society is not guarded by a respect for God, then whoever has power wins. If society is not guarded by Godly principles, Hitler’s National Socialism is a logical outcome. If society is not guarded by a respect for God, it makes perfect sense for your values to be those of the animal kingdom. There is no right to life in this pragmatic world, only the “law of the jungle.” If your life gets in the way of my ambitions, I will kill you or enslave you. This is what happens in human societies without an authentic Christian foundation. The truth is, when people stop ruling “under God,” they will seek to be like God.

Christianity understands that God is the ultimate authority. The American Pledge of Allegiance describes America as “one nation under God,” not “one nation under a president or king.” President Nixon discovered that he was not above the law regarding the Watergate affair. The law of the people, under God, stood over him.

The significance of this is: If you reject God, you condemn yourself to be ruled by those who are driven by selfish ambitions and a lust for power. This inevitably causes a lot of people to be oppressed. It is significant that people generally move (as refugees or migrants) away from a nation without the values of a Christian heritage to one that has these values. They seek that nation’s safety, civility, justice and prosperity. My own country of Australia has had to institute tough, and I might say contentious, immigration policies in order to stem the flow of immigrants from Sri Lanka, the Middle East and Asia.

However, many Western nations with a Christian heritage are now losing that heritage. Its people are turning away from Christianity to atheism, or to one of the non-demanding, pluralistic, self-designed religions.

I’m not sure that this bodes well for a nation’s ability to continue to be a refuge for those seeking its justice, order and hope.

Please rediscover your intended purpose, identity and worth in God. The future history of your family and nation will be grateful.