{"id":12771,"date":"2025-12-18T12:37:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T12:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=12771"},"modified":"2025-12-18T12:37:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T12:37:11","slug":"when-christians-dont-get-with-the-times-they-change-empires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=12771","title":{"rendered":"When Christians don\u2019t ‘get with the times,’ they change empires"},"content":{"rendered":"


By John Stonestreet<\/span><\/span>, Timothy Padget<\/span><\/span>, Tuesday, December 16, 2025<\/span>\u00a0<\/span> | iStock\/Getty Images\/freedom007<\/span><\/p>\n

Critics often argue that much of what Christians think of as biblical truth and morality are inventions of late 20th century American conservatism. So, Christian sexual ethics are products of 1990s \u201cpurity culture.\u201d Claims about the exclusivity of Christ are remnants of Western ideological imperialism. And the pro-life movement was invented by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson to get Ronald Reagan in office.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However,\u00a0the first Christians were known and often attacked for many of\u00a0the same practices\u00a0that Christians are today, just without the lions.\u00a0In fact,\u00a0just as\u00a0the\u00a0creeds of the Early Church\u00a0clarified\u00a0what Christians must believe,\u00a0there are\u00a0other writings from that time that\u00a0clarify how Christians should live.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

For example,\u00a0Justin Martyr\u2019s\u00a0beautiful description of the Christian\u00a0worship service\u00a0would\u00a0fit what most of us\u00a0still experience\u00a0each Sunday:\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Epistle to Diognetus, written by a Christian to a non-believing friend in the second century, described the Christian\u2019s way of life:\u00a0<\/p>\n

[Christians] dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, <\/em>they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners.\u00a0<\/em>Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their <\/em>birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; <\/em>but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a <\/em>common bed.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Probably the\u00a0clearest example is\u00a0The Didache, a second-century summary of Christian moral teaching. It commanded the church, among other things, to be pro-life: \u201cYou shall not murder a child\u00a0by abortion nor kill that which is born.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A key reason for the explosive growth of the Early Church is that Christians lived by this ethical command. In the ancient Greco-Roman world, abortion and the killing of infants through a practice called \u201cexposure\u201d were considered legally and socially acceptable. Most of the babies left to die were little girls.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In his book,\u00a0The Rise of Christianity<\/em>,\u00a0Rodney\u00a0Stark\u00a0described\u00a0how Christians\u00a0would\u00a0search out and save little girls who were left to die by their pagan families.\u00a0After a few decades of this life and death dynamic, there was a shortage of women for pagan young men to marry.\u00a0So many ended up going to church to find\u00a0wives.\u00a0Also,\u00a0because\u00a0Christian women\u00a0did not have abortions at the same rates\u00a0as pagan women, a particularly brutal practice at the time,\u00a0they also\u00a0had higher fertility rates.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the end, the explosive growth of Christianity across the empire was all about math. God used the obedience of early Christians to change the world. Of course, if we were to take a time machine back to speak to some of these baby rescuers and ask if they realized how significant their obedience was going to be in the history of mankind, they\u2019d be puzzled. \u201cI don\u2019t know anything about that,\u201d they\u2019d say. \u201cI\u2019m just hoping to help her.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is why the\u00a0Christian life could never\u00a0be\u00a0reduced\u00a0to\u00a0random acts\u00a0of kindness.\u00a0God orchestrates history, and among the things He uses\u00a0is the obedience of His people.\u00a0Critics\u00a0will\u00a0tell us\u00a0to \u201cget with the times,\u201d\u00a0but it was precisely by being counter-cultural\u00a0that Christianity rocked the Roman Empire. Ordinary people living out extraordinary faith\u00a0are what transformed\u00a0the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Originally published at BreakPoint.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

John Stonestreet serves as president of the Colson Center, equipping Christians to live with clarity, confidence, and courage in today’s cultural moment. A sought-after speaker and author on faith, culture, theology, worldview, education, and apologetics, he has co-authored five books, including A Practical Guide to Culture, A Student\u2019s Guide to Culture, and Restoring All Things. John hosts Breakpoint, the nationally syndicated commentary founded by Chuck Colson, and The Point, a daily one-minute feature on worldview and cultural issues. Previously, he held leadership roles at Summit Ministries and taught biblical studies at Bryan College (TN). He lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with his wife, Sarah, and their four children.<\/p>\n

Timothy D. Padgett\u00a0(PhD) is the Managing Editor of BreakPoint.org with the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. His focus is on cultural engagement, living out the Christian worldview, and the way Christians argue for diverse viewpoints while sharing a common biblical foundation?particularly regarding the relationship between church and state, Christ and culture, and war and peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By John Stonestreet, Timothy Padget, Tuesday, December 16, 2025\u00a0 | iStock\/Getty Images\/freedom007 Critics often argue that much of what Christians think of as biblical truth and morality are inventions of late 20th century American conservatism. So, Christian sexual ethics are products of 1990s \u201cpurity culture.\u201d Claims about the exclusivity of Christ are remnants of Western<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[705,119,384,3537,1690],"class_list":{"0":"post-12771","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-christian-living","8":"tag-change","9":"tag-christians","10":"tag-dont","11":"tag-empires","12":"tag-times"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}