In order to understand Western civilization, grasp one fact: the ancient peoples of the Levant killed their own children. They sacrificed their children to their gods. Every first born son was burned alive at age six or so.
Remember that the next time you hear that the God of the Old Testament seems to be a bit of a warmonger. Yahweh's moral revulsion towards the Canaanites is questionable only on the fashionable modern creed of cultural relativism, that all mortal cultures are created equal. Consider Nazi Germany, or Imperial Japan—worth preserving? Were we not justified in employing whatever means necessary to wipe them from the face of the Earth? How much more so a society that held the murder of innocents as its core cultural value?
Yahweh, God of the Bible was not the only one who was horrified. The pagan Romans were too, when they encountered the practice in the Carthaginians. Everywhere else, Romans were notable for their clemency in victory. But Carthage? They burned it to the ground and salted the fields.
Echoes ring through the Old Testament. Moses was a firstborn son, born under sentence of death. Abraham and Isaac? Understanding that sacrificing one's first son was the required custom in the land, its significance is the reverse of what you might otherwise imagine: Abraham's great proof of loyalty to Yahweh was not in preparing to sacrifice Isaac, but in staying his hand at the angel's command. This was the one thing that distinguished him from everybody else in his day.
The moral depravity of the surrounding culture made morality, ethics, that much more important to the Jews; it became, along with their monotheism, their defining religious characteristic. “Ethical monotheism.”
This factor also explains the uncanny result of the Punic Wars. As a rule, in any war between a land power and a sea power, the sea power wins. Control of the sea allows one to attack any enemy beyond it unexpectedly, at multiple points—his border is much longer than yours. But Carthage was a grerat sea power, at the beginning of the Punic Wars across the Mediterranean from Rome, and Rome knew nothing of ships. It should have been no contest.
The only explanation for Carthage's loss, it seems to me, is a lack of resolve—that, and perhaps deivine intervention i nthe cause of right. And that is, interestingly, just what the historical record seems to show. Several times, Carthage even sought to concede, but kept fighting only because the Roman terms were too onerous. In contrast, when Hannibal was stomping around Italy with his elephant army, the war looked lost for the Romans. But they did not sue for peace.
This, I think, shows the force of moral right. The Romans, in the end, were fighting for their children. The Carthaginians, in the end, might have half-hoped their gods could be proven ineffective.
The power of right is a real thing, so real that the joust or the duel were once considered a just resolution to most disputes. God and a clear conscience give greater resolve and greater strength.
Now here's the dark side of this thought. Who now is killing their children? Who is even holding it up as a core cultural value, part of the universal doctrine of human rights, “reproductive rights” or the “right to choose”?
A just God will need, once more, to wipe out such a civilization.
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