The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great

by Ben Shapiro

We believe freedom is built upon the twin notions that God created every human in His image, and that human beings are capable of investigating and exploring God’s world. Those notions were born in Jerusalem and Athens, respectively.

Perhaps the problem is that what we’re pursuing isn’t happiness anymore.

We’re instead pursuing other priorities: physical pleasure, emotional catharsis, monetary stability. All these things are important, of course, but they don’t bring lasting happiness.

“There is nothing better for a person than to rejoice in his work, because that is his lot.”8 He’s not talking about finding your “why” at a software start-up. He means the work of serving God and following Him.

The birth of Christianity represented the first serious attempt to merge Jewish thought with Greek thought. The Christian admixture was far more Jewish than Greek in its vision of God and of man’s quest in the world, but it was also far more Greek than Jewish in its universality.