Godly Secular Obedience and Godly Secular Resistance

I’ve been thinking of late as to how to respond to the increasing Government and Corporate incursions into our lives, specifically the challenges faced by Christians in living out the tension between obedience and resistance to these secular forces, all the while conscious of the Lord’s will expressed throughout Israel and the Church’s history in testament Scripture.

Many evangelicals seem not to have a problem with developments, either blissfully unaware of wider societal collapse, perhaps in part because they have largely been insulated from the lived experience through no socio-economic fault of their own and hence lack a degree of empathy and identification, or worse, studiously ignoring the times in the hope it will all go away, appeasement and cultural assimilation as we drift towards State approved theology a la the CCP. If Beijing can buy the Vatican it will roll out elsewhere in various guises, don't kid yourself otherwise. Carrots and sticks.

I do find it ironic that some of the alternative media I consume is not inhabited by Christians, yet the former often seem better informed objectively and have a sounder worldview than the many Christians who share inverted commas a progressive outlook, a euphemism for cultural Marxism. It is an almost perverse and willful cognitive dissonance that can simultaneously pledge allegiance to the Lord yet discount and belittle the effect of manifold idolatries that have shaped Western culture for over a century and have now moved to the heart of the Church, for example Communism/Marxism, Feminism, post-Modernism, militant advocacy for gay culture, aggressive secularism, the list goes on. Have you thought on exactly where they are progressing towards? The apostle Paul was distressed over Athenian idolatry. Where is this distress and bold engagement in our public squares? Crickets. To masquerade a want of courage and fear of persecution behind on the face of it gentle humility is hypocritical and disingenuous. We must suffer many hardships in delivering the Gospel.

Christians have sought to avoid unnecessary conflict, and rightly so, yet if we look at the trajectory of events over time conflict is now inevitable, whether we shy away from it or not. Why? As a civilisation we have collectively turned our backs on the living God, cutting ourselves off from all the blessings we enjoy in developed countries. In effect we want Christianity without the Christ, all the privileges but none of the responsibilities, trusting in institutions and past practice without realising the individuals who helped build up this civilisation were either Christians themselves, married to one, attended a church without believing yet the Spirit of God still influenced their lives, a nominal Christian culture if you will with varying degrees of biblical literacy informing thought, speech and conduct. Formally or informally our God was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Sovereign Lord Jesus Christ. Today that is no longer the case for the vast majority. We have taken on the gods of surrounding nations, have embraced idolatry, and the Lord, long suffering in patience having held back for decades, is now implementing Judgement.

Homo Sapiens are naturally self-centred, but this World is not about us per se, never was never will be. We were created along with space and time for the enjoyment of God, to be relational with Him, and this is His turf. Those familiar with the bible, and not just within the apocalyptic genre, will know of the references to the end times. Jesus made clear no-one knows that date, and nor do I profess to either, all I do put before you for your consideration is what I think was the most consequential decade since the first century A.D., namely the 1940s. Think what happened.

First the Holocaust, an event to which I am yet to hear or read from any Jew or Gentile a spiritual reflection on its meaning. There is strong precedent in Scripture for the Lord judging His people through handing them over to foreign enemies. Prophets lamented how God could use complete idolaters to crush Israel, peoples ostensibly less righteous than themselves, yet this He did indeed do, Assyria removing the northern kingdom of Israel, Babylon the southern one of Judah, besides the territorial skirmishes in Canaan beforehand, and then later ultimately Roman destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem. I am of the opinion that this is what occurred under idolatrous Nazi Germany and the Jewish population unfortunate enough to fall within their orbit. For almost two millennia ancient Israel has refused to recognise the coming of the Messiah, and how they have paid. The culmination was the Holocaust.

As an aside, yes I am aware of anti-semitic elements, not just Fascist but of course Socialist/Communist and Islamic, who would wholeheartedly agree with these sentiments, but I am not of that camp. Upon my wall is an artwork commemorating the lives of past great saints, one of whom is Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Had I been unfortunate enough to have been an evangelical Christian in Nazi Germany and chose not to emigrate prior to the outbreak of war, I think it likely I would have met the same fate. I have already toured geographical Israel once, I warmed to the families I observed, my heart is with them and my God.

Second is the Manhattan Project, the fruit of which was evidenced on Imperial Japan twice and subsequently through testing, and by way of the threat of mutually assured destruction has on the surface kept the peace, a period since 1945 sometimes referred to as pax Americana. The strong desire by Communist China and to a lesser extent Russia to gain a technological advantage that renders American nuclear missiles redundant remains a real threat. The point, it now no longer requires a great deal of imagination to picture the earthly logistics of a biblical Armageddon.

Third would be perhaps the least well-known to the uninitiated, the discovery from 1946-47 of the Dead Sea Scrolls amongst the caves of the ancient Qumran community in Israel. It is worth quoting from the leftist Wikipedia entry.

‘This was a significant discovery for Old Testament scholars who anticipated that the Dead Sea Scrolls would either affirm or repudiate the reliability of textual transmission from the original texts to the oldest Masoretic texts at hand. The discovery demonstrated the unusual accuracy of transmission over a thousand year period, rendering it reasonable to believe that current Old Testament texts are reliable copies of the original works.’

Suffice to say it has proven both a great encouragement and a spur to further research by biblical scholars and presentation in apologetics.

The fourth episode from the 1940s, intrinsically linked to the first, is the reformation of political Israel in 1948. That this tremendous monumental blessing should flow on so quickly from the accursed experience of only a few years prior suggests to me intelligent design. It has deep spiritual import, besides the obvious beginnings of shalom. I have stood overlooking a packed Western Wall courtyard, having earlier exited an underground tour, during Easter. The feeling came upon me of a vigorous people with plenty of flesh to the bone, yet lacking Spirit, awaiting a further deliverance, the senses indeed alive but not yet in concert. Although a Christian, I joined the headbangers in the moshepit at the foot of the immense stone wall. Inadvertently they looked for the Cornerstone, but Rosh Pina is in the Galilee.

All this comes at a time now of judgement upon the West, though I thought it worth mentioning by way of introduction the seismic events of past decades, if for no reason other than Americans seem to love a good preamble.