Europe: Graffiti on the Walls of Eden

Walking past the elite Dutch military unit we heard the announcement that all public transport to Amsterdam from Belgium was shut down due to a storm. The storm referred to was full of rain, but more than likely the true storm was the threat of class warfare in the streets of major cities in France.

Despite the new reign of terror in neighborhoods from Marseille to outer Paris, the beauty of France outside those pockets were left untouched and uninterested.

You may have seen the images of cars burning, reports of a mayor’s family being injured, a fireman dying in another arson, and gangs of young Muslim children looting the luxury brands of Paris. But for those living with joie de vivre in St Tropez or St-Remy de-Provence, there was no evidence that anything was wrong in the world, except lineups for flavoured ice cream or a two-hour lunch that took closer to three to complete.

The new terrors and the old tastes illustrate a truth that is increasingly clear: there is both a beauty and a darkness to the Europe I have seen. Seeing Europe is like being shocked by graffiti on the walls of Eden.

The Bordered Beauty of Europe

Driving across France (we didn’t get hi speed train tickets in time) revealed the French countryside in all its productive beauty. France looks like a country where anything could grow if you drop it on the ground. Grapes, barley, olives, alfalfa, Charolais beef, wheat, lavender, and flowers of every kind. The productivity from the soil to the table is cherished everywhere in the country. As a result, there is a clear sense of order. Life is to be carried out decently and in order. Every field has a fence. Every orchard is set in rows. For all its variety there are borders. Every driveway, flowerbed and cereal crop has a border.

People don’t normally make the connection between beauty and borders. But God has established order and beauty together. The binaries of male and female possess beauty because they are distinguished. The kinds of animals and plants are beautiful because they are just that, “kinds”.

The beauty of Europe is a bordered beauty and it remains beautiful when distinctions are clear. As mentioned before, there are differences between men and women maintained. There are differences between work and rest. Lunch lasts from noon to 2pm after which no French restaurant is open until 7pm. In the Netherlands, no shop is open before 8:30am and everything is closed by 5pm. The Dutch get a lot down in those hours, but after hours, the country goes relatively silent.

Having learned for centuries how to create order from chaos, both the French and the Dutch make their appearances distinct. The French are much more concerned with fashion. But both countries care enough about themselves that they are a slimmer type of people than North Americans. Certainly, they have not given in to the idea currently in North America that obese people ought to be celebrated for their health and appearances. There is a border between what is healthy looking and what is unhealthy. This was refreshing to see and reflects God’s ordered, bordered world.

France is complex, especially Paris, when it comes to borders. The borders between arrondissements or neighborhoods are clear. But when it comes to driving, the lanes in traffic circles with 6 exits are merely suggestive. To drive in Paris is to accept one of the great automotive endurance challenges: high speed, narrow streets, presumptive pedestrians and aggressive drivers. Nevertheless, the apartment blocks designed by Haussmann for Napoleon III create an ordered, bordered context for all of the vivid sights and smells of Paris.

The Un-bordered Darkness of Europe.

The sinister element that shadows every beautiful arch, flower petal, or chardonnay resides in the godlessness of Europe. France has an embedded Roman Catholicism that is “universal” but nominally “Roman”. So the festivals and idols of Mary (call it “veneration” if you wish, she is clearly worshipped), and intentional distance from being too serious about religion, all contribute to a godlessness even among those with a culturally religious memory.

The other sinister element which is even darker is the calculated secularism of the consortium of upper classes. I spoke with a Christian teacher at a church in Aix-en-Provence who warned of the “elites” who were applying further controls upon life in order to exploit the populace. He called the Brussels base for the European Union as a “temple of idolatry”. He was not a radical man, but one who was informed about the threat that exists when, as Peter Jones describes it, “The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back”. Gnostic features (I know it’s not the same as first century Gnosticism), seem to rule the day. Tight inner circles are created with “inner rings” (CS Lewis’ term), making outsiders desperate to get in, while insiders wield gatekeeping power to filter people onto the ladder or to pull the ladder up after them as they play in the top of the treehouse.

Another layer of darkness is the blindness of Islam. Muslims have migrated to Europe in record numbers. Many Muslims have come to saving faith in Jesus Christ, God, the Son. Yet there are still the majority who remain in the futilities of Islam’s ladder-climbing approach to religion. A religion of futility leads to many expressions of desperation, as witnessed in France with the émeutes or riots. All restraint is thrown off regardless of the stated reasons for doing so. This is part of the argument of non-christian author Douglas Murray, in his 2017 book, The Strange Death of Europe.

The last darkness is the lack of evangelical churches, preachers and schools. Like the rest of the West, France has a hard time finding good preachers who can plant churches. Travelling through France you can see many impressive church buildings. But is there spiritual life within? Compared to the cathedrals of Catholicism, evangelical Protestants have the barest, merely functional buildings. But within their walls resides a spiritual life that differs immensely from the distant ritualism of Rome. Sadly, there are not enough of these new “churches in the desert”. John Calvin Seminary in Aix-en-Provence stands as a hub for reformed theological training but it is small compared to the need for preachers. France awaits more responses from those who will say, “Here am I. Send me”.

Of course the Netherlands appeared different. Multiplied Reformed denominations can give the impression that Christians are in the majority in the land of Kuyper and the Canons of Dordt. But they are not. Christians there are like all Western nations, a marginal group with little political or cultural power.

It is a great irony that the Netherlands has had such an influential Christian thinker as Kuyper, yet the Netherlands would be so thoroughly secularized. Even the plight of the Dutch farmers whose land is threatened to be appropriated, has been met with a lot of equivocation, the “on the one hand, on the other hand” kind of argument. The Netherlands especially exemplifies the technocratic future of bicycles, 15 minute cities, and more public transit. Few Dutch evangelicals appear to speak against the possibility of reduced private ownership.

On the subject of Kuyper, whose memory touches many of the denominations in the Netherlands, he was not universally praised among the Christians I spoke to. Although he was a part of the Afscheiding of 1834, separating from the state church, Kuyper’s theology lead to a collapse in evangelism and the necessity of seeing the need for children in Christian homes to be converted. The second generation liberalism that resulted from Kuyper’s tribe devastated the Afscheiding denominations and is painfully felt today.

Prospects For a New Eden

Though European beauty remains in nature, she is losing her soul. The vineyards, Haussmann apartments, and cuisine will not be able to deliver lost souls. Totalizing governments cannot deliver souls either. All that will be left is cynicism at the gates of Eden.

The message spoken into this desecration reveals a still small voice of hope. It is the voice of God, the true Word, God enfleshed as messiah, God and Man among men. Jesus Christ is heralded in small churches, prayed to with impassioned voices, praised with joie de vivre, and feared with liberated courage. Hope in Christ pierces the darkness in the small, marginalized gospel communities. And it is in those communities that the Spirit of holiness renews his beatific work.

Only a New Eden, with Christ as Lord will wash away the graffiti from the once beautiful walls of the old Garden.