How Have Christians Historically Changed Society for the Better?

Deux ex machina: god from the machine.

A deux ex machina is a plot device in a story where a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence. From Plato to Aristotle to Nietzche, critics have criticized it as inartistic, too convenient, and overly simplistic.

Basically, it’s lazy storytelling.

This might be a hot take, but sometimes it seems that within Christian culture, we have a tendency to do this with history. Instead of critically thinking through how something came to be, we have a tendency to treat the work of the God as a deux ex machina. Now, that’s not to say that the supernatural and miraculous does not occur; history is filled with instances that are simply unexplainable. It is to say however that the present was not delivered to the church like a a Seinfeld episode: Jesus was resurrected, gave the Great Commission, yadda…yadda…yadda, 2021.

So check out this example from the first 300 years of Christianity. You’ll see that growth was not at all a result into which the Christian faith inevitably fell. Rather, in the power of the Holy Spirit, Christian men and women intentionally labored for many years as good citizens of their country and Kingdom.

By most historical accounts, in the first three centuries of its existence, Christianity grew steadily and rapidly at a rate of 40% per decade. Incredibly, by the year 350, those who claimed the name of Christ accounted for 56.5% of the Roman Empire’s population. So how did a scrappy band of twelve believers huddled together in an upper room grow to the largest people group in the Roman Empire in just 300 years?

A common answer is to use a sort of deus ex machina as an explanation: high government officials, even emperors, became Christians and made the faith in vogue. However, while having imperial power in their corner certainly didn’t hurt the expansion of faith, this explanation that it was simply the right man in power is not credible. The numbers were there long before Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity the official religion of the empire in 380. They were there even before Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313, ending the persecutions and making Christianity legal.

So how did it happen?

Christianity’s Growth through Community and Kindness

This is pretty incredible actually. In his book Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark stresses Christian community and kindness as key issues in early Christian growth and conversion. Based on historical evidence, he imagines a hypothetical city with 10,000 inhabitants in 160 AD, just before the Antonine Plague. Christians probably accounted for .4% of the Empire’s population at this time, so suppose that 40 people in the city are Christians while 9,960 are pagan  —  a ratio of 1:249.

Well, when the Antonine Plague hit, simply because of their commitment to conscientious nursing (i.e. basic care like giving water, feeding, and tending to the sick), Christian mortality rates would be at 10% while pagans would be significantly higher at 30% without it. Accounting for these mortality rates would leave 36 Christians and 6,972 pagan survivors after the Antonine Plague. The ratio of Christians to pagans in the city is now 1:197, a significant population shift.

Factoring in that growth rate of 40% however results in an addition of 16 converts to Christianity bringing the ratio to 1:134. If the cities population remained stagnant until Cyprian’s Plague 90 years later and the same mortality rates of 10% and 30% held for Christians and pagans respectively, the population would then be 997 Christians to 4,062 pagans or a ratio of 1:4 in just 100 years time. Crazy.

So how did it happen? There was no deux ex machina involved. No undefined and inevitable force. No half-hearted and lazy reference to Jesus saying that the gates of hell won’t overcome His church. Essentially, it was many years of Christians being good citizens and showing incredible love and generosity toward their neighbors. This led to survival rates being higher for Christians as well as conversions because of community and kindness that was shown to neighbors in Jesus’ name.

And check this out. Over time, this countercultural care for the sick and the poor had the effect of creating quite the reputation within the empire for the early church. In fact, two centuries later, when the Roman emperor Julian attempted to revive the worship of Roman gods in the empire and saw Christianity as threat, he wrote to the Roman high priest of Galatia: “[Christianity] has been specially advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers, and through their care for the burial of the dead. It is a scandal…that the godless Galileans [i.e., Christians] care not only for their own poor but for ours as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them.

So Now What?

We obviously are going through a plague of our own and the parallels for Christ-centered service write themselves in our minds. So what better time to emulate the community and kindness that made Christianity first grow than a similar time such as this? Consider these two ideas:

1. Reject the deux ex machina of politics

Sometimes its like we have this deux ex machina mindset when it comes to faith and politics. We think that if we just get the right guy in office, then everything will just work out alright.

“Ok, we get this presidential candidate elected, then we’ll be a Christian nation again.”

“If we get this party in control, then everyone who we are ideologically against will be silenced and we’ll have peace and happiness.”

Now I’m not saying that politics and voting isn’t important at all; it very much is. To say that we should just do evangelism and not politics is fundamentally a reductionistic view of the Gospel. However, what I am saying is that its never been true that once you get the right guy in office, that’s when everything just works out well for Christians. We’ve said a few paragraphs ago about the early church: Constantine did not make the Roman Empire Christian when he legalized Christianity in 313 nor did Emperor Theodosius when he made Christianity the official religion of the Empire in 380. As we saw, the empire was “Christian” well before that.

In Titus 3:1-2, immediately after he reminds the church to be submissive to the rulers and authorities of the civil government, the apostle Paul tells them to be obedient, ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people.

What Paul is saying is basically just be a good citizen. Christians taking these six things in Titus 3 seriously and actually doing them is the way that historically things have moved toward Christianity in a society.

Consider Tony Evans thoughts on the matter: “If you want a better world, composed of better nations, inhabited by better states, filled with better counties, made up of better cities, comprised of better neighborhoods, illuminated by better churches, populated by better families, then you’ll have to start by becoming a better person.”

2. Embrace the deux ex machina of Jesus’ return

Our hope is not ultimately in the empires and government’s of this world; it is in the Gospel of Jesus.

I say this as someone who grew up right next to an Air Force base. Nobody thinks America stinks on Air Force bases. My middle school was right next to the front gate of that base and everyday at 4pm when “Taps” played on the loudspeakers, we stopped everything at baseball practice and put our hands over our heart in the outfield to honor those who had died so that we could could actually pick up that ball and pick up that bat. Straight up, I am not ashamed to admit that when Lee Greenwood sings “I’m Proud to Be An American” on the 4th of July when the bright colors fireworks are exploding overhead, my eyes get misty.

So I write this with a lot of loyalty and emotion for my country; but God has no special countries.

God raises up nations and He sets them down. No country, no nation, no empire, no matter how great and mighty it might be is exempt from that.

A simple cursory overview of history would tell us that. For 300 years the sun never set on the British Empire. The Union Jack flew all around the globe until it came down. For the better part of 700 years, Rome ruled the known world. No one living in any of those great empires at the time could have imagined a world in which their government did not rule and yet the Indian flag now flies over New Delhi and just a few years ago, I paid 10 Euros to walk through the ruins of what was once Rome’s greatest city.

Empires have come and empires have gone. Countries have come and countries have gone. The United States of America is no different. One day, there will be no Unites States, but there is a government that is coming that will be forever.

And its leader will not be flying in on the wings of Air Force One; He will be riding a white horse.

His party won’t be that of the elephant and it won’t be the donkey; His will be the blood-bought family of the Lamb.

So take courage friends. To turn the tables a bit, in some great examples in literature, deux ex machina as a plot device is actually not an excuse for lazy storytelling but rather the most fitting and glorious end imaginable (As You Like It, Lord of the Rings, and Oliver Twist to name a few). The greatest and most beautifully glorious deux ex machina that will happen is the inevitable return of Jesus Christ to rule and reign forever.

So until God comes, not from the machine but from the sky, we labor to be good citizens of our country and our kingdom as we wait.