Growing up as a youth in the 1960-70s I recall various times in life that seemed like significant moments in the history of our nation and everyday life. I remember the Vietnam war; a neighbor drafted, the riots, the loss of lives, and when the peace treaty finally was announced. Even more foreboding was the “Cold War,” a war of propaganda backed with the proliferation of nuclear weapons that threatened the world with nuclear war as both the U.S. and Russia were held in a stalemate. As a youth, I read small Public Service booklets distributed by the Government on Communism, China, and the U.S.S.R. One booklet literally gave plans for building an underground fall-out shelter in your backyard. In Elementary school there would be times where the loud throbbing buzzers would send us to retreat to inner hallways or taking cover under our desks – later we were to learn it was a “drill” preparing for a possible attack of the war. So, it was a truly life-changing time in my mid-20s as we witnessed the entire Communistic edifice of the Eastern European world collapse in 1989. The Cold War was over. The pervasive possibility of cataclysmic world war had passed.
However, in the midst of this dramatic change in history, I also had the privilege in the 1990s to take a number of trips to work in this “former” Communistic world. I was there to help train church leaders to re-establish the Gospel and plant churches. I stayed in pastor’s homes as I heard many first-hand stories of what an atheistic/Marxist world was like for these Christians. I witnessed where church buildings had been bulldozed under. I stayed in homes that had little protection in the harsh winters due to being oppressed as Believers. And I will never forget the surreal experience when we pulled our Lada off a minimally traveled road looking on an indistinguishable field marked by just a small plaque nailed on a tree memorializing 20,000 Polish and Ukrainian men, women, and children who were killed there by the Soviets. The threats I was warned of as a youth had been very real indeed.
Given a little backdrop of my life history, it may surprise some to hear me say that what we have observed unfolding these past few years, and culminating in these recent weeks has been some of the most dramatic and consequential shifts of my lifetime. These recent cultural shifts are very different than the ever-present danger of my youth. The threats of my youth were much more obvious. They were clearly observed in the rhetoric of Communist leaders, the war machines, and the images of death. Those threats came from the outside. They were outside of my neighborhood, outside of my school, outside of our Government, and even being half-way around the globe were outside of our actual geography. But this current threat is far more deceptive and pernicious. Frankly, it’s diabolical. It is virtually unseen. This threat comes not in images of massive armies and bloodshed, but much more subtle in the form of ideas. But not just any ideas, these are ideas founded from the underworld of the real Enemy- the one who opposes God.
Unlike the Cold War that was so obvious a threat from the outside, this new threat is far more serious as it comes from the inside! This inside threat actually resides inside of our communities, inside of our Educational Institutions, and inside the Halls of Power of our country. And far more disconcerting, like a Trojan horse, this threat has been brought inside of the Evangelical church. While there have been a few leaders who see things clearly, many appear as deer in the headlights. While the barbarians are pillaging, many leaders are trying to avoid conflict by letting the barbarians know we are nice! I fear many are like the ancient parable told, “If you want to know what the water is like don’t ask a fish.” The fish has been so immersed it does not even know the difference. And making this threat even worse, these ungodly ideas have not just been smuggled inside, but they have been baptized as Christian dogma. Instead of the Church exposing these ideas as falsehood, like the barbarians who were inside the Trojan Horse or perhaps spies in the Cold War, these false ideas have now escaped their hidden ploy and been adopted inside of our churches and actually given authoritative standing as holy and good by many! Lord help us!
But even while this was occurring God has not been silent. This Inside threat did not go unchallenged as “John the Baptists” of our Kingdom were warning us. Consider the likes of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who survived the gulags of Russia and in warning the West was booed off the stage at Harvard in 1978. (https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/alexandersolzhenitsynharvard.htm)
Then consider Francis Schaeffer who in his writings and his acclaimed film series, “How Should We Then Live,” had much to warn us about. Consider:
It was indeed unfortunate that our Christian “thinkers” in the time before the shift took place and the chasm fixed did not teach or preach with a clear grasp of presuppositions. Had they done this they would not have been taken by surprise. . .the floodwaters of secular thought and liberal theology overwhelmed the Church because leaders did not understand the importance of combating a false set of presuppositions. They largely fought the battle on the wrong ground. . .This was a real weakness which it is hard to rectify among evangelicals. . . .Once we begin to slip over into the other methodology [synthesis versus antithesis]. . .Historic Christianity is destroyed. We may not know it, but when this occurs, the marks of death are upon it, and it will soon be a museum piece. “The God Who is There.”
Of course, I pale as a man and life in comparison to these giants, but I have given my entire adult life to both preaching the Gospel in many diverse settings, and equally equipping Christians to be faithful witnesses in being the Lighthouse by holding forth what is often called a “Biblical world-view.” If the Church is to ever stand in her rightful place in the cosmic battle we must understand; First, that like Adam and Eve, God has spoken the truth about the reality of Himself, ourselves, and the world around us. When we step into God’s reality and proclaim the Truth of God to the world- God is glorified and we as His Creatures flourish. When we fail in this- as our first parents did, we suffer casualties and even death. Secondly, understanding God’s view of the world gives us the clear “rule” or lens by which we measure and assess the knowledge and resultant ideologies around us. God’s Word rightly wielded holds forth the Truth while exposing the lies. God called this having the “mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:10-16). In 2 Corinthians 10:4-6, Paul spoke further in terms of an unseen enemy and unseen “weapons of our warfare.“ This battle is against “fortresses” that use “speculations and. . . lofty things” that need to be assailed and taken down by the knowledge God gives us through His Spirit-illumined Word. In taking all of our thinking to the “obedience of Christ” we destroy our Enemy’s plotted Inside schemes (Ephesians 6:10-12). God says we are in a real war- a war with a real Enemy! A war of ideas!
While this Blog entry has labored a few introductory thoughts that will continue to be the backdrop for future Blog editions; I have really wanted to make a key point. So, “What is the point?”
Do you know what is actually occurring in this cultural moment here in the U.S.? What is the threat? What is it that is fracturing Churches, Institutions, our Nation, relationships, and even families?
The Answer: It is an all-out cosmic and cultural war of two fundamentally different views of reality. Good and Evil. And they are incompatible. It is a battle for how we think, and thus how we actually live.
I have much to write about this in future Blogs. I hope to offer more thoughts and applications of God’s Word as to what is happening in the war of our day. God’s Word is sufficient for the answers we need in this life. But do look around. . . .The Trojan Horse is actually no longer a threat- the Horse is an empty statue, as the barbarians have escaped and are now on the Inside.