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Most Australians still believe in human dignity and inalienable rights. What they’ve since abandoned is the only foundation that make those beliefs coherent.

Jesus famously contrasted two builders: one who built his house on rock and the other who built on sand. The first was wise; the second watched his come crashing down in a storm.

What if this parable proves instructive not just for individuals but whole civilisations?

I recently suggested that Australia has found itself a new god and accompanying worldview, and is now building its legal system upon that foundation.

At one level, this is an unremarkable observation. The world’s cultures have been built on a veritable pantheon of different gods and worldviews.

But it’s important to note that not all cultures have a just legal system — and the reason for this is simple: not all worldviews are able to bear the weight of a coherent and just legal system.

Australia has changed its god. But is our new god up to the task?

Meet Australia’s New God

It helps if we understand a little more about Australia’s new god.

Australia is not an atheist country. Less than 40% of Australians claimed to have “no religion” in the most recent census. Many Australians still retain a vague belief in God and vaguely Christian ideas about him.

But throughout the West — and even among people who call themselves Christians — ‘God’ has become a subjective idea that can be moulded to our preferences.

The post-Christian creed makes faith in God optional. It allows ‘God’ to be anything we like — whether a force, a feeling, non-existent, or indistinguishable from the universe itself.

The problem with a God so malleable is that he isn’t real in any objective sense. From a practical standpoint, he’s just a figment of our imagination.

The result is that we no longer have a transcendent foundation to rest our worldview or our legal system upon.

Without the Christian God — the God who is there — the only foundation Australians have to grasp at is a purely material one.

The materialist foundation says that you and I are simply a collection of DNA molecules. We’re the product of blind evolutionary processes, glued to a spinning rock somewhere on the outskirts of a vast black universe.

Sure, we can try to dress up this bleak worldview up by believing in some kind of god if we want to. But remember that belief in God is optional under the post-Christian creed.

The Conundrum Facing Modern Australians

The truth is that DNA, and time and chance, and a mostly empty universe, is hardly a foundation on which to build a coherent and just legal system.

Here is the conundrum facing modern Australians.

Most still believe that every human being has inherent worth and dignity, but they have no foundation for this belief.

Most believe that freedom of thought, speech, and religion are inalienable, but they have no foundation for believing it.

Most Australians believe that the rule of law applies equally to rulers and the ruled, but they have no foundation for believing it.

Most Australians believe that good and evil are real categories, not just cultural preferences, but they have no foundation for believing it.

The beliefs I’ve just listed — and we could add many more — where did they come from?

They came from Christianity. They were part of the Christian air that Australians used to breathe. They rested on a transcendent foundation in the God who is actually there, not a god we made up in our imaginations.

Indian philosopher Vishal Mangalwadi explains the problem well: “‘Unalienable human rights’ make no sense without the biblical principle of the unique worth granted to all individuals by their Creator.”

Without a transcendent foundation, all we’re left with is consensus. And consensus is very different from truth.

Another philosopher, Francis Schaeffer, put it like this:

If there is no absolute moral standard, then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong… If there is no absolute beyond man’s ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions.

Or in the words of Psalm 11:3, “When the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”

Returning to the Rock

We still use the language of human rights. But under the post-Christian creed, they’re not really rights, and they’re certainly not inalienable. They’re just agreed upon. For now. By the people currently in power. Which means they can be revoked when it’s convenient.

It’s no wonder that we’re seeing exactly this play out in modern Australia. Last month, we released the Australian Christian Freedom Index, the first comprehensive audit of Christian freedom in Australia’s history. Among the cases we profiled in that report were:

• A doctor investigated for social media posts made outside clinical settings
• A rugby player sacked for posting a Bible verse about sin and hell
• A uni student suspended for offering to pray for a distressed peer
• A couple rejected as foster carers for holding longstanding Christian views on sexuality
• A charity denied government funds unless its chairperson publicly changed her beliefs
• A Christian uni group threatened with deregistration for requiring its members to be Christian
• Seven NRL players forced to miss a match for declining to wear a pride jersey
• A Catholic hospital compulsorily seized by the ACT government for failing to provide abortions

When the law no longer has a transcendent foundation, rights can be extended to some and withheld from others. A person’s conscience can be trumped by the state. The legal system, which was designed to enact justice, can easily be manipulated by people with power. The unborn and the elderly can be deemed non-persons and disposed of.

Very simply, without the God who is there, there is no foundation for human dignity and a just legal system.

Jesus’ warnings were apt. We need to abandon the sinking sand and return to the rock — to Jesus himself.

Download your free copy of the Australian Christian Freedom Index here.

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