I don’t pretend to suggest that this will be the only answer to how the Church must unify before the nation unites. And yet, from a thirty-thousand-foot view of the situation, my sense is that if the Church writ large is to unite and confront the world’s cultures and ours in this American Cold Civil War, around what ideas and constructs must it agree?
Many thoughtful folks recently have penned some good articles regarding what is to be done. Among them is Ryan T. Anderson, et al., in The Public Discourse. Laid out there are ideas that unite social conservatives: our positions on marriage, life, education, religious freedom and justice. This collection of single issues doesn’t require a lot of science to explain or understanding to articulate. We hold these truths to be self-evident in the social conservative cause and the article by the editorial board there is excellent, even inviting disagreement to engage in a dialogue, not a monologue.
But just as a collection of five good individual players does not a basketball team make, each of these single issues strikes me as terrain on which our great enemy Satan would rather fight us. Issue by issue, our enemy likely thinks he can pick us apart until we are left feeling discouraged and defeated, as we have since Roe v. Wade in 1973, Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, Engel v. Vitale in 1962, and the liberal bias stranglehold of our jurisprudence. Any secular, worldly warfighter would know that you always want to fight your enemy on terrain of your choosing. What does this look like for the Church as it seeks to unify in a worldly way and mobilize for the spiritual warfare that is our Cold Civil War? Given the opportunity to choose, on what terrain should we build our defenses?
The Bible tells us that our fight is against ideas, arguments, pretensions, and things that set themselves up as an affront to the knowledge of God. This intellectual battle dictates that we prepare our minds for action. In as much as we are commanded to love our God with all of our mind, we need to grapple with a team of four harmonizing questions that may make our brains hurt for a while—but only for a while. But, should the Church writ large answer these four questions, it will go a long way to build the foundations of faith, and defenses for the Cold Civil War.
1. From where did we come? The Bible says God knew us before we were born. He made us in His image. We reflect the praise of His glory. What’s amazing about all of this is that science is coming around to support these Biblical facts with scientific certainty. “Francis Crick, himself a committed atheist, acknowledged that ‘the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.’” When the Church starts to believe that God is the origin of all life, then we are able to answer for ourselves, “I am made in God’s image.” Oddly, from time to time, I think the Church struggles with this question.
2. Why are we here? Nothing physical in the universe can explain its own existence. Matter cannot emerge from matter. Nothing comes from nothing. Whenever someone sees intelligibility, one can assume that intelligence is present. Even science is coming around to this assertion that the universe is uniformly expanding from a common point, intimating that an intelligence was present when the universe “happened.” Science may suggest that “something was acted upon and creation happened.” But, science cannot tell us who was the actor performing the action or why the action happened in the first place. And science certainly cannot tell us what we’re supposed to be doing here.
God has intervened in man’s history and reasoning. The “historical Jesus” was at least someone. The great preacher Charles Spurgeon suggested that “if Jesus was anything, then Jesus was everything.” The Church has the freedom to choose for God or against God; but, we do not have the freedom to shape the consequences of that choice.
The atheist denies the existence of meaning, and all of life is purposeless. There is not significance in life for the atheist. For the atheist, all of life was determined when your DNA was first structured and you spend the rest of your life dancing to it. There is not God, and therefore no meaning, no purpose, no significance. My question for the atheist is this: “Why would anyone want to sign up for that lifestyle? What’s the draw? Aimlessness, purposelessness, hopelessness, and Godlessness?”
The Church must come to the realization that we have infinite value and worth, and as image bearers of God, we have a purpose and meaning in life.
3. Who gets to draw the lines for our conduct? Most people can agree that there is the existence of evil in the world. Hitler was evil. Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao Zedong killed millions. Religion didn’t cause the bloodiest century in world history. It was the lack of religion that did it.
Yet, we wouldn’t know that objective evil exists in the world without the existence of an objective good. And objective good in the world wouldn’t exist without a moral law. And because there is moral law, there must be a moral law giver. And this is the sticking point for those who would rather draw the lines of personal conduct for themselves, or have no lines drawn at all.
God is the source of all moral law. The Church must agree that God gets to draw the lines of our conduct. Again, we have the freedom to choose for Him or against Him; but we do not have the freedom to shape the consequences of that choice.
4. Is this world all there is? Even now, God’s wider reality is all around us. The Church must believe this is our destiny. Heaven doesn’t exist in “series” with this world. When we die, we don’t journey very far to heaven. God’s wider reality is already all around us. We don’t take a step in this world that isn’t already seen or noticed in God’s wider reality.
There are so many, perhaps even in the Church, who do not believe in God’s wider reality. For them, this world is all there is. And as I look around at the world that is, for those who have not hope or a destiny, this must be a pretty depressing paradigm. If you are one of those people, do you have a savings account? Do you see an investment advisor or estate planner? Why would you do any of that if this world was all there is and you could depart from it at any second? Where is your hope?
If the Church ever agrees on these, and answers them as a family of four questions, then it will also lead to other outcomes.
First. the Church writ large as well as individual parishioners will articulate what we believe and why we believe it. This is dangerous to our enemy Satan, because resolve is steeled into an adherent who knows who he is, from where he has come, and where he must go.
Second, millennials have, for some time, left the Church complaining largely that Church-goers cannot articulate what they believe or why they believe it. They won’t have that excuse anymore. Will they return to the Church of their fathers? We’ll only know when the Church unifies around the replies to these four ideas. This is dangerous to our enemy Satan. He is quick to ask the young and least experienced believers the same question that worked on Eve in the garden: “Did God really say. . . .” When you determine for yourself what God said, Satan’s influence, even in the young, melts away.
Third, the Church will become the terrain on which we choose to stand and confront our great enemy. Who can stand against it? No one, not even Satan. Why can’t we see that?
Here’s this from one of my devotionals for today: “Our problem is not that God is inactive or that he has abandoned us, but that we are not on his agenda page. Left with confusion about his plan and carrying with us unrealistic expectations, we get disappointed and a little bit cynical, and we quit running to him for help. It is a bit of a spiritual mess.”
If we want to engage effectively in this Cold Civil War for the American culture, and seek to unify our nation, we must first unify ourselves. God has indeed already won this whole thing. We should recognize that and stop ceding ground to the enemy, and like the prodigal son, come to our senses here in this pigsty we call a culture, and arise to return to our Father.
More about our enemy—and ceding ground—in the concluding Part Four.