DOMINION

There is no impartiality. Modern man pretends to look upon Christ with a critical, unbiased eye and to find Him wanting. He plays the skeptic, thinking he has outgrown the religion and myths of children. He assumes that because he is outside of Christianity, he can be the impartial judge- but even he is not exactly outside. He who scorns the faithful, still lives in a world influenced by Christ, finding himself helplessly part of Christ's legacy. His history, language, and assumptions are, by all accounts but name, Christian. Even his intuition is only a distorted echo of Christian thought. And so he blasphemes the King while dwelling in His kingdom. He curses God, forgetting that the very ground on which he stands was forged by saints. He attempts to strike down Christ using foundations established by His followers, and with all the fury of a tantruming child, batters soft flesh against immovable stone.

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Christ will have dominion, yes. But hasn't he already? Our cultural imagination, our general societal ethic, our perspective of the natural world have all grown out of the mountain made without hands. Even the atheist's primary claim of religious identity must be one of negation rather than assertion, leaving Christianity as its primary reference point. Historian Tom Holland to this end writes:

So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of civilization that it has become hidden from view. It is the incomplete revolutions which are remembered; the fate of those which triumph is to be taken for granted.

While the beauty that has bloomed from Christianity has indeed been taken for granted, there is no denying that the world we have inherited is Christ's. He stands at the center of all things, His cross the axis on which history itself turns, His empty tomb the gates of Heaven opened to earth. All of civilization should therefore be considered not as secular, post modern or evolved- but as post Christian. There is no neutral ground. In faith or unbelief, each person must determine what to think of Christ; whether one receives Him or rejects Him, glorifies Him or curses Him, there is no escaping Him.