Air We Breathe, The: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality

This book really helped me gain an understanding of my culture and political environment and it will be something we can share with non-Christian friends.
Thanks Glen Scrivener and Reformers.

Glen Scrivener has a fresh and inspiring way of using words. The Air We Breathe is a book that begins by informing the reader of the many different cultural standards and expectations of ancient civilisations and cultures. The first chapter covers the very earliest records and historians up until the appearance of Jesus, and is necessary to understand the rest of the book. Seven chapters follow, each focusing on a particular value of today’s western culture, i.e. equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom and progress. In each chapter, today’s value is compared and explained against the standard experienced in those ancient societies. Again, this is done with fresh and engaging wording. Two chapters follow dealing with events relevant to right now with the final chapter speaking to and challenging the reader on what they do now that they have read the book.

For me, this book both educated and liberated me by connecting so many dots. Our since-Jesus expectations of behaviour and standards compared against pre-Jesus times became mind blowingly obvious to me once it was brought to light through this book. The basis of western society’s values and expectations are based on the radical ideas Jesus presented and for which he was condemned. However, his followers continued on with these radically different ideas and today, those values form the foundation of the ideas on which we expect all humanity to live. I’m so very grateful to have read this book and highly recommend it to everyone.