Mr. Sargon goes to Church

 Over the years I've run across videos from a British YouTuber called Carl Benjamin - a.k.a. Sargon of Akkad.  In the early days he would have described himself as a liberal and an atheist (like me, he came of age during the "New Atheism" days), but nevertheless was voicing concern about what he saw as problems in Western society - especially British society.  

Often provocative, in his earlier days I didn't care too much for what he had to say about Christianity and the Church, yet I sometimes found myself resonating with his critiques of certain aspects of secularism, or radical feminism, or Islamic immigration, or consumeristic globalism.

Despite often disagreeing with Benjamin, or sometimes thinking "I can't believe he just said that," I have also found that I cannot help but really like the man.   

So, it has been interesting to see Benjamin move in a more conservative direction culturally and politically, but also to see his attitudes toward God and the church softening.  Today you can find him saying that, while he doesn't believe Christianity is literally true, he does think it is good - maybe even indispensable - for the flourishing of Western Man and Western societies.   

This leads to a new kind of argument in favor of God and Christ that I have been trying to articulate over the years: we have all sorts of evidence now that - in terms of mental health, physical health, even the health of whole societies - being Christian is actually (on the whole) good for you.  

That in and of itself does not prove God's existence, but it is precisely what you'd expect to find if God - and specifically the God of the Bible - really is 'The Living God.'  To be in alignment with his revealed truth would mean being in alignment with the deepest core of reality, and this would (quite naturally) be better for you in all sorts of ways than living discordant with Reality.

Anyways, I ran across this video recently in which Carl Benjamin talks about his and his wife's decision to start attending church and even to have their children baptized.  I was surprised how emotional this made me to hear, but I'm certainly praying for Carl Benjamin and other influencers (Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, and so on) who seem to be wrestling with Christ, and whose conversions would no doubt be tremendously influential for the Gospel.