I have been watching The Last Kingdom on Netflix. There so many lessons to be learned in this ongoing series. What’s notable is how in this series the Christian king, at that time in the 9th century, entwined with the Church, believed God could only work through Christians. It was a completely unbiblical view, but that was the view at the time. What we saw over and over was how the king and the church reluctantly went along with the fact that its best warriors didn’t tend to be religious types. Without pagan warriors, Wessex would have been utterly destroyed by the invading Danes. With respect to the attitude of the king, what was right was that the king did not want to rape, pillage, and destroy everything in his path like the Danes. He wanted a unified, civilized England of peace, and the only way to have peace is through strength. That peace was based on the Christian ethic as its guiding principle. So while the kingdom needed its pagan warriors, those warriors had clearly accepted the Christian ethic. The parallel here is that America was designed to live by a Judeo-Christian ethic though it is a pluralistic society with no state defined religion. Another parallel is that America recognizes (well, except for progressives) that it is only peace through strength that protects this nation and a host of other nations around the world.
So a key lesson taught here, whether intentional or not, which I believe is consistent with history, is that there is indeed such thing as evil. Even though progressive minds may not believe it, it’s hard to square with what we see in the world empirically. Also, no matter how much a king, or priest, or other people of faith may pray, they must still protect themselves when attacked and there are other times when they must attack to prevent future conflicts. We see this all played out in this series. We see pagan men who are not evil but do recognize the world is fallen, brutal, and bloody, but they ally themselves with kings who want a peaceful society so they can raise their families themselves in peace, knowing that at some point they may have to go off to war. And that is another parallel with America. We have people in our military of all religious persuasions, or none, who are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their fellow Americans, yet sadly they are so unappreciated and even reviled in the progressive liberal ranks. We have veterans living on the streets while we import literally millions of illegal aliens. In our advanced society, we still have much to learn.
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