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167. 1/1/22 AI and Man’s Tech-Based Quest to Become God
168. 2/1/22 A Study in Tyrants – Hitler & his Minions, Part 1
169. 4/1/22 A Study in Tyrants – Hitler & his Minions, Part 2
170. 5/1/22 How are American churches doing?
171. 6/1/22 Benedict’s Option
172. 7/1/22 The Lost Art of Reading
173. 8/1/22 Reimagining Apologetics
174. 9/1/22 Confronting Truth
175. 10/1/22 The Stairway to Life?
176. 11/1/22 Live Not by Lies

 

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167. AI and Man’s Tech-Based Quest to Become God
January 1, 2022

Considerable efforts are underway in the quest to upgrade humans, aimed at superintelligence – first – but ultimately immortality and godhood.  Those on this high tech quest imagine that billions of years of random evolutionary development have produced the human brain, which will now take over and complete the journey by design.  With AGI – Artificial General Intelligence – man hopes to create computer gods in our own image and then, hopefully, to meld with them to refashion the universe as we see fit.

This is the opposite of the Biblical narrative, of course, the narrative that corresponds to the reality in which we live, that God created man in His own image, to serve Him within a world under His dominion.  The superintelligence that is intrinsically God’s already existed.  “He is not an End Product.  He is the Producer.”

So writes John Lennox in his 2020 book, 2084:  Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity.  I highly recommend the book.  I would read anything by John Lennox, a professor (emeritus) of mathematics at Oxford and a philosopher of science, among other talents.

AGI is to be contrasted with narrow AI, which includes systems that autonomously drive cars, or diagnose illnesses, that enhance data analysis or translate languages on the fly, or accelerate innovation in many other conventional technologies.  Most famously, or intrusively, is the development of AI for digital assistants like Alexa and Siri, plus the AI to control the smart devices in our homes, and to annoy us with ads for things we must be thinking of buying.  One of my sons recently muttered aloud something favorable about a particular product and his smart TV quickly began displaying ads for that product.  Lennox:  “Such tracking algorithms are pursuing us all the time.”

Lennox cites Kalev Leetaru:  “At the end of the day the deep learning systems are less ‘AI’ than they are fancy pattern extractors . . . they are able to blindly identify the underlying patterns in their training data and apply those patterns as-is to future data.  They cannot reason . . . or generalize to higher order abstractions.”

But the dream of AGI is to build a machine that surpasses human intelligence, not just in number crunching, which computers have done for a very long time, but in reasoning, decision making, and even creativity – like composing music or writing novels.

All the AI that exists today is of the narrow variety, a deliberately programmed competence only in a specific area, like Deep Blue, IBM’s world chess champion computer.  But Deep Blue does not know how to play checkers or drive a car.

Lennox cites Nick Bostrom and Eliezer Yudkowsky who comment that a bee is competent to build hives and a beaver builds dams, but a bee cannot build dams, nor a beaver a hive.  Yet humans can watch and learn to do both, manifesting talents that are unique among biological lifeforms.  What humans do includes learning, planning, and reasoning.

I would add that image-of-God human beings also care, possess a moral conscience, can love by choice, hope for an imagined future (both temporal and eternal), and enjoy beauty and other intangibles.  Human life goes infinitely far beyond the drudging vacuousness of a materialistic worldview, in which humans, rocks, asteroids, and stars are merely clumps of particles interacting via the laws of physics, “laws” that have no sensible origin or purpose.  Purpose – that’s another quality that humans embrace that cannot be programmed into a computer.

Computer Engineering Professor Danny Crookes of Queens U. comments that “so-called ‘deep learning’ is now all the rage in AI research, but there’s nothing particularly new in it:  it’s just that the computing power now exists to run the multi-layer (deep) neural networks which have existed on paper for decades.”  In short, we have bigger computers now.

Nobel Prize winner Sir John Eccles (discoverer of the synapse) wishes  that AI researchers  would simply “admit that there are fundamental differences between machine intelligence and human intelligence – differences that cannot be overcome by any amount of research.”  Most researchers will at least admit that they are a long way from creating human-like intelligence.

Nevertheless, many dream of a day when AGI will be here and will produce a utopian socialist paradise.  Lennox playfully cites one of my favorite philosophers, Yogi Berra:  “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

Ray Kurzweil, well known for his book The Singularity is Near, believes that within just a few decades, AI robots will exceed humans in intelligence and capabilities.  I like to imagine the challenge this way . . . when will a robot win the Grand Slam of tennis, the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open?  Winning a chess match, or even a Go match, is a very different challenge.  Or when will an AI create a scintillating stand-up comedy routine, or write poetry that brings tears, or devises a laboratory experiment to detect dark matter . . . without plagiarizing?

Some extrapolate from narrow AI, observing that we use tech to augment our senses and abilities now – VR glasses, smart phones, smart headphones, computer chips to overcome deafness.  How big is the extrapolation?  After all, evolutionists extrapolate from discovering some amino acids in a carefully designed chem lab experiment to declarations that all of the nanotechnology of life must therefore have arisen by chance.  (See my free ebook on Creation / Evolution in the bookstore on this site.)

In a 2018 TED talk, physicist Max Tegmark, president of the Future of Life Institute at MIT said, “In creating AI, we’re birthing a new form of life with unlimited potential for good or ill.”  On the pessimistic side, Rosalind Picard opined that all AI and machine learning algorithms are “no more alive than Microsoft Word.”

Vladimir Putin has thought a lot about AI.  Here’s one of his thoughts:  “Artificial Intelligence is the future not only for Russia but for all humankind.  It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict.  Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”

The spirit of antichrist lusts after world rule.  The US and China strive to dominate the AI field.  China expects to win by 2030.  Lennox:  “President Emmanuel Macron wants to make France the AI capital of the world.”

What worldview drives the dream of AGI?  Physicist Sir John Polkinghorne writes, “If we are to understand the nature of reality, we have only two possible starting points:  either the brute fact of the physical world or the brute fact of a divine will and purpose behind that physical world.”  The first is atheism, as expressed by physicist Sean Carroll:  “We humans are blobs of organized mud, which through the impersonal workings of nature’s patterns have developed the capacity to contemplate and cherish and engage with the intimidating complexity of the world around us . . . The meaning we find in life is not transcendent.”

The second choice is, ultimately, Biblical Christianity.  There is no rational competitor – nothing in the same class.  (But you should read my essays on apologetics in the Evangelism section of this site.)  The two worldviews have very different perspectives on the nature of man, mind, and free will or, you could say, between man and machine, as Francis Schaeffer unpacked  extensively in his works.

This contrast comes out in Roger Epstein’s rejection of the idea that the human brain works like a computer:  “Computers really do operate on symbolic representations of the world.  They really have physical memories.  They really are guided in everything they do, without exception, by algorithms.  Humans, on the other hand, do not – never did, never will.  Given this reality, why do so many scientists talk about our mental life as if we were computers?”

Lennox observes that an AI algorithm can find a cat on a YouTube video, yet the AI hardware / software has no concept of what a cat is.  Computers have no goals.  When Garry Kasparov was beaten by Deep Blue, he was devastated.  But Deep Blue did not exult.

AIs are not persons.  The Biblical perspective is that our personhood derives from an immaterial soul / spirit that connects to our brain in ways beyond anything scientists have hoped to measure.  But after all, what scientists measure are quantities like length, mass, weight, charge, voltage, and wavelength.  It’s a limited set.

If we are not persons, then what?  Charles Darwin’s commitment to evolution gave him a “horrid doubt” that if man’s mind derived from the lower animals, then the convictions of man’s mind are not trustworthy.  A modern atheist philosopher, Thomas Nagel, admits, “Evolutionary naturalism implies that we should not take any of our convictions seriously, including the scientific world picture on which evolutionary naturalism depends.”

If our thoughts are reduced to brain chemistry, then they are neither right nor wrong, says John Polkinghorne.  “They simply happen . . . rational discourse dissolves into the absurd chatter of firing synapses.  Quite frankly that cannot be right and none of us believes it to be so.”  In a materialistic worldview, reason – and man – are abolished.  Reason, independent of deterministic brain chemistry, is an axiomatically essential part of being human.

A Christian friend of ours was challenged recently by her atheist daughter that the choice is between science and Christianity.  That’s a false dichotomy, of course.  Lennox:  “Science and God mix very well.  It is science and atheism that do not mix.”  The scientific method involves reason, judgment, logic, decision-making, and a whole host of non-material qualities . . . that do not even exist in an atheistic worldview.

Lennox waxes eloquently that “this universe bears the signature of its superintelligent divine origins in its law-like behavior, in its rational intelligibility, in the information-rich macromolecules in our DNA, and in the informational structure of intricate physiological mechanisms responsible for, for example, the migration of birds and fish, and in our human capacities for thought and language, feelings and relationships.”  Information comes only from a mind.  In the list above, only God’s mind fits the pattern.

Thus, matter is derivative.  “Spirit is primary.  Matter does not generate spirit.”

AI attempts to mimic what the human mind does.  It is a different category to try to create a machine that feels like a man.  Consciousness in an insoluble barrier, because consciousness derives from our immaterial spirit.  The brightest scientists and engineers of the last century have made no progress – really, NONE – in trying to imagine a material basis for consciousness, for spirit.  They want to be God, but they’re not going to make it.

Dystopian visions of a future dominated by AI (even narrow AI to some extent) and robots include fears of a vast number of unemployed and unemployable people.  Since meaningful “work is part of our God-given significance as human beings,” any trend along these lines may collapse society, once the multitudes of of the un- or underemployed get fed up with the elite few they serve.  The slave-based economy of the Roman Empire was a major factor in its dissolution.

In the shorter term, there is hope that AI will provide companionship, lifelike robots.  This is already taking hold in Japan.   On the other hand, Joseph Weizenbaum  was unpopular with his MIT colleagues back in 1976 when he insisted, “To substitute a computer system for a human function that involves interpersonal respect, understanding, and love is simply obscene.”

Margaret Boden warns that “the fundamental difference between human and artificial intelligence (is that) one cares, the other does not.”

The simulated morality of AI systems invariably reflects the morality of the programmers.  One of my sons, a computer science professional, tells me that atheism is the dominant worldview of computer science majors.  Rosalind Picard at MIT warns, “The greater the freedom of a machine, the more it will need moral standards.”  In our current ultra-woke Marxist culture, what are the moral standards that would be embedded in AI systems?

Perhaps the most disturbing goals are those of the transhumanists, whose dream is not merely to improve, but to change human nature, thus the prefix trans.  What will define morality then?  But we’re already into moral issues.  With autonomous vehicles, how do you program the priorities for avoiding or minimizing damage to obstacles, property, animals, and people?  Do you avoid the child crossing the road at the expense of a dozen adults queued up at a bus stop?  What defines the principles upon which you base programming decisions?

In the bigger picture, AI advocates like Yuval Harari like to think of death as a merely technical problem that can be overcome with medical and robotic technologies.  In the Christian worldview, of course, death is a consequence of the Fall, a result of man’s willful (and ongoing) rebellion against his Creator.  Since God is there, tech won’t solve the problem.

The Chief Technologist, the Lord Jesus Christ, demonstrated victory over death with His resurrection.  It is Jesus who has the “tech” that we need.  We have to come to Him on His terms.

Lennox:  “The promises of AGI are firmly rooted in this world, and in that sense they are parochial and small compared with the mind-boggling implications of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus.”  Indeed.

Lennox sees the hype of AI as one of the myriad distractions that blind the world and even Christians to the assured promise of the return of Jesus Christ, the 2^nd Coming.  Modern false Christendom denies the 2nd Coming along with its pre-events, the Rapture of the believers and the seven years of Tribulation judgments.  Rather, they imagine that through some combination of watered-down missionary work and social justice and charitable projects they will bring in a utopian Millennial Age through their own efforts.  The Marxist Utopia, on the other hand, “is to arise out of the workings of the inexorable laws of history.”  But “history has taught the hard lesson:  there is no pathway to paradise that bypasses the problem of human sin.”

Ironically, the word utopia means “no place.”

The ultimate upgrade for humanity will happen at the Lord’s return, specifically at the Rapture, when each of His blood-bought believers is granted a resurrection body that will live forever and without the maladies of our present frail existence.  Our bodies will be strong and perpetually healthy and our brains / minds will have perfect recall, wonderful creativity, and opportunities to explore . . . an entire universe, perhaps.  Lennox asks, “What might we then be allowed to create in the way of heavenly technology?”

Lennox interprets humanity’s efforts to achieve divinity as “overweening arrogance and a sense of superiority . . . that has produced something terrifyingly subhuman and bestial.”  The history of the last two centuries, in sync with the industrial and technological revolutions, has produced “a morass of violence and tyranny.”  Lennox cites Hannah Arendt – The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951 – who was convinced that totalitarianism is rooted in a utopianism based on rejecting God and deifying man.  Examples include Nazism’s Auschwitz, the Soviet’s Treblinka and gulags, and Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.  More currently, we can point to the slave labor camps in China and North Korea, and the woke takeover of every institution in America.

Atheist / evolutionist Yuval Harari (Sapiens – 2015) wrote about the irresponsibility of us all, more powerful than ever with all of our technological advancements, “self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company . . . Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?”  The woke crowd comes to mind here.  Even after taking all the reigns of power everywhere, are they satisfied?  They seem angrier than ever.  But of course the game isn’t over, is it?

The endpoint of totalitarianism, in which power is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, is to invest all authority into one ultimate man, “a Homo deus whose powers of rule and deception are derived from the most sinister of all superhuman intelligences – the Devil himself.”  It is the Antichrist’s rule that precipitates the Tribulation judgments.  Don’t be here then!

Our time on this Earth is short, whether by a natural death or by the coming Rapture.  Let’s make our days count.  Reach out this week with Gospel tracts.  Pray that God would jumpstart more believers into obeying the Great Commission.  Pray for boldness and then act on it.  Don’t quit.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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168. A Study in Tyrants – Hitler & his Minions, Part 1
February 1, 2022

Decisions made in the 1930s – mostly bad decisions – shaped the political structure of the world for the rest of the century, and right up to the present.  FDR’s socialist policies – doubling down on Hoover, his predecessor – brought on the Great Depression of the 1930s, and FDR’s political corruption established the pattern for today’s degenerate governance.  Communist tyrannies spawned by Lenin and Stalin, including that of Mao in China and the Kim family in North Korea, continue to crush liberty and endanger the world to this day.  Arguably the most famous tyrant, though – Adolf Hitler – rose to power in the 1930s and, for the twelve years he enjoyed that power, wreaked more havoc more quickly than anyone in history.

Stalin’s form of tyranny envisioned a global communist government, embracing the lie that the working class would rule – in fact, there is always a privileged elite.  Hitler’s form of tyranny envisioned national supremacy and racial hatred, with a privileged elite in charge.  For all the rhetoric that supposedly distinguishes communism from fascism, for the people there is scant difference.  Oppression is oppression.  The only practical differences are the excuses the elite ruling class uses to justify their tyranny.

I recently read a book that’s been gathering dust on my shelves for decades, unfortunately, The Nightmare Years:  1930 – 1940, by William L. Shirer, an American journalist who was on the ground in Europe, and especially in Germany when Hitler grabbed power and inflicted war on the world.

Shirer was there at the Nuremberg rallies when Hitler celebrated his freshly won political domination of Germany.  Shirer was there in Munich when the British Prime Minister, Chamberlain, betrayed the Czechs.  Shirer was there for the Anschluss in Austria and he was there when Hitler sent his armies into Poland.  Shirer desperately tried to warn the West of the magnitude of the coming catastrophes through his articles and broadcasts.  It is interesting that in the jacket description of the book, the editor calls the rise of the Nazis “this demonic scourge.”  I believe he was quite literally correct.

The Nightmare Years is not a conventional history, so to speak, of the run-up to WW2, but rather a thoughtful journalist’s personal perceptions and agonies in the midst of events he witnessed.  One of the threads that I found most interesting was Shirer’s descriptions of Hitler and his inner circle.  In this essay I hope to pull some nuggets out for you on that thread.

I’ll give you one summary conclusion of mine up front.  Worldview matters.  Character matters.  When individuals with the worst possible character acquire awesome political power (and / or economic or media power), and when they are infused with the worst possible worldview – inspired and sustained by demonic influence, if not possession – then people will suffer on a massive scale.  The Nazis, the Communists, the modern Marxists who hold the reigns of power and influence in the world today . . . these are the nastiest people imaginable.  I’ve written essays previously for this site based on biographies of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao.  This one is just a glimpse into Hitler and those close to him.

It is striking how these mega-tyrants share so many characteristics.  It is also instructive to recognize such characteristics in less notable tyrants or wannabe-tyrants in our world today, whether we find them at the national or local levels . . . or on a corporate board, or teaching a 3^rd grade class, for example.

Shirer published his book in 1984 and, looking back, he calls the 1930s the nightmare years.  His work in Asia and Europe shocked his sensibilities as he observed more and more revolutions, uprisings, a spreading intolerance, and explicit “violence, repression, aggression, and barbarism in supposedly civilized countries.  One watched it all leading inexorably toward war.”

Shirer was both fascinated and horrified as he watched Hitler crush both freedom and the human spirit in Germany, and persecute the Jews in preparation for the Holocaust.  What particularly shocked him was how most Germans of the time “joined joyously in this Nazi barbarism.”  Shirer sees all this as quite strange in that Germany is the country of Luther, Kant, Beethoven, Goethe, and other luminaries.  I would observe that genuine Christianity in Germany was rare in the 1930s.  It is not so difficult to crush the human spirit if that spirit is not bulwarked by the Holy Spirit in a born again individual.  Furthermore, it is vital for real Christians to sow Gospel seed along with salt and light into the culture by speaking out boldly.

Shirer and his wife arrived on assignment to Berlin in late August 1934, but he was quickly off to the annual Nazi party rally in Nuremberg, a week-long conclave for hundreds of thousands of uniformed party members, plus Hitler’s S.A. (brown-shirted street brawlers) and S.S. (the paramilitary group that came to dominate the police and the secret police).

This was Shirer’s initial first-hand view “of this strange man whom so many Germans hailed as a genius and a savior.”  Watching Hitler’s hold over these masses, Shirer began to understand “the reputed hold of this vulgar, uneducated, fanatically bigoted Austrian, who had risen from the gutters of Vienna, on a great people who over the centuries had contributed their considerable share to the civilization of the West.”

It had already been a bloody summer for Hitler, who consolidated power by murdering the leaders of the S.A., including its head who had been a close personal friend, and murdering several old political enemies, including the previous chancellor and his wife.  Then, with the death of the President, Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler had control over both the government and was head of state, and so had become dictator-in-fact, with the legislature reduced to a rubber stamp.

Shirer observed that some of his old acquaintances, including ‘liberals,’ socialists, even Communists, and some pacifists, along with people who had a passion for freedom and the arts, “were full of the Nazi bug,” extolling “Germany’s destiny under the new Fuhrer,” liberated from the shackles of the Treaty of Versailles, a return to “the solid traditions of the old Germany, which respected authority.”  Shirer was depressed, yet did find those who saw the dangers . . . but these “were careful of what they said.  They did not trust you.”

Platoons of the brown-shirted S.A. and the black-coated S.S. were often seen marching through the streets.  Anyone on the sidewalk who did not pause to salute their flags might be beaten up on the spot.  This happened to a prominent American physician who was in Berlin to consult on lung diseases.  Additionally, Jews were favorite targets and Jewish shopkeepers began to suffer smashed windows and beatings, too.

Shirer first glimpsed Hitler as his motorcade passed by, the ‘great man’ standing in his car, accepting hysterical acclaim from the mob, “men, women, and children were so wild in their joy at seeing him, their faces contorted in a way I had never seen before, ever.”  Shirer had seen crowds worshiping Gandhi in India and Mussolini in Italy, but the German response was different:  “They were swaying back and forth, like the Holy Rollers I had once seen in the back country in Arkansas and Louisiana, with the same crazed expression on their faces . . . Several women swooned . . . some were trampled as the crowd surged toward the hotel to get a closer look at their Messiah.”

Shirer is precisely on track.  Hitler was certainly a foreshadowing of the Antichrist.  I believe that Satan works to have a budding Antichrist always available, not knowing when God will ‘pull the trigger’ for the last days with the Rapture.  Also, it is clear what the explanation has to be for the adulation afforded this man of “modest bearing, in his rather common look.”  It wasn’t Hitler himself.  It was supernatural, certainly a powerful demonic influence about him and working within the people around him.

This man of ordinary appearance, Shirer noted, had eyes that seemed “hypnotic.  Piercing.  Penetrating . . . What hit you at once was their power . . . They stared through you.”  Apparently, Hitler was especially fascinating to women.

Hitler’s speech to 30,000 in the huge Luitpold Hall promised a thousand-year reign for the Third Reich.  A Millennium!  I wonder where he got that idea.  Hitler’s speech was astonishingly moving and compelling to the German crowd.  Shirer found the words and the arguments ridiculous, but somehow his delivery was “uncanny . . . holding them completely in his spell . . . they easily believed anything he said.”

Shirer came to realize that “Hitler needed enemies to blame for all that had gone wrong before and for all that threatened the new, awakened, authoritarian Reich.”  Obvious enemies included Jews and Bolsheviks, but this was expanded in the years to follow to embrace Christians, gypsies, and anyone that did not conform.  Can Americans not see the same game plan unfolding today?  But the problems – and the solutions – are not political; they are spiritual.  And today’s Christians are far more interested in politics than they are in the Great Commission.  Shall God bless the political efforts of Christians who despise the Great Commission?

Shirer was amazed to see the Nazis dictate to society in every area, including what forms of art were acceptable.  Unacceptable art, whether sculpture or painting or music or literature or theater, was cancelled and the artists persecuted or prosecuted.  Stalin and Mao did the same.  America’s cancel culture is the beginning of the same game today.  In Shirer’s first year in Germany he saw thousands of works of art disappear from state-controlled museums.

One of the inner circle, Hermann Goering, acquired much of the forbidden art and admitted to Shirer that he sold some of it for foreign currency.  Later, during the war, “an entire freight train was commandeered to transport to Berlin his loot from the museums and private collections in Paris.”

Shirer confesses his surprise “that most Germans, so far as I could see, did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away,” that their culture was being destroyed, and their lives were suffering an ever-increasing regimentation.  What we would say today is that the German people under Hitler became woke.  In the beginning the majority of the populace didn’t see their own lives change much and were not concerned about what Hitler was doing to a few Communists, pacifists, defiant pastors, and to the Jews.  The vast majority of Germans were compliant, docile.  Sound familiar?

What mattered the most to his followers was that Hitler was destroying the past, with all of its disappointments.  In America’s case today, it’s a phony version of the past that is attacked, so that even statues of Lincoln, Washington, and Columbus are toppled, the Declaration and the Constitution are rejected, and above all Christian values, speech, and freedom are despised.  Where will it end?  In the rule of the Antichrist, of course.  I believe that Satan felt that his time was at hand in the 1930s.  That didn’t work out for him then, but the Adversary is relentless and the current trends look promising from his point of view.

Hitler bought a measure of support from German Catholics, one-third of the population, by his concordat with the Vatican, assuring the right of the RC Church to regulate its own affairs within Germany.  This move secured some cover abroad just as accounts of Jewish persecution were surfacing.  Nevertheless, he initiated a double-cross by forcing Catholic Youth League members into the Hitler Youth.  In the Hitler Youth, by age 10 a boy took the following oath:  “In the presence of this blood banner, which represents our Fuhrer, I swear to devote all my energies and my strength to the savior of our country, Adolf Hitler.  I am willing and ready to give up my life for him, so help me God.”  (Throw in the ‘God’ word just to make it seem OK.)  Ten million took that oath.

In the years to follow thousands of Catholic priests, nuns, and lay leaders were arrested on trumped-up charges, along with many non-compliant Protestants, as Hitler worked to force all Protestants into a State-controlled system.  Some of these Reich-friendly congregations and meetings seemed more pagan than Christian to Shirer.

Alternatively, the “Confessional Church” resisted Nazification, rejected the Nazi racial nonsense (which is now called Critical Race Theory), and lamented the attitudes of multitudes of ‘professing’ Christians who sat on the fence, waiting to see what would happen, hoping that it would happen to someone else and not to them.

Shirer attended Martin Niemoller’s church occasionally to observe this symbol of defiance to the regime.  Niemoller was a former U-boat captain, a patriotic nationalist, who drew a crowd of 20,000 worshipers at a rally in November 1934 to denounce Nazism.  Hitler had nothing but contempt for German Protestants.  He confided once, “You can do anything you want with them.  They will submit . . . They are insignificant little people, submissive as dogs, and they sweat with embarrassment when you talk to them.”  Martin Bormann, an inner circle thug,  once told a Party meeting, “For us, National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable.”  I appreciate his honesty.  Would that our current political leaders would admit as much about their Marxist / Wokist ideology.

In the next year the Gestapo arrested over 700 Confessional Church pastors.

Where are America’s Bible-believing prophets today?  As far as I can tell, the only issue that America’s churches fussed over during the pandemic was their ability to meet together weekly to put on their scripted services and take collections.  Why not be about the Great Commission?  Why not send your people out to share the Gospel and bring salvation and comfort to multitudes locked down and isolated from others?  Why not organize a plethora of small prayer meetings?  Why not train and trust your own people to grow and disciple one another, rather than beg them to watch your online streaming show?

Niemoller spoke boldly in public until he was arrested and, ultimately, sent to a concentration camp for seven years until he was liberated by American troops.  Shirer:  “As for the majority of Protestant pastors, they, like almost everyone in Germany, submitted in the face of Nazi pressure and terror.”

It was gut-wrenching, personally, for Shirer at times.  He had met a couple of young German women at embassy receptions; they were from aristocratic families, well-educated, and had been vocal in their loathing of the Nazis.  They were arrested, falsely accused of spying for Poland, and beheaded.

Hitler’s key positions were filled with the loyalists who had been with him from the beginning, most from his failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923, and had suffered with him the wild ups and downs that culminated in the Party’s power grab in 1933.  Shirer got to know them because that was his job as a foreign correspondent.

Hermann Goering, Shirer assessed as a “fat, high-living, swashbuckling number-two man, Rudolf Hess as a “dim-witted deputy to the Fuhrer,” Joachim von Ribbentrop, the foreign minister as “a vain, pompous, incredibly stupid man,” and Heinrich Himmler, “who with his pince-nez looked like a harmless provincial schoolmaster but who in reality was the brutal dreaded chief of the S.S. and Gestapo, and, in the end, the exterminator of the Jews.”

Alfred Rosenberg, the official Nazi ‘philosopher,’ “was the most muddled of men:  tedious, dull, verbose and just plain stupid.”  Joseph Goebbels, the number-three man, was “the wily, glib, clubfooted minister of propaganda.”  Shirer found him as insufferable as Ribbentrop, sharing a tremendous arrogance, although Goebbels was not unintelligent.  Goebbels controlled the press and state-run radio, plus the Chamber of Culture, which ruled cultural activities across the nation, deciding what music was played (no Jewish composers), what books were published, what paintings and sculptures were displayed, and what plays and movies were produced.  (Stalin admired much of what Hitler accomplished here and Mao followed suit.  Today’s cancel culture is racing to catch up.)

Regarding himself and the other foreign correspondents, Shirer confessed, “We learned to stomach more than I would have believed possible.”  But he had to mix with them to do his job.

Assuming that Shirer’s assessments were reasonable, what explains the pervasive stupidity?  I believe there is a spiritual explanation.  When one denies God, rejects the Bible, and descends further and further into depraved behavior, one separates from reality.  This can be rationally interpreted as stupidity.

Rosenberg, for example, avowed racial theories that insisted on the superiority of the “Aryan” Germans and the inferiority of the Jews, Slavs, Asians, Americans, etc.  “His ignorance of history was almost total,” yet he was considered the chief intellectual of the Nazi Party.  Today’s ‘Critical Race Theorists’ simply re-shuffle which races are good and which are evil.  It’s the same game, though.  Why should Satan change tactics?  They always seem to work.

Shirer marveled that Hitler would choose Ribbentrop as Foreign Minister:  “I sized him up as incompetent and lazy, vain as a peacock, arrogant and without humor.”  He spoke French and English quite well, but apparently had not “the slightest comprehension of France and the French, and of the British and Americans and their countries.”  He was perhaps the worst possible man to be picked as foreign minister, but . . . “Ribbentrop was doggedly loyal to the Leader and never crossed him or even questioned him.”  That seems to be a principal chacteristic of the woke Marxists / Fascists of our era – loyalty above all, never question, never criticize.

Hitler eventually double-crossed every group he had made promises to.  In May 1934 he dissolved the unions and confiscated their funds, arrested their leaders, had them beaten and shipped off to concentration camps.  All this was right after speeches and assurances that the workers were sacred to the National Socialists (Nazis) and that the Party will preserve and protect the workers and their institutions.  A Nazi-controlled “Labor Front”  replaced the unions to keep workers in line, to control wages and to crush any hint of a strike.  In tyranny all institutions must be under Party control.

Hitler could not have brought devastating war to the world except for the rot and cowardice that infused the western powers.  In 1936 he moved an army into the Rhineland, western Germany, an area that was officially demilitarized by the Treaty of Versailles.  If the French had responded militarily they would have crushed the Nazis and almost certainly caused the overthrow of Hitler and his regime.  France had an overwhelmingly strong army compared to the Germans. The truth was that the German army had orders to retreat if the French moved against them.  The German army was bluffing.  They did not have the arms or the training to win at that time.

But France and Britain submitted to the provocation, buying into Hitler’s phony promises of peace, with Germany now satisfied that they had complete control of the Rhineland once more.  Hitler’s hypocrisy was spectacular in that he offered to sign a 25-year nonaggression pact – after violating the standing treaty!

In Hitler’s address to the Reichstag he recited a long list of the injustices of Versailles and proclaimed the peacefulness of the Germans.  His biggest applause line:  “We have no territorial demands to make in Europe! . . . Germany will never break the peace!”

In Satan’s cause there are no lies too outrageous.  In fact, when tyrants are in control you are almost certainly right if you conclude that every public statement is a lie, at least in part, and the opposite is what you should plan for.

Regarding the decadence of the ‘free’ nations, it is notable that Hitler chose early Saturday morning to march into the Rhineland, knowing that British political leaders would have retired to their country estates for the weekend and would not be bothered to work on a response until Monday.  Hitler would repeat this pattern in later adventures.

Hitler’s successful bluff awarded him with enormous support in Germany, including among his generals, who were heretofore resistant.  But it now seemed clear that Hitler’s judgment was preeminent.

Hitler admired the Italian fascist, Benito Mussolini, and supported the Italian conquest of Abyssinia (Ethiopia).  The Italian move separated Italy from Britain and France, which were allies of Italy in WW1.  But while Italy was drawn into partnership with Germany, Hitler misjudged his ally’s strength, a mistake that would cost them dearly in WW2.  Reality matters.  A strong will is not enough.

Hitler’s dream had always been to unify his native Austria with Germany.  In 1938 he made his move, threatening the Austrian leaders with invasion if they did not capitulate.  They caved.  For years Hitler had promised that he would leave Austria alone.  Hitler had no problem making any promise that would tickle the ears of the gullible and the cowardly, and then breaking the promise when convenient.  Austria was now a province of Germany.

Hitler arrested the reluctant Austrian president and announced a plebiscite to show the world that the Austrian people favored the union.  At polling booths Nazi Party overseers were positioned to see how people voted and the ballot had clear instructions on how to mark it with a bold Ja to signify agreement.  The result was 99.75 percent  Ja.  The Soviet communists enjoyed similar success in their regular elections.

We’ll take a break here.  In Part 2 next month we’ll pick up with the Czech “crisis” which provided yet another opportunity to cut Hitler off at the knees, if courage had only been in modest supply in the West.

The takeaway, in my view, is for Christians to recognize and to speak out truthfully when we see Satan working in this world, whether on grand or small scales.  Speak truth and then transition to the Gospel.  Victory is not in political reformation, but rather in the salvation of souls.  A saved soul can easily find the wisdom to vote wisely and live as a productive neighbor and citizen in whatever land he resides.  What your neighbors, co-workers, relatives, and others around you need, above all, is a clear Gospel witness.  Give it to them.  At least offer them a tract.  If you need some tracts, check out ours at ThinkTracts.com and order some, or just email me and ask for some free samples.  Make your days count.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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169. A Study in Tyrants: Hitler & his Minions, Part 2
April 1, 2022

During the Nuremberg trials after WW2 the head of the Hitler youth, Baldur von Schirach, testified:  “The destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement.”

Christians today should recognize such historical parallels whenever government gets too powerful and whenever the ruling elite – including those in education and media – propagate anti-Christian values.  A Biblical worldview – the only perspective in touch with reality – is that of the age-old war between God and the fallen angel, Satan, a war over the souls of men.  Satan’s first choice is always tyranny so that he can directly suppress the Gospel and damn multitudes to share the Lake of Fire after the Great White Throne judgment.  Short of tyranny, the Adversary will work hard at corruption, as we have seen in America especially since the 1960s, but the goal of that corruption is inevitably tyranny . . . and that’s where we find America and the rest of the West today.

“If men will not be governed by God, then they must be governed by tyrants.” – William Penn

Any student of the Bible already knows that when a nation has great light and favor from God, specifically Old Testament Israel, such a nation is responsible to fulfill its duties.  Israel did not, and so suffered repeated invasions and exile before they repented and were restored.  Now, America is not Israel, but has enjoyed God’s blessings, including freedom for individuals to serve Him, raise their children to know Him, and to launch missionary movements around the world.  But especially in the last 60 years, Christians have despised their heritage and devoted themselves to politics and prosperity.  Even in this present madness there is no detectable move among Christians to repent on behalf of our nation, as Daniel did, and as Ezra and Nehemiah did, who sought God’s deliverance rather than trying to manipulate earthly power through politics.

One of the big lies of this present age is to define the political spectrum as if it is a 1-dimensional left vs. right axis.  Accordingly, conservative Christians are identified with the right along with Hitler and the Nazis.  What willful stupidity this is!  If a 1-dimensional model is to make any sense, it must be with tyranny at one end and freedom at the other.  Accordingly Nazis and Communists share one extreme and born again, Bible-believing Christians are entirely at the other, embracing free speech and free markets.

The differences between Hitler’s National Socialism (Nazism) and Stalin’s or Mao’s Communist Party are insignificant, especially with respect to the lives led by freedom-loving Christians.  Under Communism the State is controlled by the Party and owns everything.  Under Nazism you could “own” a factory, but you had better do whatever the Party tells you to do.  Thus it is a lie that the Nazis were capitalists – in the proper free market sense.  Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises wrote that Nazism was “socialism under the outward guise of the terminology of capitalism . . . (it) seemingly preserves private ownership of the means of production and keeps the appearance of ordinary markets, prices, wages, and interest rates.  There are, however, no longer entrepreneurs, but only shop managers.”  The Nazi office of production management dictated what to produce at what prices and mandated who would buy from you.  The Party fixed wages, too.

The Communists do the same, whether Lenin, or Stalin, or Mao and his successors, or Castro, or Pol Pot, or the Kim family.  America’s socialists are working hard via the same script.  And they are getting closer.

In a 1931 interview, two years before seizing power, Hitler explained:  “The good of the community takes priority over that of the individual.  But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself an agent of the State; it is his duty not to misuse his possessions to the detriment of the State or the interests of his fellow countrymen.  That is the overriding point.  The Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners.”  **

Such sentiments are completely in sync with today’s “leftists.”  Communist Party, Nazi Party, Democrat Party . . . not a nickel’s worth of difference.

Now, let’s continue with my discussion of William L. Shirer’s book, The Nightmare Years:  1930 – 1940, particularly Shirer’s personal account, on the ground, while Hitler worked to intimidate Europe in the run-up to WW2.

Hitler’s secret desire in the Spring of 1938 was to “wipe Czechoslovakia off the map.”  He used the three million ethnic Germans who lived in the Sudetenland as a pretext to acquire their territory and undermine the Czech government.  Ceding this land would deprive the Czechs of its mining and industrial base, plus the line of fortresses which were its principal defense against a German invasion.

President Benes was sure that the crisis could be resolved with “reason, goodwill, and mutual trust on both sides,” as Shirer reports.  Running into Benes, Shirer wanted to rush up to him and say, “But Mr. President, you are dealing with gangsters, with Hitler and Goering!  You think they are capable of reason, goodwill, and trust?”  But Shirer “did not have the nerve and merely nodded a greeting.”

One of Hitler’s tactics was, of course, to promote race hatred.  A Goering speech put it like this:  “A petty segment of Europe is harassing human beings . . . This miserable pygmy race [the Czechs] without culture – no one knows where it came from – is oppressing a cultured people [the Sudeten Germans] and behind it is Moscow and the eternal mask of the Jew devil.”

The Nazis proceeded to foment riots in Czechoslovakia and a war fever at home by continual lies about oppressions and atrocities supposedly perpetrated against the Sudeten Germans.  Benes thought he could get help from the French and the British.  The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, caved to Hitler’s demands – quite infamously – giving a rich and poignant example of the word appeasement henceforth in world history.  The British parliament backed up Chamberlain resoundingly, to assure “peace with honor,” as Chamberlain put it.

Benes was willing to cede the Sudetenland, in the end, but that’s not what Hitler wanted.  He wanted it all.  And he got it.

When WW2 broke out, Churchill replaced Chamberlain as PM.  At the time of the British betrayal of Czechoslovakia, Churchill said to Chamberlain, “You were given  the choice between war and dishonor.  You chose dishonor and you will have war.”

Shirer was convinced at the time that if Britain and France had stood strong in 1938, Hitler would have been overthrown, or if the Nazis had invaded Czechoslovakia, Russia would have joined the West and together would have crushed the Nazis.  The German generals were doubtful that they could break through the Czech fortifications, and the French army outnumbered the Germans ten to one on their borders.  The Czechs had 35 well-armed divisions which would have at least partially crippled the German army even without help . . . but these divisions were never used.  At Nuremberg, Field Marshal Fritz Erich von Manstein affirmed this assessment.

The time to stand against evil and tyranny is as soon as you recognize it.  Don’t just hope for the best as evil simply takes more and more.  As I draft this essay it is August 31, 2021.  The Taliban have just overrun their country and atrocities are multiplying.  Meanwhile the U.S. government is expressing hope that the Taliban will govern with equity and consideration for human rights and international norms.

After occupying Czechoslovakia Hitler held a party rally called, “The Party Convention of Peace,” assuring the world that he had no designs on any other nation.  At the same time he was directing secret plans for the invasion of Poland, scheduled for September 1, 1939, a schedule he kept.

Hitler celebrated his 50^th birthday (April 20, 1939) with a huge display of military hardware, with swarms of bombers, fighters, and Stuka dive bombers, plus heavy tanks and artillery.  Shirer was flummoxed that the German spectators cheered in frenzy as the weapons paraded by.  Hitler saluted unit after unit and gave the appearance of being at his peak of physical and psychological strength.  In 1937 Hitler told his military chiefs that it was important to use the army’s strength before obsolescence set in.  In 1939 Hitler was personally ready and the army was, too.  Hitler admitted privately that he much preferred war while he was an energetic 50 years of age, much more than when he might be 55 or 60.  And so world history turns on such personal drives.

Hitler proclaimed publicly that the time for a showdown was now, that Hitler had the complete confidence of the German people and enjoyed more authority than any man in history.  No self-esteem problem there!

The President of the United States, FDR, sent telegrams to Hitler asking for assurance that Germany would not invade its neighbors.  To satisfy FDR, Hitler’s Foreign Office demanded of several countries to profess whether they felt threatened.  Under some degree or other of intimidation, they provided testimony that they were content.  In a broadcasted speech Hitler declared that he had not called up a single new man to active duty and had not mobilized any troops.  But he had secretly been mobilizing for weeks and would be ready by September 1^st.

The Soviet foreign affairs minister, Maxim Litvinov, called for a pact joining the Soviets with France, Britain, Poland, Romania, and Turkey.  In a Commons speech, Churchill urged the Chamberlain government to accept the pact.  Chamberlain declined.  Litvinov was fired and replaced by Molotov.

Stalin was worried that France and Britain were content with the idea of Hitler expanding his empire eastward, threatening Russia.  This led quickly to the infamous pact between Stalin and Hitler that resulted in the destruction of Poland.

So, decisiveness matters.  Reality matters.  It appears that the Brits and the French had no idea that declining the pact with Stalin would result in freeing Hitler to attack west.

Hitler used the German  press and radio to stir up war fever against Poland, claiming that Poland threatened to bomb Danzig, a German-held city close to the border.  Last ditch appeals from France and Britain to avoid war were refused.  On the morning of September 1, 1939, war erupted as the German army and air force  crossed the Polish border, all the while Hitler explained to the world that Poland was the aggressor.  And the German people ate it up.

Although France and Britain declared war on Germany at this point, nothing happened on the western front.  The German general staff knew that the French army could cross the border with little opposition and threatened the Ruhr, the huge industrial centers of Germany.  Shirer:  “The failure of the French to act, when action might have quickly won the war, made, I believe a lasting impression on Hitler.  He knew that when he turned his weapons against France after consolidating Poland, he would face weak opposition, despite the numerical strength of the French army.”

In a press conference with Goering, Shirer marveled that Goering professed no concern that America would supply the West with weapons or even possibly join in the fight . . . despite what happened in WW1.  He didn’t take American military power seriously.  Once again, Goering violated the reality principle.

At Christmas Hitler and Stalin exchanged greetings and professions of friendship, a friendship between their peoples that would be “lasting and firm.”  At New Years Hitler proclaimed to the German people that the war was started by “Jewish reactionary warmongers in the capitalist democracies.”  Thus he explicitly distinguishes his rule from both capitalism and democracy.

In his diary Shirer once again expressed how depressing it was to see a people so easily deceived.

In April Hitler invaded and occupied the neutral countries Denmark and Norway.

In the first few days of May, and even right up through May 9^th, Hitler’s team generated headlines like, “CHAMBERLAIN, THE AGGRESSOR.  ALLIED PLANS FOR NEW AGGRESSION.”  And “BRITAIN PLOTS TO SPREAD THE WAR!”  On Friday, May 10, 1940, German troops poured across the Dutch, Belgian, and Luxembourg borders.  The Nazi Foreign Office called those three ambassadors in to explain that the Germans were protecting their countries from attacks from France and Britain and if they offered any resistance they would be crushed.  Shirer:  “That afternoon the Berlin newspapers carried large headlines dubbing as “shameful” the protests of Belgium and Holland against being invaded.

How do tyrants and tyrant-wannabes get away with so many big lies?  Why do ‘ordinary’ people believe them so much?  Most ‘ordinary’ people still have a functioning conscience and find it hard to imagine that leaders would lie so brazenly, so publicly.  If they buy into the lies long enough, liberty is crushed and it doesn’t matter whether anyone believes the lies anymore.

On June 19^th after the low countries and France had fallen, Hitler arranged to have the French humiliated by conducting the surrender ceremony in the same railcar that Marshall Foch used on November 11, 1918, to force the armistice concluding WW1, which was effectively a surrender of the Germans, considering the terms they were forced to accept.  To obtain the car German engineers had to rip it out of a museum and transport it to a field in Compiegne Forest, the exact spot of the WW1 armistice.  Hitler had his sweet revenge.

When Hitler arrived he was furious to discover a granite memorial celebrating where “. . . THE CRIMINAL PRIDE OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE [was] VANQUISHED BY THE FREE PEOPLE WHICH IT TRIED TO ENSLAVE.”  The memorial was blown up three days later.

Perhaps the most odious (to Shirer) of the surrender demands was that France return all refugees who had fled Nazi tyranny, including Jews and socialists.  Two notable German Socialist leaders who had opposed Hitler years before were captured in the days to follow, brought to Berlin and axed to death.

Shirer has much to say about the Battle of Britain, Hitler and Goering’s attempt to bomb Britain into submission so the Germans could avoid outright invasion – although for the next year Churchill and his nation were convinced that invasion was imminent.  Hitler’s grand strategic goal was to crush Stalin and the Soviets.  It would have been enough to merely subjugate Britain.  Of course, with Churchill at the helm, Britain would not quit.  I hope to publish an essay on aspects of Churchill’s character and determination based on a book about this critical year.  Hopefully, I’ll post this in a few months . . . if the rapture does not intervene.

Of course the Germans wanted  the Brits to believe that invasion was imminent. And they would have invaded if they had won the Battle of Britain.  Crushing the British air force would have allowed the Wehrmacht to cross the Channel virtually unopposed, if Britain still proved stubborn.  But God spared western civilization – for a time – by the outcome of that battle.

Shirer was an American journalist and America was still a year and a half from entering the war, ostensibly a neutral nation, and Shirer has many accounts about German censorship and manipulation to constrain what the reporter would broadcast to America.  At one point they provided Shirer and other journalists briefings and tours to convince them that invasion was imminent, then arranged a phone line from Brussels to Berlin so he could report on what he had learned.

“We’ve got an excellent line for you to Berlin,” the radio man said.  “When do you want to broadcast?”

“And no censorship this time,” the army captain said.  “You are free to tell what you’ve seen the past few days.”

“I’m not broadcasting,” I said.

They seemed stunned.  Before they could regain their voices, I added:  “Gentleman, I appreciate your setting up the line to Berlin.  But I cannot use it.  I won’t be broadcasting . . . “

“And why not?” the radio official broke in to ask.

“Because I do not believe, from what I’ve seen, you’re going to invade, at least for now.”

The two Germans made some noises, but found no words.

“I do not expect you to allow me to say that,” I said.  “That would be a military secret.  But you must not expect me to broadcast what I don’t believe.”

Other networks dutifully complied with the opportunity, while Shirer’s bosses at CBS wondered what had happened to their reporter.  Shirer thought his job was at risk, but his integrity was proven by his prescience.  One of the fascinating aspects of Shirer’s wonderful book is his accounts of fencing with the Nazi propaganda ministries.

Throughout my life I have marveled at tyrants and corrupt political leaders, in the lies they use to cover up or to justify horrific actions . . . actions that they believe are righteous.  Yet this is a widespread human failing, a sin that springs from all of our deliberately wicked hearts.  It is simply more striking when perpetrated at the highest levels of our nations or cultures.  For example:

Shirer discovered that the Gestapo was systematically detaining and then executing “mentally deficient people.”  “The Nazis call them mercy deaths.”  A pastor who ran a large hospital for “feeble-minded” children was arrested because he refused to deliver up his more serious cases to the secret police.  Shortly after, his hospital was bombed – by the Gestapo, who claimed it was a British bombing raid.  That wasn’t the only time the Nazis bombed one of their own facilities, for convenience, and then blamed British bombers.

The ‘marvelous’ thing, then, is why don’t they simply proclaim boldly that they are ridding the world, justifiably, of the mentally disabled?  They certainly believe it’s the right thing to do, so why not boast of the righteousness of their policies?  On a grander scale, the Nazis hid both the fact and the scale of the Holocaust, despite their convictions that their murderous deeds were righteous.

Yet even the most wicked do understand the conscience that God has given all of us, even though their own conscience is perverted.  They know how everyone will see their actions and so they cover up or lie about what they do.  The same phenomenon occurs every day in America as Satan’s minions in government, media, education, and culture promote evil policies and make some phony justification, or simply deny that evil is occurring.

This is all related to the reality principle – Reality matters! – illustrated during a visit by the Soviet foreign minister, Molotov, to Ribbentrop.  The meeting was necessarily held in an underground shelter because of an ongoing British air raid.  Ribbentrop was going on, as he and Hitler had for two days, to Molotov how the British were beaten and how the Germans and Soviets could now plan how to divide up the British empire.

Molotov finally blurted out, “If that is so, why are we in this shelter, and whose are the bombs which fall?”

It was only a month later, on December 18, 1940, that Hitler “issued the most fateful war directive of his life:  The German armed forces must be prepared to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign before the end of the war against England.”  Thus began operation Barbarossa, which eventually destroyed the German armies.

In the summer of 1941, the apparent success of Barbarossa was so glorious, and the judgment of Hitler so out of touch with reality, that in September Hitler told the High Command to disband 40 infantry divisions, which he believed would no longer be needed.  On October 3 Hitler proclaimed from Berlin “that the enemy in the East has been struck down and will never rise again.”

He was wrong about the Brits and he was wrong about the Russians.  Arrogance can be a lethal flaw.

Shirer writes that his years in Berlin “deepened my comprehension of life on this earth:  its brutality, violence, chicanery, repression, hypocrisy, deceit, intolerance, senselessness . . . But I had also seen some beauty and meaning and fulfillment in men’s lives, some courage and fortitude in people, even some decency and honesty, and goodwill and tolerance in their relations to one another.”  He had attained “a tragic sense of life.”

It is sad that Shirer chose not to view world events through a Biblical lens, which truly makes sense of sin on both the small and the vast scales, that he had no sense of hope, both personally and prophetically, that there will be a day when the Lord Jesus reigns over a kingdom that displays peace, love, and righteousness, and that every man and woman will be judged – or will be delivered, forgiven, and granted mercy – for everything done under the sun.

At 3:30 p.m., Monday, April 30, 1945, just ten days after his 56^th birthday and just over twelve years since he became chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth as Soviet troops closed in on the Chancellory.  Eva Braun, his longtime mistress but now a bride just 24 hours before, took poison.

His last testament showed that he had learned nothing:  “I shall not fall into the hands of the enemy, who require a new spectacle presented by the Jews, to divert their hysterical masses.”  The Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, poisoned his six children, ages three to twelve, and then had an S.S. orderly shoot him and his wife, Magda.  Goebbels had just written about his children, “If they were old enough they would unreservedly agree with this decision.”

At the Nuremberg trials, observing Goering and twenty other Nazi leaders, Shirer was shocked at his first sight of them.  “How the mighty had fallen! . . . How common and mediocre they looked . . . these nondescript, little men, fidgeting nervously in their shabby garb . . . [these] were the ones who when last you saw them wielded such monstrous power . . . Gone was the arrogance, the insolence, the truculence.”  They had lost weight, Goering at least 80 pounds, had aged considerably, and looked bent and broken.

Shirer:  “Broken, miserable little men!”

But such temporal judgments are mere foreshadows of the final judgments of Revelation chapter 20 at God’s Great White Throne.  Truly, every knee shall bow and declare the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ and lament how they despised God’s offers of mercy and grace.

Adolf Hitler has often been used as an icon for someone who actually deserves Hell.  Multitudes of lost people don’t see themselves as headed for judgment, including good American citizens, churchgoers, faithful husbands and wives who are devoted to their families.  They see themselves as righteous in comparison with someone as vile as Hitler.  Perhaps this is true in some microscopic sense.  If you stand on top of a skyscraper you may be a little closer to the Andromeda galaxy than someone at street level.  But Heaven, too, is infinitely far away, unreachable but by God’s grace.

Our part, a genuine life-changing repentance, faith, and trust in the One who shed His blood for our sins and defeated death in the Resurrection, is open to all.  If you’re one of God’s redeemed, share the truth with someone else this week, whether they are obviously wicked or not, whether powerful in this world or not, whether polite and pleasant or not.  If need be, warn them that they don’t want to share the Final Destination of the infamously wicked of this world, including Adolf Hitler, but they will do just that, if they don’t get in touch with reality.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

 

** Much of the quoted material in the introduction up to this point I gleaned from Lawrence Reed’s article, “What the Nazis Had in Common With Every Other Collectivist Regime in the 20^th Century,” in The Epoch Times, Aug 4-10, 2021.  I heartily recommend that you subscribe to this weekly newspaper.

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170. How are American churches doing?
May 1, 2022

He was visiting an underground church in China, marveling at how the young people prayed so passionately, praying for God to send them to the most dangerous places, expecting to die as martyrs.  He kept asking for more stories of their witness under persecution.  Finally, they asked him why he was so intrigued.  Well, the church in America is nothing like this!  He was embarrassed to explain how people attend 90-minute services once per week in a comfortable, air-conditioned building, how people switch churches for better music or more exciting programs for their kids.

They began to laugh, and laugh hysterically.  They found it ridiculous that we could start with the same Bible and then create a “church” so completely different.

Another time, he talked to a pastor from the Philippines who used to send missionary candidates to the U.S. for Bible training.  But they didn’t come back!  America was too comfortable and it was too easy to find a comfortable salaried position on a church staff.  That pastor stopped sending his people to America.

These and other experiences led Francis Chan to a drastically different perspective on what church is all about, as he describes in his 2018 book, Letters to the Church.  In this essay I will pull out a few nuggets, as I usually do, and offer some comments.  This is NOT a careful assessment of Francis Chan’s theology or practice, whether he’s the ‘real deal’ or not, and it’s certainly not an assessment of how his new work in San Francisco is going.  I simply don’t know.  But I resonate with many of his ideas and that’s what I believe is important, especially whether those ideas are in sync with the New Testament, wherein we find God’s prescription for the church.

Chan offers a thought experiment.  Imagine you’re stranded on an island with nothing but a Bible.  You know nothing of Christianity, but begin to read, carefully.  In the end, “how would you imagine a church to function?”  Now, open your eyes and “think about your current church experience.  Is it even close?”  Furthermore, “Can you live with that?”

Around 2010, Francis left his megachurch pastorate at Cornerstone Church, Simi Valley, California.  He and his wife had started that church in their living room in 1994 at age 26.  Later he started a college, wrote bestselling books, and developed a huge podcast following.  But then he walked away and moved his family to Asia for several years.

When he launched Cornerstone, his goal was to build the kind of church he wanted to be part of.  First, he wanted everyone to sing directly to God, with reverence, with emotion, not going through the motions.  Second, he wanted everyone to “really hear the Word of God . . . to dig deeply into Scripture – even the passages that contradicted our logic and desires . . . and I wanted us to take it seriously.”  His preaching and teaching were verse by verse through the Bible.

Finally, he “wanted all of us to live holy lives.”  James 1:22 – “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.”  He wanted everyone to help and challenge each other toward action, “expecting change.”

Over the years good things happened and the church grew, enormously.  But, “I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was still missing.”  There was too much dependence on one person . . . Francis.  He was distressed that too many people came to hear Francis Chan, and not experience the moving of the Holy Spirit.

“I saw a few other people and me using our gifts, while thousands came and sat in the sanctuary for an hour and a half and then went home.  The way we had structured the church was stunting people’s growth, and the whole body was weaker for it.”

In the book Francis describes a variety of things they tried in order to shift the culture.  Finally, he left and moved his family to Asia and was able “to see a glimpse of what the church could be and the power it could have.”  He felt God leading him to start over in America and plant a church on New Testament principles.

Francis laments our social media culture, where young people speak quickly and loudly to be heard, where offense is taken quickly and sharply; whereas the Bible commands us to be “swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath” (James 1:19) and, “In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin:  but he that refraineth his lips is wise.”  (Prov 10:19)

The speed and tempo of the culture has penetrated the church and its people, in its “worship services” and in its lively, ‘exciting’ programs.  Yet . . . “Be still, and know that I am God:  I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.”  (Ps 46:10)  There must be time for the sacred, time for the thoughtful, time to insure that our words to each other and to the world are grounded in Scriptural truth, and clothed in compassion and grace.

Francis envisions the privilege the redeemed will have in Revelation 5:13 (look it up), suggesting that those who are accustomed to being god over their own blogs and Twitter accounts, who have built their own shrines on Facebook and Instagram, may despise the reality of God’s glory and the joy we will have in sharing it . . . according to God’s plan.  I would go further and claim that the self-glorification of the social media culture works viciously against the need for humility, repentance, and saving faith that will mean the difference between Heaven and Hell for multitudes of young people.

Francis Chan:  “Heavenly beings are shocked by God’s church, while many on earth yawn.”  The early church didn’t have the sound systems, pop music, and winsomely educated and carefully coiffed leaders that we see today, but somehow they reached the world with the Gospel and lived lives of holiness foreign to our pampered sensibilities.  Francis confesses to having been part of the problem, training “people to become addicted to lesser things.  We have cheapened something sacred, and we must repent.”

He suggests you imagine that you walk into a restaurant and order a steak.  Later, the waiter delivers you a plate full of what he assures you is the best spaghetti you’ll ever eat.  Are you content?  How big a tip do you leave?

Analogously, God gave us an ‘order’ for how to do church.  We think we have better ideas.  After all, what design would please us more?  What will attract more people?  Francis does an exercise when he meets with church leaders, asking them what people expect from their church.  The list typically includes a great music service, exciting age-group programs, compelling sermons, a clean building, childcare, etc.

In turn, he offers them Scriptural commands like, “love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:12), “visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction” (James 1:27), “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them . . .” (Matthew 28:19), and “Bear ye one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2).

I have noticed over the years that many churches, including megachurches, have a wealth of resources and programs, some listing over one hundred ‘ministries’ on their web site, but having no evangelistic outreach to their community at all.  (Local charitable programs don’t count if the volunteers never share the Gospel, which is usually the case.)

Francis notes that Scripture says nothing about a senior pastor delivering a 40-minute sermon on Sunday.  He particularly laments that the most vocal members of churches, those with the most complaints or suggestions about music, youth ministry, etc., “have not shared their faith in months (or years) and couldn’t care less about making disciples of the billions of people who have no idea who Jesus is!”

Those billions include the vast majority of Americans who do not know the most basic truths about the Gospel.  Ask most Americans – the ones who believe that God exists – what they must do to quality for Heaven and avoid Hell and they will tell you that they live a good enough life.  I experience this every time I knock doors to share the Gospel, even in “Bible-belt” country.

Church attendance in America, Francis observes, is in decline with respect to the growth of the population.  The temptation of salaried pastoral staff, who depend on that cha-ching every Sunday, is to make church more popular and more comfortable.  Despite appearances, it’s a losing game, because it is God’s enterprise.  He judges the ‘game’ by New Testament rules.

Alan Hirsch talked about his experience in building an Australian megachurch:  “If you have to use marketing and the lures of entertainment to attract people, then you will have to keep them there on the same principle . . . it gets harder year after year.”

As with young children, if you continually respond to their wants and their whining, you will only magnify the behavior you reward.  Francis sees multitudes of churchgoers “who genuinely believe their unhappiness is the church’s fault!” The bigger problem, as I see it, is that these multitudes are still unsaved and are being coddled along the road to Hell.

When does a megachurch deliver the news that sin condemns, that the sinner must humble himself, repent, trust Christ, and get a new heart, a new attitude, new behavior, sacrificial love for others, and a zeal and a practice of reaching out to others with the same news?  Francis concludes, “I fear we have created human-centered churches.”

In the book of Acts we see the early Christians devoted to prayer, evangelism, teaching (discipleship), fellowship, and taking care of their own who needed help.  What we do not see are strategy sessions and marketing campaigns to get people ‘interested.’

But if we just do what the early Christians did, especially in these modern times, our churches might be small!  Yep, but they might consist of genuine and fervent born again believers.  But how are we going to take our city or our country for Christ?!?  We’re not.  The last days of this age are days of apostasy and wickedness.  Just look around.  This is ‘lifeboat’ time.  Individuals can still be saved, but only if genuine Christians proclaim a Biblical Gospel – no sugarcoating.

As Francis observes, “Not everyone is interested in God.  We just need to make sure that it’s really God we are putting on display.”  We are not trying to win them over to us or to simply attract them to a great ‘show.’  We are looking to make genuine, blood-bought converts who will, in their turn, live right and reach out to the lost around them.

A friend from India drove Francis to a speaking engagement in Dallas.  When ‘the show’ started he said, “You Americans are funny.  You won’t show up unless there’s a good speaker or band.  In India, people get excited just to pray.”  His fellow believers in India loved sharing the Lord’s supper and they flocked to simple prayer gatherings.  Francis writes, “It’s embarrassing.”

Francis sees more commitment in criminal gangs.  A gang member knows “his homies have his back.”  In most churches, though, you have as much connection with your “spiritual family” as those who might attend the same movie theater as you.

This is intentional, though.  It’s safe for the salaried clergy.  If you have a dozen people meeting in a house church, you can’t hide from each other.  You will get to know your Christian brothers and sisters and they will get to know you.  It is far more comfortable for almost every American Christian to sit anonymously and passively in a crowd, and then return to the important things in life – sports, social media, work, entertainment, whatever stimulates the carnal senses.

Francis asks when are we going to take the Scriptural commands of unity and love for the brethren seriously, “where we meet one another’s needs and care for one another regardless of the time or effort required.”  I believe it will never happen ‘top-down.’  The clergy class cannot handle the concept.  For the people in the church to enjoy true interactive and caring fellowship means loss of scripted control for the salaried clergy.  Indeed, who needs salaried clergy when the brothers and sisters take responsibility for building up one another?  So it was in the early churches, but no more.

I share his perspective that most churchgoers come as consumers, not servants.  It seems natural to put money in the basket to pay for the facility and the staff salaries, so the staff can put on the program.  I summarize this as “show up, shut up, and pay up.”  Francis:  “It’s not what God wanted, but it works.”  Well, it ‘works’ only in superficial appearance.  If God is not in it, there is no eternal value.

Regarding the consumer attitude:  “Takers are the most miserable people on earth.”  In startling contrast he supposes, “Have you ever been in a room filled with humble people who count others more significant than themselves? . . . Everyone is built up.”

God’s purpose for the leaders in a church is to use their gifts to develop the gifts and service and leadership abilities of everyone else in the church.  Build and replicate.  A leader in God’s church, no matter how talented, is in rebellion if he is the performer, the one on stage, the one people come to see, the one everyone marvels at.  Ugghh!!  “Then we wonder why we, the people, aren’t developing.”

At the time he wrote the book, Francis Chan reports that in his house church network in San Francisco there are about forty pastors – all work other jobs, none are paid by the church.  All their training has been on-the-job from the elders.  “Every church should be equipping people and sending them out.  Unfortunately, the trend is the opposite.  We send out want ads, asking for pastors to come serve at our churches.  Some churches even hire professional headhunters to find pastors for them.  Rather than sending, we are recruiting.  This has become normal.”

Those who are ‘recruited’ are hirelings, are they not?  Jesus had something to say about hirelings in John chapter 10.

Francis:  “I can’t tell you how much freedom I feel now that I’m ministering in a church with no salaries and no potential for any of us to be pastoring a large church.”  Once one of their house churches exceeds twenty people, they divide and multiply.

When Francis was in China he was deeply affected by what a local pastor said:  “In America, pastors think they have to become famous to have a big impact.  In China, the most influential Christian leaders had to be the most hidden.”  By the way, if you haven’t read Randy Alcorn’s novel, Safely Home, which describes the underground church in China, get yourself a copy quickly, and then several more for people you know.

A pastor in India told Francis that the biggest mistakes he had made were when he allowed people into leadership who were not humble.  So now he consistently looks for people who are humble and who desire to know Jesus deeply.

I might also mention the epidemic in the western churches of pastors who acquire the title of “Dr.”  Many of these are honorary, and so not even earned.  Yet many of the earned doctorates entail academic efforts that are pitiful in comparison to earning a typical secular Ph.D.  But why the lust for the world’s title?  Isn’t ‘brother’ enough?

I resonate deeply with Francis’ prescription for solving annoying people problems in a church, for resolving self-centered fussing . . . “The answer is not just telling them to stop being so selfish.  Pastors need to engage them in helping the lost and desperate around the world.”  I’ve seen that everywhere I’ve gone in America, churches with an internal, satisfy-the-customer mindset while their neighbors go to Hell.  Frankly, most of the membership is one heartbeat from Hell, and they are never warned.

Suffering is woven into the history of early Christians, and into the experiences of Christians throughout the world today.  It hasn’t hit America, but suffering is on its way.  Francis reports that a house church in Iran has new believers sign a written statement that they understand they are likely to lose their property, be jailed, and even martyred for their faith.  Fellowship in such a church has a different quality than what we experience here.

In China, Francis marveled at the stories he heard in an underground church . . . people would hide in the walls when the police raided them, some had narrowly avoided gunshots.  There was much laughter at how God had preserved them.  They expected persecution.  They embraced suffering.  Acts 5:40-42.

I regularly hear accounts of wondrous events displaying God’s power . . . overseas, not in America.  Francis writes of an evangelistic ministry in Africa, in which children travel to villages too dangerous for adult missionaries, who have been killed for sharing the Gospel.  In one village a great spiritual darkness reigned, with village children dying mysteriously every week.  The missionary kids stayed and prayed for hours, then shared the Gospel.  The deaths ended.  Many became Christians.

Francis:  “Don’t you find it even a bit discouraging that these kids are transforming villages while our kids are watching puppet shows on Jonah and learning songs with hand motions?”

Isn’t the Holy Spirit capable of doing more in America?  But the vast majority of Christians are content to watch the weekly Sunday show, put on by the talented few, the salaried elite.

In the New Testament we find that the followers of Jesus began immediately to reach out to people around them, to lead them to the Savior.  Within months the Lord sent out 70, two by two, on an evangelistic trip throughout the land.  Going out was part of their initial training.  Yet today ‘saints’ who have attended church for decades are still too timid to reach out to their neighbors or co-workers or people they cross paths with on their errands . . . most won’t even include a Gospel tract with the candy they give to trick-or-treaters who walk right up to their door, asking them for a gift.

I do heartily recommend the book Letters to the Church.  I expect that it will encourage and challenge you.  Have you noticed the world is spiraling toward a certain prophetic climax?  Our days are short and precious on this Earth.  I hope you are working to make your days count for eternity.  Please check out my ‘church’ essays in the Discipleship section of this site – those are the ones with the word “church” somewhere in the title.  And, especially, check out my essays in the Evangelism section.  Then get busy.  And let me know how it’s going.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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171. Benedict’s Option
June 1, 2022

In 2005 sociologists Smith and Denton surveyed American teenagers on their religious and spiritual beliefs.  They found that most teenagers subscribed to a mushy set of beliefs that the researchers termed Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD), which is summarized in 5 points:

• Some God exists who created the world and watches over us.
• God wants people to be good and to be nice to each other.
• The chief goal of life is to be happy and have high self-esteem.
• God need not be involved in your life unless you want Him to solve a problem.
• If you’re good, you go to Heaven when you die.

Rod Dreher summarizes the consequences of MTD in his book, The Benedict Option:  A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (2018).  It’s not that MTD is entirely wrong, but that its focus is self, happiness, and simply getting along with others.  MTD is antithetical to Biblical Christianity, though, “which teaches repentance, self-sacrificial love, and purity of heart, and commends suffering – the Way of the Cross – as the pathway to God.”  In short, Dreher explains, MTD is “the natural religion of a culture that worships the Self and material comfort.”

I agree.   Just knock doors in your neighborhood and talk to folks about what they see as the point of life, what God expects out of them, and – particularly – whether they see themselves as ‘good people’ deserving of Heaven.

Dreher further reports  that in a 2011 followup survey, a remarkable 61 percent of young adults saw nothing immoral about a life devoted to materialism and consumerism.  Another 30 percent had some qualms but “figured it was not worth worrying about.”  Smith and his team concluded, “all that society is, apparently, is a collection of autonomous individuals out to enjoy life.”

In this essay I’ll pull out nuggets from Dreher’s book in which he does far more than criticize our culture, but has definite strategies he thinks Christians should employ for living in a post-Christian nation.  A caveat on Dreher – he was, apparently, raised Roman Catholic, but converted to an Eastern Orthodox faith.  He lives in Louisiana as part of an Orthodox church and expresses himself often from an evangelical point of view.  Exactly what his salvation theology is . . . I don’t know.  We’ll just focus on the book’s ideas.

Dreher sees the destruction of American culture as irreversible.  I would agree by considering that the pervasive hot-button topics include transgenderism, abortion, open borders, critical race theory, and several others.  Nobody even discusses anymore the issues of gay marriage, unbounded immorality, and internet pornography.  Furthermore, all political issues today are framed by racism.  The ‘conservative’ forces in the country mostly talk about upcoming elections.  And the churches continue to be content with their low-content, passive ‘worship services’ each week.

The culture has been lost and there are no countervailing forces that line up with Biblical morality, or the Great Commission as an offensive strategy to make a difference with God’s help.  Who is calling for national repentance and begging for God’s help for our country?  Additionally, there remains no open public square as debate is suppressed and ‘rebels’ are punished or cancelled.

Dreher’s argument is that Christians should face the reality that the culture is indefinitely lost, that we shouldn’t waste time and resources on unwinnable political battles, and that we should build our own communities and networks to “outwit, outlast, and eventually overcome the occupation.”

So, don’t think in terms of survivalists hiding in the mountains, or isolated monks in monasteries, but rather think in terms of vibrant churches,  home school networks, and associations with like-minded, mutual encouragers.

Dreher’s book spins off of the life of Benedict, a Roman of the early 6^th century, after the Visigoths had sacked Rome many years before.  Benedict was shocked and disgusted when he visited Rome and observed widespread vice and corruption.  Despite his opportunity to live a privileged life in the upper class, he moved to a cave about 40 miles east to begin a life of prayer and meditation.  Supported by a local monastery for the necessities of life, he eventually joined the monastery for a time before establishing his own.

Benedict established “rules” for Christian living, a training manual, oriented toward practical service in the local community.  Benedict’s monasteries worked to evangelize locals, to disciple them, to teach them to read and plant crops and build useful stuff in the midst of a crumbling and chaotic and decadent empire.

Now, I won’t try to unpack Benedict’s theology in this story.  That’s not the point of this essay, which is primarily to think about what strategies that Christians might employ – together – to effectively grow in spiritual maturity and to be a Gospel light to the lost world in which we live.  I would suggest that modern evangelical and fundamentalist churches are woefully inadequate to the challenge.  (See my many “church” essays in the Discipleship section of this site.)

Dreher notes that philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre likens present Western culture to the fall of the Roman Empire.  The West is governed by neither faith nor reason, but by emotivism:  moral choices are merely what individuals feel like doing.

When a society transitions to ‘post-virtue,’ it will consist primarily of strangers who have no local support structures, and look to their autocratic leaders for big decisions.  To achieve this Marxist utopia, objective moral standards have been abandoned, any religion that claims to be right is condemned, history is irrelevant, and local social obligations are dissolved.

Dreher sees this societal state as barbarism. “Our scientists, our judges, our princes, our scholars, and our scribes – they are at work demolishing the faith, the family, gender, even what it means to be human.”  Don’t be fooled by their smart phones and designer suits, he warns.  Their hearts are the same as those of their forebears who wore animal pelts and wielded spears.

What Dreher recommends as the Benedict Option, is for Christians to focus on families, on prayer, on building churches and private or home schools.  Invest in these rather than on partisan politics.  I would add a focus on 1-2-1 Gospel witnessing, the Great Commission, because the BIG issue with 98% of those around us is that they are lost and need to be saved and to embrace a Biblical worldview.  Further, the Christian cannot be obedient to his Savior unless he is about what Jesus was about, the saving of souls.  Almost all evangelical and even house churches – in practice – despise the Great Commission, and of those very few who have some life, only a miniscule fraction of their people lift a finger to give out a Gospel tract or share the truth verbally with someone outside their own family.

Dreher offers an interesting analysis of the history that led the West to our current state.  I won’t attempt to summarize it, but will mention a few points.  Sigmund Freud, the ‘founder of psychoanalysis’, namely talk-therapy, was a fervent atheist who “proclaimed the Self as a deity to replace the Christian religion.”  Religion, to Freud, was a man-made coping mechanism, a non-existent source for meaning.  He taught that Self-fulfillment should be your life’s goal.

Sociologist Philip Rieff described the shift in perspective that Freud helped inflict upon Western consciousness:  “Religious man was born to be saved.  Psychological man is born to be pleased.”

Dreher sees the 1960s as the period when Psychological Man began to dominate . . . “and now owns the culture – including most churches – as surely as the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, and other conquering peoples owned the remains of the Western Roman Empire.”  The result is a culture now built on the absence of belief in anything or anyone transcendent, in fact, an “anti-culture” that is intrinsically unstable.  As the Roman Empire declined, Augustine described his nation as preoccupied with pleasure-seeking and selfishness.

Consider just some of the fruits of this shift:  Abortion kills nearly a million babies annually in the U.S., for the convenience of Self.  Sexual immorality is so rampant it is not even discussed anymore outside of particularly conservative churches – and sex in our anti-culture is disconnected from marriage, from love and commitment, and from responsibility.

In the 1992 Supreme Court decision, Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, reaffirming abortion rights, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”  Then why do we need judges at all?  Aren’t laws just an imposition of one person’s morality onto another?  How dare you judge that any mass murderer or child molester is wrong, since he can define his own existence and pursue his own meaning with complete autonomy?

Dreher anticipates difficult times ahead for serious (genuine) Christians.  He recommends we embrace a God-centered view of work.   Certain professions will become closed to Christians who are open about their faith, namely all genuine Christians.  Some will lose jobs.  If we have the perspective that we are serving God and doing His will in the work that provides our sustenance, we can more readily adapt.  For example, as I see it, if we are really focused on God’s will above all, then it matters little how we make a living or how luxuriously we live.  Namely, it’s not about careerism, but about making a living and a life that counts in God’s sight.

Dreher on restricted opportunities:  “It’s hard for contemporary believers to imagine, in part because we are Americans, we are unaccustomed to accepting limits on our ambitions . . . Many of us are not prepared to suffer deprivation for our faith.”

He asks us to consider why the Benedictines lived with reduced comfort, fasted often, and submitted to strict rules.  The principle was to reign in the passions of the human heart through disciplined living.  “Asceticism is an antidote to the poison of self-centeredness common in our culture, which teaches us that satisfying our own desires is the key to the good life . . . Ascetical practices train body and soul to put God above self.”

“We expect our religion to be comfortable.  Suffering doesn’t make sense to us.”  We can see this in the design and practice of evangelical churches everywhere.  Where is the burden?  Where is the seriousness?  Where is the sacrifice?

I (Dr. Dave) am not recommending monastical life.  Frankly, neither is Dreher.  Yet  as America and the West implode we may well see our standard of living reduced dramatically.  It would be good to be aware of – and embrace – Biblical priorities.  On my own part, as America looks into the abyss I do not pray for economic restoration and I pray only occasionally for the quick return of the Lord Jesus – I figure that the timing of the Rapture will not be influenced by my prayers.  What I do pray for is that the Lord use these present circumstances to provoke repentance and saving faith among the lost and that He provokes more Christians to share the Gospel Biblically and boldly (Matthew 9:35-38).

Dreher has some political commentary, noting that the 2016 election of Donald Trump occurred with the support of Catholics and Evangelicals:  “The idea that someone as robustly vulgar, fiercely combative, and morally compromised as Trump will be an avatar for the restoration of Christian morality and social unity is beyond delusional.  He is not a solution to the problem of America’s cultural decline, but a symptom of it.”  He goes on to say that Christian conservatives are politically homeless, although most don’t see it, trying to keep hope alive via Republican politics.

Sure, I’ll continue to vote for the least worst candidates, which cannot conceivably be Democrats.  But voting is a trivial matter compared to an active daily and weekly witness for truth and, especially, Gospel truth conveyed personally to those around us.  What if a thousand Christians in your community determined to get out at least 100 tracts per week?  It would certainly change the conversation in your area and would likely result in at least some conversions.  Would there be controversy?  Yes.  That would be a good thing.  People might finally start thinking and talking about what matters.

The Great Commission is the Christian’s sword and shield in the spiritual war we find ourselves in.  It’s the only way to play both offense and defense.  Are you on the field?

Dreher:  “Trying to reclaim our lost influence (politically) will be a waste of energy or worse, if the financial and other resources that could have been dedicated to building alternative institutions for the long resistance went instead to making a doomed attempt to hold on to power.”

Institutions worthy of investment are few and local:  family and church must head the list.  Ministries must be local with a Gospel focus.  Putting energy into local politics may be feasible if there are enough people of like mind to elect officials with integrity, especially those that control the police force and the courts . . . in order to preserve some measures of liberty.

Vaclav Benda was a Czech dissident under Communist rule.  He was convinced that Communist tyranny was maintained by isolating people, by fragmenting their social bonds.  “Benda did not advocate retreat to a Christian ghetto.”  Rather he saw the need for people to bond together within the culture and work to speak truth into the culture.  Of course, the New Testament local church was designed by God precisely with this in mind!  Yet we Americans design and support churches whose practice is in disastrous violation of this principle.

Dreher warns that to speak truth into a politically oppressive woke culture will require courage and doubtless entail suffering and sacrifice.  It would be good if we had Christians around us when the adversary brings the hammer.

In all these areas, unfortunately, Dreher has too much of a rose-colored glasses perspective on the Roman Catholic Church which, throughout history, was the chief oppressor of Bible-believing Christians, especially in Europe.  But, like I said before, we can cull some of his ideas and approach / apply them Biblically.

A helpful point the author makes is that you cannot expect a Christian approach to these problems to ‘work’ politically.  It might, given enough time.  Tyrannies have been overthrown and revivals have occurred in history.  But it might not.  There is a long history of martyrs, and some tyrannies have lasted from decades to centuries.  The main thing is to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do.  Namely, do God’s will and despise the temporal consequences, with an assured hope that God will take care of the eternal consequences.

Some specifics he offers on seceding from cultural wickedness:  “Turn off the television.  Put the smartphone away.  Read books.  Play games.  Make music.  Feast with your neighbors . . . Start a church, or a group within your church.  Open a classical Christian school, or join and strengthen one that exists.  Plant a garden, and participate in a local farmer’s market.  Teach kids how to play music . . . Join the volunteer fire department.”

Dreher has a lot to say about weakness in the churches.  Some of his solutions are non-starters, though, including a return to emphasis on liturgical services.  But he does see that the superficiality of evangelical churches opens the door for an unregenerate membership and a mostly anything-goes sexual immorality, with an accompanying divorce rate that is exponential.

A teenaged evangelical told Dreher that she dropped out of her local chapter of a Christian paragroup ministry because of her peers smoking, drinking, and having sex.  “Honestly, I would rather hang out with the kids who don’t believe,” she told him.  “They accept me even though they know I’m a believer.  At least around them, I know what being a Christian really is.”

Dreher:  “A church that looks and talks and sounds just like the world has no reason to exist.”  Amen.

Dreher also warns about retreating into an isolated family life, which often produces cult-like behavior.  Over-sheltering the kids prevents them from building spiritual strength to do something useful – for God – in the world when they grow up.  Most kids in these scenarios lose it when they move out, diving into sin and rejecting a Christian faith they never did understand.

On the other hand, Dreher is among the courageous few who boldly challenge parents to pull their kids out of the public schools!  “Provide them with an education that is rightly ordered – that is, one based on the premise that there is a God-given, unified structure to reality and that it is discoverable.  They need to teach them Scripture and history.  And they should not stop after twelfth grade – a Christian plan for higher education is also needed.”

I don’t want to elaborate here on the overwhelming evils perpetrated on children in the public school system.  I do marvel at how long it has taken for some small fraction of parents to become disturbed at the most egregious revelations on CRT and transgender recruitment in the schools.  I get the distinct impression that the most conservative of the politicians and pundits and parents in this country would be content if the public schools would just return to the level of immoral indoctrination of just a couple of years ago.

My wife and I, among a minority of Christian parents, pulled our kids out of the public school system decades ago.  If only the Christians would divest themselves from the public school system, the educational establishment would be disrupted and private and homeschooling systems would flourish – supportive networks would multiply and family finances would enjoy a quantum leap as money flows back from the system into the wallets of parents.  Dreher has a lot to say about schooling, including some stats:  Did you know that 20% of twelfth graders smoke pot at least once per month and that six out of ten seniors admit to having sexual intercourse?  I do recommend the book to you, especially for this section.

Since some career fields will be closed off to Christians in the years ahead, Dreher advises, “Be entrepreneurial . . . Identify a need in your community, develop an excellent product or service that fills that need, and then work at it with your whole heart.”  Also, we should use the business services offered by other Christians in our community, especially as the federal government colludes with giant corporations to crush independent small businesses.  This began to happen on a large scale during the pandemic.

Furthermore, don’t blindly commit to sending your children off to college.  A trade can provide a very comfortable living.  “Better to be a plumber with a clean conscience than a corporate lawyer with a compromised one.”

I’ll end here.  I encourage you to acquire the book, but to treat it like a smorgasbord – just select the good dishes and leave the rest.  Dreher, at least, provokes thought about how to face the emerging woke / Marxist reality in the West.  You may come up with different conclusions or strategies than he does . . . or than I do . . . but I submit it is vital to start thinking and acting.  Just begin with a Biblical, born again worldview.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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172. The Lost Art of Reading
July 1, 2022

“No individual can conceive or encounter everything in one lifetime, but through literature we learn from many lives . . . Literature multiplies experiential knowledge and shares timeless meaning.  Readers have the amazing opportunity to participate in humanity’s ongoing conversation.”

 This encouraging insight from Leland Ryken and Glenda Faye Mathes in their 2021 book, Recovering the Lost Art of Reading:  A Quest for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, should be the theme of English literature teachers throughout the West, assuming there are any left that love the classics and have avoided succumbing to today’s woke drivel.  I was blessed in my 1960s public high school by English teachers who unabashedly conveyed their passion for worthy classics.

In recommending Recovering for your reading pleasure, I’ll note that their conviction is that good books make you think and that the Bible has no peer on Earth in that category.  Furthermore, I’ve learned over the years that sound Biblical knowledge establishes a framework – a worldview – so we can discern, appreciate and sift the valuable nuggets from literature, while taking care to discard or, at least, to flag the fool’s gold.  It’s possible to enjoy some stories (even Hallmark movies) that have little value by working your discernment muscles to judge just how detached from reality the screewriters are!

So let’s pull some hopefully practical nuggets from Recovering . . .

The authors suggest that most people read more than ever, but on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc, and primarily on their smartphone.  How much personal joy or value is acquired in these hours?  “Kitten videos may be endearing but not enduring.”  Maybe we should work to balance our intellectual diets.

Their goal is to replace the perception of ‘reading as duty’ with ‘reading as delight.’  A 2018 study indicated that a quarter of American adults had not read a book (print or digital) in the previous year.  Worse, one out of five could not name an author – any author.

The most devoted readers are those over 75 years old, at 50 minutes per day.  No age group averages a single hour per day.  The average digital media consumption, however, is 6 hours per day.  That’s an average.  Many are glued to screens most of their waking hours.  The authors cite Nicholas Carr who writes about how the internet is changing our brains, profoundly and negatively.  “When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning.”

In contrast, Ryken & Mathes observe that “reading a book immerses oneself into an extensive work.  When this is done receptively and thoughtfully, it becomes artful reading.”  Carr:  “The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle . . . Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words.  Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”  Sven Birkerts sees a loss of depth and wisdom, defined as “the knowing not of facts but of truths about human nature and the processes of life.”

My wife and I have noticed this woeful deterioration in the scripts of modern movies, which seem to be written by juveniles for juveniles, exhibiting a warped view of human nature, especially regarding marriage, the raising of children, how to make a business successful, and what constitutes joy and lasting happiness.

These issues permeate not just modern literature, but also politics, education, and the culture.  For example:  There is a pattern in Hallmark movies wherein a budding romance gets derailed because one party gets offended, whether by genuinely bad behavior or a simple misunderstanding.  It then takes a while for the offended party to forgive the other.  What no one ever realizes is that unforgiveness is a sin in its own right, and persistent unforgiveness is a gross sin.  Our current culture celebrates offense and unforgiveness.  A Biblical persective on forgiveness is foreign to modern storytellers.

Ryken points out that moderns tend to avoid or to be embarrassed by an emphasis on such terms as truth, meaning, soul, and destiny.  The Christian sees this cultural collapse as Satanically inspired.  Distract people from timeless truths, truths that speak to who we are as image-bearers, to Whom we are accountable to in Judgment, and to the infinite stakes of eternal destiny and . . . well, the Gospel will be oh-so-easily scoffed at and the Christians will become ashamed of what they believe, lest they offend others with truth claims.

The authors remind us to find “the still small voice,” as in 1 Kings 19:12 and Psalm 46:10.  “We are called to quiet our souls and commune with God through an open Bible.”  Digital media fractures our focus.

In the material realm we may yearn for possessions that we have not acquired . . . it takes but little imagination.  In the spiritual realm, though, we are not likely to imagine what we have never been exposed to or looked for.  In An Experiment in Criticism, C. S. Lewis writes, “Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realized the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors.  We realize it best when we talk with an unliterary friend.  He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world.”

Lewis suggests that leisure time is the occasion not just for rest and restoration, but for learning, growing, and rediscovering the fullness of life.  Our culture has largely discarded contemplative reading which, Ryken asserts, was once the staple of leisure in the West.

Thoughtful reading allows us to transcend the drudgery of daily life and to focus on larger themes, including the spiritual.  We need to escape the mundane, but pay a price when we devote our leisure solely to trivialities.  God rested on the 7^th day to set a pattern for His image-bearers.  God intended for His people to embrace the transcendent each Sabbath.  The principle remains and is unlikely to be satisfied while staring at a screen.  Good literature “offers the power of transport, a holiday of the imagination and spirit.”

Ryken applies lessons from Francis Schaeffer when he recommends that as we read we should be cognizant of both our own worldview and that of the author, so we can interpret not just the prose we see, but what is between the lines.  We learn both from authors who share our worldview and from those who don’t.  Over the years, for example, I have read a considerable amount of evolutionary literature . . . know thine enemy.  This has benefited me greatly, but only because I was careful to know my Bible and to ground my science (which I have devoted much of my life to) in a Biblical worldview, before I dove into the Adversary’s arguments.  Given that grounding it is so easy to see the errors and fallacies in evolutionary fantasy.

Similarly, Ryken notes that as Christians we can “recognize ways that even harsh terrains reveal truth or goodness or beauty.”  “Harsh terrains” would include secular literature written by people who also live in God’s reality and have gained insights . . . or not, in some cases.

I have observed in modern fiction how often the anti-Christian authors ‘get it right.’  The lives of characters are wrecked by substance abuse, adultery destroys marriages, and uninhibited fornication produces obsession or even rage if a partner moves on.  This is all quite ironic because our culture glorifies sex without boundaries, along with substance abuse.  But when these elements are part of a story, the author typically recognizes the consequences of sin, just as if he had gotten his wisdom from God’s word.  On the positive side, the best secular stories usually recognize godly virtues, including honesty, self-sacrifice, and courage.

Ryken and Mathes observe that, “When we read imaginative literature artfully, we better understand ourselves and the meaning of life.  We identify with universal truths and emotiions, while becoming more aware of ourselves as unique individuals.  Such discoveries strum our heartstrings, reverberating humanity’s common chords.”

Nicely put.  This book is a very pleasant read!

The authors lament the degradation of literature within the universities.  They list a few typical course titles:  “The Politics of Hip-Hop;” “Digital Game Studies;” “The Art of Insult” – which could be substituted for a course in Shakespeare.  Ryken knows a student in a lit course that had no texts at all.  One exercise involved visiting a toy store to analyze gender-bias in packaging, followed by meeting at a gay bar.

If you’re a parent of a college student, you might review the course offerings before you pay the tuition.

Jesus’ parables are cited as brilliant examples of “show, don’t tell” in writing.  The parable of the Good Samaritan is offered as an answer to the question of an acerbic lawyer, “Who is my neighbor?”  Instead of a direct response, the story featured a robbery victim, heartless religious leaders, and a compassionate foreigner.  At the end Jesus was able to turn the question back to the lawyer, who was humbled enough to get it right and to hear the subsequent admonition.  Now that’s literature!

Newspapers tell us what happened, Ryken notes, while literature tells us what happens, namely, how the world works because of who we are and how our nature is wired.  Know the Bible and you’ll be closer to reality than those who don’t.

The authors attempt a definition of literature . . . “a concrete interpretive presentation of human experience in an artistic form.”  The art matters.  Beauty matters.  Well-written prose can be memorable and inspirational.  I have previously reviewed Leland Ryken’s book, The Word of God in English, in which he makes a strong case for the literary excellence of the KJV, in stark contrast to the watered-down expression typical of modern versions.  Of course, a Bible translation must also be faithful to the Hebrew and Greek of God’s prophets and apostles, but the modern versions fail woefully in that, too.

Ryken and Mathes ask, “Why does beauty matter?”  Answer:  Our spirits crave beauty.  The Bible begins with a beautiful creation and ends with a description of the wondrous New Jerusalem.  Beauty is part of God’s character and we are wired to recognize and to appreciate it.

The authors suggest a 3-part model representing the great issues of life:  reality, morality, and values.  We read fiction to enjoy a good story, but reflection will inform us regarding how faithful to reality the story tracked, whether the behavior of the characters reflected godly or ungodly morals, whether the story touched on things that matter, also on whether the characters acted in accord with what matters most.

They cite Bret Lott who explains to his college students what separates popular from literary fiction.  The first is driven by plot and intended for escape – it’s the equivalent of comfort food.  But literary fiction focuses on characters and “confronts us with who we are and makes us look deeply at the human condition.”

Lott, a Christian author, doesn’t avoid the harsh aspects of life in his writing, but is sure to include grace as a theme.  Good Christian fiction may well include page-turning action, but also engages the mind and emotions, and reflects God’s presence in a Biblically-realistic way.

Ryken cites an essay by Tolkien on the value of fantasy which, in its best form, simplifies the world with a heightened clarity about good vs. evil.  Tolkien warns of this age’s modern spirit which works to confuse good and evil.  This brings to mind the warning of Isaiah 5:20-23 where woe is pronounced against those that call evil ‘good’ and good ‘evil,’ that put darkness for light and light for darkness.  Modern culture is filled with inverted morality.

I have read The Lord of the Rings at least twice and I have read considerable sci-fi and fantasy over the years.  The more modern the writer the more confused the morality.  I have written before of the chivalry, self-sacrifice, and courage portrayed in E.E. Smith’s 6-book Lensman and 4-book Skylark series.  In the last 20 years there is little that comes close to the clarity that Tolkien admires except, perhaps, David Weber’s Safehold series.  For those that would suggest other novels that uphold ‘conservative’ values, I would recommend a quick examination regarding the author’s portrayal of sexuality and marriage, and whether there is any effort to resist profane dialogue.  It is not enough to support free markets and limited government.

Ryken notes that one critic of C. S. Lewis’ fantasies declared that lovers of these books must be either children or Christians.  Tellingly, this critic opined that those two groups “share one quality of imagination – a common willingness to extend reality beyond the visible.”  How sadly limited the worldview of an atheist!

Madelein L’Engle, who writes fantasy stories for children, notes that the world of fantasy “is inimical to the secular world, and in total opposition to it,” also that “in the Bible we are constantly being given glimpses of a reality quite different from that taught in school.”

On the charge that reading fantasy is escapism, Lewis points out that “all reading whatever is an escape.  It involves a temporary transference of the mind from our surroundings to things merely imagined or conceived.”  This includes history and science books along with fantasy or realistic novels.

Sci-fi writer Ursula LeGuin rejects the charge that “we who hobnob with hobbits and tell tales of little green men” are mere entertainers or escapists.  She views the imaginative details of fantasy as “precise and profound metaphors of the human condition.”  LeGuin notes that the classic tale of a scientist who creates a monster is entirely up to date in our present age.

Pablo Picasso extends the principle to all literature, art, and music:  “We all know that art is not [factual] truth.  Art is a lie [at the literal level] that makes us realize truth.”

The authors have much to say on children’s literature, which has been almost wholly corrupted in the last few generations.  Jill Carlson’s analysis shows that, “Novels which reveal God’s positive power are censored from library shelves.  Into this vacuum . . . authors pour a torrent of books offering a narrow spectrum of other ‘isms’ – rationalsim, occultism, and nihilism . . . In the name of diversity, our kids are offered books channeling them into a humanistic dead end.”

Teen fiction is overwhelmed with “real life” problems from the trivial to the traumatic, like sexual abuse.  Characters are portrayed as victims understood by no one, especially parents.  There is no God and if Christians are involved, they are shown negatively.  Language is often graphic.  David Mills describes most teen fiction as “tawdry and sometimes depraved,” appealing to the “worst in every teenager.”

Our authors highly recommend that parents read to their young children, a practice that develops language and literary skills and shapes emotional development.  “Reading aloud has potential for helping children be kinder, calmer, and more focused.”

On the idea of reading the Bible with a literary perspective, they note that the account of Cain’s life is covered in just 16 verses, yet illuminates such human experiences as “sibling conflict, domestic violence, harboring a grudge, feeling rejected, anger at getting caught, refusal to repent, . . . guilt, exile, and so on.”

Psalm 23 uses a poetic form and a shepherd metaphor to reveal truths on how to live life in sync with God.  Throughout Scripture we find “figures of speech, such as imagery, metaphor, simile, allusion, and personification.”  Consider the personification of wisdom in Proverbs chapter 8.

Ryken and Mathes:  “The Bible is one of the most copious anthologies of diverse literary genres and forms in the world, and their presence easily demonstrates that the Bible is a literary book.”  By the way, as Ryken shows in The Word of God in English, modern versions tend to destroy the literary quality of the Holy Spirit’s message by dumbing down language, destroying metaphors, and choosing specific interpretations where multiple meanings were intended.

On literature’s moral perspective, Ryken and Mathes observe that how sin is portrayed and whether consequences unfold will portray the author’s worldview, which is often intended to influence the reader.  Immoral literature recommends sin by making immoral acts attractive, portraying evil as something that brings satisfaction, and depicting immoral acts as normal or even irresistible.

As examples, Samuel Taylor Coleridge notes, “Shakespeare always makes vice odious and virtue admirable, while Beaumont and Fletcher do the very reverse – they ridicule virtue and encourage vice:  they pander to the lowest and basest passions of our nature.”

On beauty in literature, our authors write:  “A written work could be good and true, but without beauty it is not art.”  Defining beauty is difficult, but they suggest that we can use Scripture to see what God says about it, since He is the source of beauty and has made us in His image.  A word study using a concordance would be a simple way to begin.

Can Christians experience art more deeply than unbelievers?  I agree with the authors that the capacity is there, with the Holy Spirit indwelling and with the conviction that God, Heaven, and eternity transcend what we see in front of us – in fact, we can enjoy the ‘trigger’ that art provides to embrace the transcendent.

The same is true with science.  Unbelievers can do science, very well indeed.  But a believing scientist sees and marvels at the design and purpose filling all of creation.  An unbelieving scientist, for example, may quantify a cow’s physiology, milk production, fat content, and grazing habits, but a believing scientist understands what a cow’s purpose is, and is thankful for the cow’s Creator.

Clyde Kilby offers that the beauty of a Turner landscape painting contains a double beauty – the skill of the artist and the hand of a personal and loving God.

Artists and viewers can share both pleasure and expression.  Leo Tolstoy wrote, “Art is an activity by means of which one man, having experienced a feeling, intentionally transmits it to others.”

A few comments about some of the literature that I find especially beautiful . . .

The Psalms are rich in metaphors that deepen our understanding of God’s person, His mercy, patience, love, holiness, power, and judgment.  It is simply not enough to merely state that God is patient, loving, powerful, etc.  The marvelously diverse display of metaphors in the Psalms paints pictures to give us varied perspectives on who God is.  It’s easy to see how the great hymns of the last two centuries make use of metaphor, including explicitly Scriptural metaphor, to resonate deeply with the hearts of believers so that generation after generation is blessed by the best of these lyrics.  But it’s also so easy to see how CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) is often poor in metaphor, dumbing down the lyrics, insuring their forgettability.

Spurgeon’s sermons are perhaps the most metaphorical, and beautiful from a literary point of view.  He is often thought of as a brilliant preacher, but I would judge him as brilliant in expression.  John Wesley, on the other hand, was not so eloquent in expression, but was brilliant in analysis and application of doctrine.  Similarly, my favorite author is Francis A. Schaeffer, who is wonderfully rich in content, but not as brilliant in expression as Os Guinness, whose books are very pleasant to read.  I’ll also read any book written by John Lennox, although I don’t agree with him on everything, yet he makes his arguments so well, even when he is wrong, like on the age of the Earth.

Ryken and Mathes pose a typical question, “How in the world do I find more time to read?”  They cite Kevin Young’s impression of modern life as “unrelentingly filled up and stressed out.”

The answer is simple enough.  God prescribes a weekly rest for His image-bearers.  Just do it.  Even in the midst of a busy week, how do we find time to brush teeth or do laundry or whatever?  Well, we just prioritize those things and do it.  So . . . go ahead and prioritize rest breaks that include intellectual and spiritual refreshment via reading.  Just do it.  Everyone has far more discretionary time than they will admit.  No one makes us scroll Facebook for an hour or watch a football game for 3 hours or get hooked into a video game for __ hours.  The most insidious and vicious time thieves attack you through screens.  Figure it out and do something about it.

I recall a famous warrior who once said, “Do or do not.  There is no try.”

Ryken:  “How will you choose to spend each minute of what poet Mary Oliver calls ‘your one wild and precious life?”

The authors note that baseball fans have taken photos of Stephen King reading between innings at Red Sox games.  Often when I go for an exercise walk, I’ll take a stack of memory verses along with me.  I always take a book with me when I go to a medical or dental appointment.  At bedtime I typically read 3-5 pages of a serious book and then turn to a novel until it’s lights out.

Ryken and Mathes recommend audio books for traveling or exercising or doing mundane tasks.  But I, like them, “love the feel and smell of a physical book.”  You can mark up your own book, like I often do, once I got over the prohibitions of my youth.

They also encourage the reader to be picky.  “Put down a bad book!”  You don’t have to finish “poorly written, immoral, boring, or unhelpful books.”  Amen.

The best books can be read again and again.  I have read the Lensman series about once every five years since I was a teenager.  It’s the one time I could wish selective amnesia as I open the first book of the series.  I have read Schaeffer’s Complete Works twice.  I learned more the second time due to years of life experience between readings.  I’ve also read Feynman’s 3-volume Lectures on Physics twice, as I have Sargent, Scully, & Lamb’s Laser Physics, and Baierlein’s Thermal Physics – all are beautiful expositions of how God designed the underlying physical principles of His creation.

Also, at least twice, Rimmer’s The Last of the Giants, Guinness’ Impossible People, and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress . . . the last simply cannot be read just once.  And several others, but I’ve already made the point.  Ryken mentions that C. S. Lewis famously defined an unliterary person as someone who reads books only once.

Good literature is analogous to good music and good art, experiential, anticipatory . . . the resolution or climax is all the more satisfying.

I’ll close with one more C. S. Lewis quote our authors offer up:  “But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. . . . Here, as in worship, love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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173. Reimagining Apologetics
August 1, 2022

I’m 70 years old now, and have been engaged in 1-2-1 evangelism for most of my adult life.  I’ve tried a lot of approaches over the years, but eventually settled into patterns that I believe are Biblical and, therefore, in sync with the way the Lord Jesus would have me share the Gospel.  I’ve written extensively about this in the Evangelism section of this site and in the free e-books on this site.  The tracts I’ve designed (ThinkTracts.com) display my best attempts at combining different aspects of apologetics with a succinct Gospel challenge.

Yet I still experiment, as I do regularly when I take my grandsons out with me to knock doors in neighborhoods all over our area.  I don’t believe there is a ‘magic bullet’ in Gospel presentations, but I do accept my responsibility for making my best effort in reaching the fellow I’m talking to, all the while asking God for guidance and trusting Him to do the BIG work of touching the conscience and mind, convicting the heart and will.

I recently read Justin Ariel Bailey’s 2021 book, Reimagining Apologetics:  The Beauty of Faith in a Secular Age.  I recommend it with some qualifications, despite some reservations that I’ll summarize at the end of this essay.  So let’s pluck some nuggets . . .

Bailey lists some alternative approaches – truth-oriented apologetics, for example, which focuses on an “appeal to external evidences and rational proofs.”  He cites William Lane Craig who points out that a Christian may know the truth of the Gospel through the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, but demonstrating that truth to the skeptic is another matter.  And so we construct a body of evidences to convince the mind.  Clearly, though, the mind is not enough.  A Biblical model of one made in the image of God includes mind, conscience, memory, emotions, heart, and will.  Mr. Mind is just one of six members of your Board of Directors.

It seems to me there is a huge practical difficulty in executing evidential apologetics (beyond the philosophical difficulties I’ve discussed on this site).  I’ve observed that most Christians abhor the idea of studying and practicing in order to develop the skills to contend for the faith.

A second approach for one who gets frustrated at building evidential cases is to simply proclaim the Gospel and depend on the “church’s communal witness” in day-to-day life.  He calls this church-oriented apologetics.  “This approach seeks to commend the Christian faith as an imaginative whole.  Apologetics is embodied in a revitalized and robust church whose distinctiveness is its most attractive element.”

My experiences in evangelical and fundamentalist churches indicate that many churches like to think of themselves as embodying, or at least striving to fulfill the Great Commission in this way.  They are wrong.  In brief, American churches are filled with members who live pretty much the way the rest of the world lives, ie., no distinctivness, and uniformly fail to train their people to actually talk to lost sinners about their need for salvation.

Bailey’s third route, clearly his preferred approach, “seeks to alert outsiders to the way that their embodied, emotional experience of the world may already bear the marks of divine presence.”  He calls this “the apologetics of authenticity.”  You don’t leave the other two approaches behind, but you weave in ideas that provoke the hearer’s intuition and imagination, connecting the Christian faith to the aesthetic dimension.

I identify with his perspective; appealing to the transcendent may be precisely the tool that resonates with some people.  Beauty in creation is an obvious example.  But in my own young life as an atheist, what really gripped me was the idea of hope, an overwhelming yearning that there must be something more!

Bailey seeks what he calls “a thicker authenticity” that extends beyond factual evidence.  “Apologetics is certainly not less than a defense of the truth of Christianity . . . throughout history apologists have endeavored not merely to show that Christianity is true but also that it is beautiful and good.”  Resonant moral values and demonstrated love may be the most direct paths for conveying truth to the lost.

He suggests that Augustine’s strategy in City of God was to offer “a larger story of the world rooted in an ontology of peace rather than violence.”  This idea – that of worldview ­­– is at the heart of presuppositional apologetics.  Explain and embrace a Biblical worldview with respect to history, science, morality, and love, etc., and this world and our lives within it are tractable.  Life makes sense if and only if we see ourselves as God’s creation, as image-bearers and yet sinners, fallen, broken, in need of redemption and, once we’re born again, with a life’s purpose centered in the Great Commission.  In such light the pervasive distractions of politics, success in business, wealth acquisition, and entertainments are seen for the trivialities they really are.

“Christianity is beautiful because it is good, and good because it is true.”  The seeker can enter in at any door and discover all the riches of the house.  “We want non-believers to understand that Christianity is not narrow but a vision that includes everything, restoring the lost beauty of the world.”  This last thought can be expressed by telling the lost fellow that although the world is grossly messed up now, by us, when Jesus comes back He is going to set things right.  If we’re on the right team, we get to be part  of that.

Bailey begins the arguments in his book by emphasizing the value of imagination in belief.  Provoke desire, create a vision in the mind of the hearer.  To do this effectively we must have empathy.  When I’m engaged in a 1-2-1 I’m watching body language, asking questions, listening.  I may or may not do it well, but I’m trying to connect, to suggest an idea that grabs hold, that the Holy Spirit will use in the days following to bring conviction.

Above all, OF COURSE, we must convey the essential truths of sin, judgment, repentance, faith, the cross and the resurrection, the new birth, etc.  It’s not hard to give witness to the fundamentals.  (See my ‘how-to’ essays in the Evangelism section of this site.)  Three minutes is enough to share the essentials.  But you’ve got to try to earn a few extra minutes to provoke curiosity and hope and imagination to leave with the hearer a desire to know more.  Oh my! – Our part is both simple and impossible.  We must pray for wisdom and trust the Lord to walk before us, with us, and after us, staying ‘on the trail’ of the hearer.

Bailey uses the term Uppercase Apologetics for the “evidence-that-demands-a-verdict” approach.  It’s designed to provoke an intellectual obligation to believe.  Lowercase Apologetics, then, is the messy and varied work we must do as we address the real stumbling blocks of the hearer, that he might not even admit to.   “Lowercase apologetics seeks to give outsiders a maximally hospitable space to consider the invitation of faith.”  The hope is to frame the good news “with a force that can be felt.”

We’re working to convey truths that open up a life that makes sense.  Now, I think Bailey goes too far in his description  here, suggesting that a lost sinner feels “the internal call to compose an original life . . .”, while warning that phrases like “follow my heart” and “choose my own adventure” may tempt toward narcissism.

What he should emphasize is that conversion requires a humbling, a repentance that seeks God’s will in the future for all aspects of life, recognizing that we are too sinfully stupid to design our own lives.  The new Christian properly recognizes that God is smarter than he is and that’s a good thing.

On the transcendent aspects of conveying Gospel truth, Bailey cites Marilynne Robinson who notes that we, as humans, “participate in eternal things – justice, truth, compassion, love.  We have a vision of these things we have not arrived at by reason, have rarely learned from experience, have not found in history.  We feel the lack.  Hope leads us toward them.”

Indeed.  So why not find ways to convey these thoughts in even a briefly extended 1-2-1?  Everyone wants hope and meaning.  The idea that God loves us individually even though He knows everything about us should be startling, when considered.  Given the possibility of hope, in utter opposition to the hopelessness of an atheistic worldview, or the debilitating uncertainties of false religious systems, shouldn’t the lost fellow take the Christian’s message seriously enough to investigate?  Most people do more research on the internet before they buy a car or a refrigerator than they ever do regarding their eternity.

In C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory, he famously challenges,

“Do you think I am trying to weave a spell?  Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales.  Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them.  And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.  Almost our whole education has been directed to silencing this shy, persistent inner voice; almost all our modern philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth.”

Bailey suggests an intriguing view of religious history.  Ancient paganism was rife with magic.  The medieval ‘church’ (Roman Catholic Church) offered protection from evil magic through good magic mediated by saints and relics and the Mass.  “By contrast, the Reformers emphasized the need to ‘leap out of the field of magic altogether, and throw yourself on the power of God alone.’”  (I would just modify the thought by pointing out that true Biblical Christianity in the West – The Trail of Blood – was always there.  The Reformers’ principal service was to break the hegemony of the RCC.)

In New Testament Christianity, all people have access to grace, and all places are sacred when communing with God, since all born again believers are priests with direct access.  Bailey observes that medieval worship was centripetal, drawing worshipers toward the Mass, whereas Christian worship is centrifugal, directing energy outward into the lives of believers and those they work to reach.

I’ll note that within evangelicalism and fundamentalism, the program is still largely centripetal, as evidenced by mega-facilities, worship teams, winsome speakers, and activities to fascinate everyone.  Just follow the program and you’re a fine Christian!

Christian practice and experience in the West is oh-so-superficial, oh-so-weak.  There is no resonance!  Bailey defines resonance as “a sense of existential ‘fit’ with a particular vision of the world.”  For the unbeliever it is hard to break the resonance his life has with woke politics or career ambitions or substance abuse or sports fanaticism or partying (alcohol & fornication).  In fact, it is impossible without the work of the Holy Spirit and a cogent and punchy Gospel witness.  Even then, it’s rare.  God has granted each of His image-bearers with spectacularly-free will.  What is the Christian witness to do?  Well, we can’t quit.  We’ve got to try.  Sadly, the churches wherein the Christians reside, do little to create resonance connecting believers to the passion the Lord Jesus has for reaching the lost.

Bailey considers some of the work of the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834).  Schleiermacher was raised by Moravians, ordained in a Reformed church, and influenced by the German Romantic movement.  He argued that the essence of Christianity was not rooted in metaphysics or morality, but in a consciousness of the eternal.  He rebuked the Romantic “cultured despisers of religion” who rejected the Gospel as irrational and irrelevant.  Friedrich worked to show that man’s love of natural beauty and artistic creation were strong evidences of gifts from God, “an irrefutable sense or hunger for the infinite.”  The transcendent has no place in a materialistic worldview.

He goes on to argue that prophetic ministry is to make others feel this intuition that the universe is more than can be seen.  And so we ought to minister not just from pulpits and street corners, (Bailey) “but from the pens and brushes of writers and artists, who excel at giving us images and stories that resonate with our intuitive sense of our place in the world.”  I’m surprised that Bailey does not mention the powerful books and essays penned by Francis A. Schaeffer on this very point.

I’ll comment that my own skills in artistic imagery are woeful, and so I eagerly enlist the help of a professional graphic artist, and occasionally one of my grandsons, in developing the imagery for the tracts I design.  The historic success of Chick Publications’ comic book tracts are wonderful examples, and continue to be used prolifically in poor countries where fewer people are spoiled by the imagery Americans enjoy on laptops and smartphones.

Bailey:  “Perhaps truth-oriented apologists have it backwards.  Perhaps it is truth that provides the final ‘push’ into belief once the imagination is already captivated by the goodness and beauty of the Christ.”  Additionally, Bailey asserts that one’s search for meaning is primarily about imagination in the aesthetic realm, and only secondarily for the intellect.  Could be.

Novelist George MacDonald is cited regarding the temptation to win arguments using apologetics.  “When a man reasons for victory and not for the truth in the other soul, he has just one ally – the devil.  The defeat of the intellect is not the object of fighting with the sword of the Spirit, but rather the acceptance of the heart.”

Bailey gives us an excellent discussion of exploring apologetics through MacDonald’s fictional characters.  For example, surgeon Paul Faber is an atheist whose dedicated service to humanity should put him in contact with the transcendent – with God – in his strong desire to love his neighbor, but pride deludes him into self-satisfaction as he congratulates himself on his benevolence.

MacDonald makes clear that Faber is not as good as he thinks and that God is far better than Faber believes.  Faber’s Christian friend, Thomas Wingfold, decides not to answer Faber’s skeptical criticisms directly, but rather probes the roots of his objections.  Faber’s humane version of atheism “veiled the pride behind it all, the pride namely of an unhealthy conscious individuality, the pride of self as self, which makes a man the center of his universe.”

When a young, bereaved husband expresses his submission to God’s will in front of Faber, the surgeon scoffs at the existence of such a God, whereupon the young man “turned white as death.”  Hearing about this, Wingfold rebukes Faber:  “You were taking from him his only hope of seeing her again.”

Remember, hope is one of the ‘big three’:  faith, hope, & charity.  For me, as a young atheist, hope was the biggest of the big three.  Hope is what I craved, but hope had to be grounded in reality.  And so I searched out God’s reality and found an assured hope, grounded in God’s word.  Hope for the future infuses our soul.  The hope to live again with our loved ones is sourced in God.

Knowing that the soul we witness to is kin to our soul, we should use this in 1-2-1 evangelism.  I often tell someone who is a husband and father that his family’s salvation depends on him repenting and coming to Christ.  Only then can he work to save his family, and save them for eternity.  Let this thought work in his heart.

Bailey reminds us that if there is no one to turn to in the midst of suffering, then there is no one to thank for the joys of life.  Also, “Materialism suffers from a profound inability to account for beauty and . . . meaningless beauty also entails meaningless barbarity.”

MacDonald writes his novels to stir readers “to find a God worthy of belief, one whose presence accounts not just for truth and goodness but also for beauty.”

How is this possible?  How can this work?  This is what it means for us to be made in the image of God.  God has wired our characters to recognize truth and beauty, to desire justice, to honestly confess our need for mercy, and to recognize the light of Gospel truth . . . if we choose to.  God gives us spectacularly-free will.  God’s family adopts and embraces only volunteers.

It is central that we remember and remind those we witness to, that the Lord Jesus Christ, a person, is the source and embodiment of truth, love, and beauty.  See John 17:3.  This is how to know God.  Once you know Him, you cannot be dissuaded.  How could someone convince me that my wife does not exist?  How much less could someone convince me to return to atheism or the false religion in which I was raised?

Bailey’s theme is that our job, as evangelist, is to awaken what is already there inside each lost image-bearer.  We certainly must use the law, the commandments to convict the conscience of sin – everyone knows he is guilty of offending God and harming others.  I’ve never met a dispassionate atheist who came to his worldview on analytical grounds, and attempts to practice his materialism consistently.  Atheists, rather, are quite visceral in clinging to their religion.  But so also are lost religious people who hold to their works-based systems without confessing how utterly un-righteous their lives are.  We are all but sinners in need of the one and only Saviour.

Marilynne Robinson argues that a Christian vision of the world earns its authority by winning aesthetic assent. “It is discerned by a spirit of recognition just like great poetry.”

I’ve experienced this and I’m sure you have, too.  When confronted with a new and important idea, the realization that it is true and I should act accordingly manifests as something like an inner light / warmth / peace / resonance . . . it suddenly just makes sense, an aesthetic sense.  It doesn’t  come from spreadsheets and probability calculations.  You suddenly just realize that it’s right.  I experienced this even within my physics education.  I didn’t understand or get comfortable with a new idea until it suddenly just made sense.  When it felt right,  it was mine and it was true.

Bailey contrasts the two authors that he analyzes in some depth:  George MacDonald and Marilynne Robinson.  Unlike MacDonald, Robinson is not interested in converting unbelievers.  She writes, “While my thinking is Christian, it has led me to a kind of universalism that precludes any notion of proselytizing.”

Well, then, her thinking is not Christian after all, is it?  Despising the Great Commission and affirming universalism are anti-Christian positions.

Instead, Bailey explains, Robinson targets contemporary ideologies like Darwinism, Marxism, and Freudianism.  She sees them as narrow visions of the world, whose adherents “exclude experiences that do not fit their explanatory filters.”  That’s certainly true.  So why not try to convert them?  Don’t you care?

Apparently, Robinson’s harshest criticisms are reserved for dogmatic atheists and dogmatic Christians.  She despises certainty, assuming that it shuts down dialogue.  In my own experience as a completely committed Christian, I’ve had wonderful dialogues with completely committed atheists, Mormons, Catholics, Muslims, etc.  Consider that the apostle Paul was a completely committed anti-Christian when the Lord Jesus engaged him in dialogue on the road to Damascus.

Those who hate certainty, who can never settle on simple answers to basic questions, are willfully stupid.  There are questions to which you can find answers!  True answers.  Certainly Bailey would agree to this, which makes me wonder why he features Robinson’s work so extensively in the book.

As Bailey begins to conclude his arguments he offers that “imaginative apologetics seeks to arouse confidence that the object of our hope is attainable . . . the best apologists tell stories that are able to baptize the imagination . . . arousing us to seek God’s kingdom.”

But Bailey fails to get specific.  What does this look like in a face-to-face encounter?  When do you include the elements that enable the lost sinner to see what his problem is and how to find the solution?  You’ve got to do far more than stimulate his imagination!

Journalist Mark O’Connell reviewed Robinson’s book Gilead, writing, “She makes an atheist reader like myself capable of identifying with the sense of a fallen world that is filled with pain and sadness but also suffused with divine grace.”  Not good enough!  O’Connell hasn’t moved a millimeter toward salvation.  Rather, he’s found some comfort, perhaps, in what he sees as a spiritual metaphor for a miserable existence on a hopeless Earth.  He’s still a rebel, but may find delusional solace in Robinson’s universalism, just in case God might actually exist.

Bailey finishes weaker than he started, as if executing a brilliant Olympic vault, but failing to stick the landing.  “The answer in our polarizing climate is not armed resistance but cultural renewal:  telling better stories, painting more beautiful pictures, making connections that were previously unimagined.”

No.  Don’t stop there.  Yes, get creative and stir the imagination, but do stick the landing.  Don’t just play sweet and nice with the culture.  Rather, play offense by preaching sin and judgment, rationality, hope, meaning, beauty, forgiveness, peace, joy, and patience . . . and that everything about Biblical Christianity is rooted in history and in reality.  Paint pictures of Biblical families, virtuous businesses, and celebrate the beauty and design in God’s creation while explaining why we live in a fallen world and that redemption must be sought individually.

When witnessing to an unbelieving scientist, for example, find out why he loves science.  Is it symmetry in crystals, or complexity in DNA?  Is it the mathematical beauty of Maxwell’s equations and their solutions or the mystical implications of quantum theory?  Appeal to his desire to know truth and that the only hope he has to find all of truth is to get to know the Author of truth.  Then finish the landing by explaining sin, judgment, etc.  A Christian need not be a scientist himself to make these points.  Whoever the fellow is, find out what resonates and offer hope.

More likely, the lost lady you’re trying to reach has burdens in her marriage, or her job, or her children are in trouble, or life is simple drudgery.  Whatever the problems are, we can empathize and point out that God has solutions or the grace to persevere, but that the real problem is her sins which must be repented from.  Years ago I talked regularly to people outside an urban courthouse.  They all had big problems.  What I worked to convey was that their real problems were bigger than they thought and yet the solution – Jesus – is right here for you, today.  Once you’re part of His family, He will help you with these other small problems.

Finally . . . I would recommend this book only if you’re already thoroughly grounded in presuppositional apologetics and 1-2-1 evangelism along the lines I have described thoroughly in the Evangelism section of this site.  Otherwise, Bailey’s book may simply confuse and distract from the simplicity that is the Great Commission.  I’m concerned that the author, a former pastor and a current professor of theology at Dordt University, seems too little worried about the eternal Hell-bound consequences facing lost sinners if they reject the Gospel.  Employing re-imagined apologetics without ‘sticking the landing’ may prevent a lost fellow from even understanding what the Gospel is, and what his sin problems entail.

The fundamental thesis, though, is sound.  We work to reach mind, heart, and will.  It is not hard to have a basic approach to do just that, and then to add a few tools for use in extended conversations.  But while you’re working to add to the toolbox, don’t forget to just get out there and talk to people.  Anybody that’s too busy to talk, say hi and smile and give them a Gospel tract, just like we did today and every day we leave the house.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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174. Confronting Truth
September 1, 2022

The task in evangelism – or, more specifically, apologetics – is to show someone that what he says he believes is in conflict with what he knows is true, in fact, in contradiction to what his whole life is telling him, if he were but to listen.

This is one of the themes of Nancy Pearcey’s book, Total Truth:  Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, 2008.  Pearcey was a student of Francis Schaeffer and, in her works, extends his principles of apologetics into our generation, quite deftly, I believe.  She often makes use of Schaeffer’s two-story diagrams (see my essays on Schaeffer), a model which explains the disconnect from reality that afflicts unbelievers in our present age.  Briefly, the materialist worldview relegates all of life to a lower story where evolution and physics supposedly explain where we come from and how life works.  When people defy materialism by searching for meaning, for purpose, they ‘leap up’ to an upper story for mythical or religious explanations, an irrational leap because in materialism we are simply molecules in motion – there is no meaning.

 

Upper Story

Nonrational, Noncognitive

______________________

Lower Story

Rational, Verifiable

 

Pearcey insists that “it’s so important that we do not put Christianity in the upper story – because then we will have nothing to offer to people trapped in the two-story dichotomy.”  Rather, we must present the Christian faith as a “comprehensive, unified worldview that addresses all of life and reality.  It is not just religious truth but total truth.”

The challenge in this generation, in the West, may be more difficult than ever, because there are so many layers of obfuscation permeating our culture.  Traditionally, for example, evangelism would focus on a sinner’s moral ‘lostness’ and expect him to worry about his standing before a holy God.  Yet today many reject a transcendent moral standard; guilt may be viewed as a psychological problem requiring therapy, instead of necessitating repentance and forgiveness.  Indeed, I have been disturbed to hear sermons in evangelical churches with just this perspective, that the real problem with ‘sin’ is that it makes you feel bad and that is the problem!

I once asked a youth director at a megachurch how they communicated the Gospel to the young people.  She sought to assure me that they were careful to avoid even the terms sin and guilt with the young because of the distressing connotations.

And yet moral guilt is real.  God wired us to know it and unpacks the details in Scripture so that we find the one and only solution – salvation in Jesus Christ.  Furthermore, all of physical creation, along with the nuances of human life are explained fully and satisfyingly in the Bible.

Pearcey:  “Our claim as Christians is that only a biblically based worldview offers a complete and consistent explanation of why we are capable of knowing scientific, moral, and mathematical truths.    Christianity is the key that fits the lock of the universe.”  I have written much on this web site to expand on this principle.  For a quick exposition of a variety of applications, go to ThinkTracts.com for our tract designs; each feature a particular aspect of life or science or history that makes sense only in light of Scripture.

Unbelieving worldviews do not make sense of life.  Pearcey reflects one of Schaeffer’s major themes concerning unbelievers, that “they will not be able to live consistently on the basis of their own worldview.  Since their metaphysical beliefs do not fit the world God created, their lives will be more or less inconsistent with those beliefs.   Living in the real world requires them to function in ways that are not supported by their worldview.”  The evangelist can work to create a cognitive dissonance in order to provoke a hearing of the Gospel.

I have used this principle many times.  I use the argument employed in my tract, “Who are you?”, with atheists to provoke them to listen to the Gospel.  Without the cognitive dissonance that can be generated within just a couple of minutes, they would have no patience to listen further.

Early in the book, Nancy laments how we ‘train’ our children.  At a Christian high school a theology teacher drew a heart on one side of the blackboard and a brain on the other, saying, “The heart is what we use for religion, while the brain is what we use for science.”  Only one student objected.  The rest apparently accepted this ‘two-story’ distortion of reality.

Pearcey warns that if all we give young people is a “heart” religion, they won’t be strong enough to analyze and reject false ideologies.  Rather, equip them with worldview and apologetics training . . . “a Christian mind is no longer an option; it is part of their necessary survival equipment.”

In 2004 when she published the book’s 1^st edition, Pearcey observed that most secularists in the public square were too politically savvy to attack religion directly, but rather consigned ‘faith’ to the value sphere, out of the realm of facts.  They could pretend to respect religion, “while at the same time denying that it has any relevance to the public realm.”

Today, however, the gloves are off.  Attacking biblical Christianity is great sport and conducted on a moral basis.  Woke ideologies are deemed righteous and of such worth that they must be shoved down the throats of anyone who hesitates to bow down.  Yet the strategy will arise when needed, when the anti-Christians find it useful to show a kind face.  The fact/value split relegates the Christian faith to private feelings, not to be taken as genuine knowledge.

Christians should be aware of this background, making sure to explain to unbelievers that we are asserting objective moral truths wired into the very fabric of God’s universe, whenever we discuss sexuality or abortion or the other hot cultural issues.  We’re not attempting a political power grab.  We are warning that God will hold His adversaries accountable.

Pearcey does a nice exposition of the idea of worldview – “literally a view of the world, a biblically informed perspective on all reality.  A worldview is like a mental map that tells us how to navigate the world effectively.  It is the imprint of God’s objective truth on our inner life.”

For example, the classical Marxist sees human behavior ultimately shaped by economics.  The Freudian interprets actions as deriving from repressed sexual drives.  The behavioral psychologist sees humans as stimulus-response machines.  The Bible, however, sees every individual as made in the image of God, with free will and moral responsibility.

Most of the early modern scientists, who established every major field of modern science, were Bible-believing Christians.  Historian R. G. Collingwood writes, “The possibility of an applied mathematics is an expression, in terms of natural science, of the Christian belief that nature is the creation of an omnipotent God.”  Christians believe in an orderly universe, ordered by God-given and God-sustained rules.

Today, American schoolchildren are taught a postmodern view of math, that math is a social construction, that it’s man-made, arbitrary, and solutions can be derived by consensus.  There are no wrong answers.  Those that think so are likely racists.  Pearcey met a young man, recently graduated from high school, whose teacher called him a bigot for thinking it was important to get the right answer.

Pearcey mentions Harry Blamires’ 1963 book, The Christian Mind, which opens with the startling sentence, “There is no longer a Christian mind.”  What he meant was that there is no shared Christian worldview in the West, no biblically-based set of principles upon which to analyze law, education, economics, politics, science, or the arts.  Christians may profess to follow Christ and read their Bibles, but they think like secularists.  We behave in our professions as if we are not different from non-Christians, we entertain ourselves with worldly entertainment, and we send our children off to Marxist, wokist schools.  The megachurch culture is perfectly happy to attract professing Christians with shallow tickle-the-ear music, ‘your-best-life-now’ teaching, and programs that help you feel good without any spiritual growth . . . like charitable initiatives I like to call ‘cheeseburgers for the homeless’ that invariably neglect any actual Gospel outreach.

Just today my wife engaged in a conversation with a megachurch member who was quite proud of their charitable outreach, but clueless about the missed opportunities to preach the Gospel to the beneficiaries.

The biblical Christian sees no fact/value split.  Every part of creation and every nuance of life is informed by Scriptural truth.  (See my 3-part essay in the Apologetics section on Cornelius Van Til to explore this in some depth.)

Pearcey has some insight that reflects my ‘fundie’ experience.  (We spent many years attending Independent Fundamental Baptist churches.)  The fact/value split can also be described as a sacred/secular dualism, in which ordinary work is denigrated, while full-time salaried church work is glorified.

During the Bush administration, Pearcey talked to a congressional chief of staff who complained that it was hard to find people to work in D.C. who were both serious Christians and competent professionals.  The Christians who did come to Washington had been taught by their churches that if they were really serious about their faith they would have been in “full-time ministry.”

Missionary (to India for 40 years) Lesslie Newbigin wrote that Christians in business, industry, politics, etc., are “the Church’s front-line troops in her engagement with the world . . . Are we taking seriously our duty to support them in their warfare?  Have we ever done anything seriously to strengthen their Christian witness, to help them in facing the very difficult ethical problems which they have to meet every day, to give them the assurance that the whole fellowship is behind them in their daily spiritual warfare?”

In Bob Briner’s book Roaring Lambs he recounts his student days at a Christian college, whose culture presupposed that the only way to really serve God was in full-time Christian work.  Anticipating a career in sports management he felt very much a second-class campus citizen.  In my fairly considerable experience in fundie churches, I saw the same dualism.  There was essentially no teaching and no respect for the work done by everyone who pays the bills.  The overriding emphasis was to exhort young people to ‘surrender to full-time ministry.’

There is so much wrong and disgusting with this cultural attitude, which I unpack in some of my ‘church’ essays in the Discipleship section of this site.  One obvious problem is that those who pay the bills in church via their ‘secular’ jobs get the message that evangelism and discipleship – the mission of the church – is solely the responsibility of the paid clergy.  The Lord Jesus refers to this approach as Nicolaitinism . . . which He curses.

A Christian view on work is that it is far more than just putting food on the table.  Work is part of our calling from God.  We serve God with our gifts, with our creativity that extends the work that God did in the first week of creation.  We use “wood to build houses, cotton to make clothes, or silicon to make computer chips.”  Our work is not ex nihilo, of course, but it is crucial to our stewardship responsibilities.

Once we realize that the Bible is TRUE, we are obligated – in gratitude for our salvation – to use all the gifts and energies God has granted us in every area of life.  There is no sacred/secular split.  “God’s Word becomes a light to all our paths.”  Biblical truth must infuse our relationships, our business, our politics, our relaxation, and ignite a passion to reach out to others with the Gospel.

Pearcey was disappointed at the simplistic analysis of an English literature course at her Christian college, which critiqued classic works by tabulating the acts of immorality and profane language.  But why and how does secular literature drive the culture?  What worldviews are embedded in the plots?  Cannot we, as Christians, go deeper in discernment than merely to count cuss words?

She cites Francis Schaeffer’s compassion for secular artists caught in the trap of false worldviews, recognizing the despair in the lives of so many of the most famous ones.  Schaeffer wrote that such works of art “are the expression of men who are struggling with their appalling lostness.  Dare we laugh at such things?  Dare we feel superior when we view their tortured expressions in their art?”

Even in worldly art we can see the creativity that reflects God’s gifts in the image-bearer.  Sin-laden art is a challenge that the Christian can respond to with answers.  Answers are far better than mere, simplistic condemnation or boycotts.  Pearcey and Schaeffer call for Christians to move beyond criticizing culture to creating culture.  When we reach out to the lost we are obligated to employ excellent arguments, thoughtful and attractive tracts, and exhibit patience and compassion.

I know a fellow who, to his credit, has been diligent to share the Gospel with the lost, but to his discredit, is tempted to anger at some of the responses he gets.  No!  How do you expect lost people to act, to think, to speak?  They’re in the Devil’s spiritual trap and need help.  Don’t ever lose your temper when trying to rescue someone!

In addition to being true,  the Gospel works.  In 1996 Guenter Lewy wrote the book Why America Needs Religion, although he started out to establish the opposite theme, a defense of secular humanism and ethical relativism.  The evidence turned him completely around.  He found that where Christianity informs the culture, we find less crime, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, and broken families.  Also, that the culture reflects considerably higher responsibility, moral integrity, compassion, and altruism.

Lewy:  “Contrary to the expectations of the Enlightenment, freeing individuals from the shackles of traditional religion does not result in their moral uplift . . . no society has yet been successful in teaching morality without religion.”

In short, God’s word reveals the principles by which human life flourishes . . . or degenerates.

Pearcey argues that the sacred/secular split is a Western malady.  Christians in Africa, India, and the Middle East can easily understand that the Gospel transforms the entire human experience.  Persecution makes that clear.  American evangelical churches focus their message on personal meaning, family bonding, emotional nurturing . . . the ‘authentic inner life.’  And so, with western culture, government agencies and corporations are free to ramp up the persecution on the churches (during COVID, for example), and on individuals who don’t conform to government or corporate policies, policies often created just to identify those who won’t bend the knee.

Steven Pinker of MIT is a leader in cognitive science and author of a best-selling book, How the Mind Works.  His views on ethics illustrate perfectly the apologetic argument I employ in my tract “Who are you?”  Pinker:  “Ethical theory  requires idealizations like free, sentient, rational, equivalent agents whose behavior is uncaused,” and yet, “the world, as seen by science, does not really have uncaused events.”

Pearcey rephrases Pinker this way:  “The postmodern dilemma can be summed up by saying that ethics depends on the reality of something that materialistic science has declared to be unreal.”  Namely, in atheism there is no soul, no person.  Yet we act as if we are persons, and hold each other accountable as if others are persons, too.

 

Pearcey draws a two-story diagram for Pinker:

 

THE ETHICS GAME

Humans Have Moral Freedom and Dignity

___________________________________

THE SCIENCE GAME

Humans are Data-Processing Machines

 

Recall that we can also term this the fact/value split or the secular/sacred split.  In his day job, Pinker lives in the lower story, but then he goes home at night and takes an irrational leap to the upper story in order to relate to his wife and children.

Marvin Minsky, also at MIT, famously said that the human mind is nothing but “a three-pound computer made of meat.”  But he wrote in his book The Society of Mind, “The physical world provides no room for freedom of will.” And yet, “that concept is essential to our models of the mental realm.  Too much of our psychology is based on it for us to ever give it up.  [And so] We’re virtually forced to maintain that belief, even though we know it’s false.”

That last statement is not just a startling admission from an atheist, it’s also ridiculous on another level . . . how can the clump of molecules between his ears, wholly driven by deterministic brain chemistry, know anything?  Knowing requires personhood.

Pearcey challenges Christians to stand up to their responsibilities, not just to share the Gospel, but also “to learn how to give reasons supporting the credibility of the gospel message.”  We must learn to translate “Christian theology into contemporary language . . . demonstrating that it offers a more consistent and comprehensive account of reality.”  This is, of course, exactly what I’ve tried to do throughout this web site and, in particular, in the design of our tracts at ThinkTracts.com.  These tracts also serve as tutorials for Christians on a variety of topics that might well come up in a 1-2-1 evangelistic encounter.

I’ve made the point before – in order to raise up your children to embrace and contend for the faith, they must engage in 1-2-1 evangelism and study up in apologetics.  Or else.  The Devil is a roaring lion who will devour them through the culture, through the universities, through their lost worldly friends.  Train your children to see their lost friends as lost . . . in need of a strong Gospel witness.

Pearcey challenges churches to embrace a mission to give what Francis Schaeffer called “honest answers to honest questions.”  Train the people in apologetics and worldview analysis.  The culture continues to progress in only one direction:  more secular, more anti-Christian.  It’s a spiritual war.  Let’s fight with spiritual weapons.

For example, applying the Christian worldview to education . . . our children are created in the image of God, and so have a capacity for qualities that have no basis in a materialistic / atheistic worldview, namely love, morality, rationality, artistic creation, and a yearning for meaning in life.  We recognize that the Fall produced and produces sin and corruption; therefore, the Englightenment idea of a utopia apart from God, employing unaided reason, is foolish.  Furthermore, we define an absolute morality, distinctions between right and wrong, in the Bible, not arbitrarily.  “Each child should understand that God has given him or her special gifts to make a unique contribution to humanity’s task of reversing the effects of the Fall and extending the Lordship of Christ in the world.”  Teach the interconnections of all subjects and how they, like all truth, are grounded in God’s truth.

In contrast, Pearcey warns, many (Marxist) educators do not define education as helping students to acquire knowledge and gain skills, but rather to motivate and equip them as activists in approved social causes.  The one good thing that came out of COVID was the dramatic rise in homeschooling as some parents woke up to public school corruption and pulled their children out.  As of this writing, parents have not sent their kids back to that snake pit.

Pearcey notes that those who deny Biblical creation also deny the Fall, and believe that sin and its effects can be social-engineered out of existence.  This inevitably results in totalitarianism, as state power is used to force people to fit into utopian schemes.  Along the way, the family is destroyed lest there be competing loyalties.

I’ll touch just one more theme before concluding.  Total Truth covers a lot of ground and I’ve engaged on only a few themes.  She has a wonderful chapter entitled, “Darwin meets the Berenstain Bears,” quoting atheist Daniel Dennett who calls Darwinism a “universal acid,” referencing a children’s riddle about an acid so corrosive that it eats through everything, including its container.

Pearcey:   “The point is that Darwinism is likewise too corrosive to be contained.  It spreads through every field of study, corroding away all traces of transcendent purpose or morality.”  Darwinism, according to Dennett, “leaves in its wake a revolutionized worldview.”

Pearcey had bought a science book for her little boy Michael, The Bears’ Nature Guide, and was shocked to see a two-page spread with a dazzling sunrise with the bold words, “Nature is all that IS, or WAS, or EVER WILL BE!”  This was clearly taken from Carl Sagan’s documentary wherein he proclaimed, “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”

Yes, the war is upon us.  The Adversary is bold and relentless.  We can choose to contend or let him run roughshod over us, our children, and our entire culture.  Nancy blunders a bit in her analysis in this chapter, though.  She opines, “We must learn how to bring God back into the sphere of rational discussion – to win a place at the table of public discourse.”  She’s wrong because the enemy owns even the table today, dominating every institution under the sun.  What Christians can do is what they have always been charged to do under the Great Commission:  Proclaim the Gospel 1-2-1, personally, boldly, compassionately, and relentlessly.

Don’t whine about how the wokists control Facebook and Twitter and the public school system and . . . everything else.  Open your mouth, share the Gospel, hand out tracts, go door-to-door . . . do what Jesus told you to do.  Rinse.  Repeat.

I strongly encourage you to buy the book.  The last two chapters are among the best pieces I’ve ever read on apologetics:  Chapter 12 – “How Women Started the Culture War,” and Chapter 13 – “True Spirituality and Christian Worldview.”  But I won’t review those chapters here.  I won’t spoil it for you!

• drdave@truthreallmatters.com

 

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175. The Stairway to Life?
October 1, 2022

This essay is part of the Short Course on Creation vs. Evolution. Click on . . .

The Stairway to Life?

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176. Live Not by Lies
November 1, 2022

In my lifetime (1952 – present) I have been dismayed to observe the decline and degradation of American Christianity.  In the February 2022 issue of the conservative journal, First Things, Aaron Renn suggests three distinct stages to summarize American secularization, in his essay “The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism”:

• Positive World (Pre-1994): Society maintains mostly a positive view of Christianity.  An individual’s Christian faith is correlated with good citizenship and moral character.
• Neutral World (1994-2014): Christianity is no longer privileged, but is seen rather neutrally, one among many of life’s options.
• Negative World (2014-Present): Christians are viewed negatively and their worldview is rejected and seen as a threat to the public good.

Renn cites Rod Dreher’s 2017 book, The Benedict Option:  A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, for challenging evangelicals to face reality, that we have lost the culture war and must develop strategies accordingly.  (I reviewed The Benedict Option in my essay of June 1, 2022.)  Renn notes that evangelicals have not responded well to Dreher’s call, in part due to his framing the issue around the life of a Benedictine monk, a picture that might resonate with Dreher’s Orthodox compatriots, but with Catholic overtones that are anathema to many evangelicals, not to mention fundamental Baptists.

But Renn suggests the more significant reason for antipathy to Dreher’s thesis is that evangelicals deny reality, the reality of the ‘Negative World’ they live in.  And so the evangelical megachurch culture plods along with its seeker-sensitive programs and naïve Republican activism, as I see it, instead of focusing on the Great Commission and begging God for a true spiritual revival.

I won’t unpack here the rest of Renn’s argument; rather I will comment on Dreher’s latest shot at the subject in his 2020 book Live Not by Lies:  A Manual for Christian Dissidents.

What we see in America today has parallels to every move over the last two centuries to establish a socialist utopia, especially in the Bolshevik revolution.  The Bolsheviks and other socialists of early 20^th century Russia included young artists, intellectuals, and other cultural elites, who dreamed of the end of autocracy, class division, and religion – especially Christianity – and anticipated a new world of liberalism, equality, and secular enlightenment.

Dreher:  “What they got instead was dictatorship, gulags, and the extermination of free speech and expression.  Communists had sold their ideology to gullible optimists as the fullest version of the thing every modern person wanted:  Progress.”  Dreher sees modernity as built on the Myth of Progress:  the present is better than the past, and the future will inevitably be better than the present.  Totalitarians love this myth.  They even call themselves progressives.

Nadine Gordimer:  “All the young are candidates for the solutions of communism or fascism when there are no alternatives to despair or dissipation.”  Despair and dissipation are perfect descriptors of the experiences of young people coming out of the disastrous public health policies in response to COVID.

Czech dissident Vaclav Benda taught his kids that there are things more dangerous than the loss of political liberties.  His son Marek explained, “Our father told us that there is a difference between a dictatorship and totalitarianism.  Dictatorship can make life hard for you, but they don’t want to devour your soul.  Totalitarian regimes are seeking your souls.”  Clearly, there are degrees of success enjoyed by Satan and his forces.  Satan’s mission is to maximize the number of souls that will join him in the Lake of Fire.  Should not our mission, as Christians, be the preaching of the Gospel to maximize the number of souls who will populate the New Heaven and New Earth?

Dreher cites the 1966 book of sociologist Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, who suggested that the death of God in the West had enabled a new civilization centered on liberating the individual to seek pleasures and manage his anxieties.  Religious Man had lived by transcendent principles and a communal lifestyle, but now Psychological Man had to find his own way experimentally, without the benefits of history and tradition.

If God exists for Psychological Man, he’s a nice guy and just wants us to be happy.  He’s certainly not judgmental.  Ergo, he tolerates evil without limit, but nobody thinks it through to that level.

Without God, the biblical, Christian worldview God, what we have is not culture, but anti-culture.  Dreher notes that the anti-culture has permeated the churches as the spirit of the therapeutic works to make everyone as comfortable as possible.  There is no talk of suffering for the sake of truth.  That’s ridiculous!

Dreher warns that we are already experiencing soft totalitarianism, in which the media, corporations, academia, and other institutions compel doublethink:  “Men have periods.  The woman standing in front of you is to be called ‘he.’  Diversity and inclusion means excluding those who object to ideological uniformity.  Equity means treating persons unequally, regardless of their skills and achievement, to achieve an ideologically correct result.”

The title of the book derives from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s final message before his exile to the West, when he was arrested on February 12, 1974.  He urged the Russian people to “live not by lies!”  For example, such a man will not . . .

• Say or write anything that distorts the truth
• Go to a demonstration unless he truly believes in the cause
• Take part in a meeting in which no one can speak the truth
• Vote for an unworthy candidate
• Support journalism that distorts or hides the facts

The Christian must go beyond this standard, of course, and actively speak up for Biblical truth.  Furthermore, we are commanded to share the Gospel with the lost, and not just ‘wait for the right opportunity.’  Dreher recommends finding like-minded believers to form small cells “with whom she can pray, sing, study Scripture, and read other books important to their mission.”  If you can’t find Christians bold and faithful enough to start a house church, find a few within your church who will meet together weekly for mutual, spiritual encouragement.  And exhort each other to get the Gospel out 1-2-1 in your community.

How do people get sucked into falling for a totalitarian takeover?  In 1951 Hannah Arendt published The Origins of Totalitarianism.  Arendt identified several conditions:

• The isolation of individuals – loneliness. The 1950s may have been a golden age of community cohesion, but now millennials and Generation Z register much higher levels of loneliness than older Americans.  They also tend to favor socialism as if politics can replace community.  The Soviet state worked to turn the Russian people against each other so that it could maximize control.  Identity politics serves this goal in America.
• Destruction of confidence in institutions. Polls indicate historic lows in Americans’ confidence in political, media, religious, legal, medical, and corporate institutions.  The exceptions are the military, the police, and small businesses.  Accordingly, wokists work hard to destroy the military, the dominant political party works to destroy the police, and leftist economic policies are destroying small businesses.
• Promotion of sexual immorality. Late imperial Russia became obsessed with illicit sex.  Historian James Billington writes, “The sensualism of the age was in a very intimate sense demonic.”  Satan became a Romantic hero for artists and musicians.  Consider how deviant sex has become today.
• Proliferation of propaganda – fake news. Hating and destroying your enemies overrides any love for truth.  Example for today:  The “1619 Project” is a massive attempt to reinvent American history by discrediting the Declaration of Independence and insisting that America was founded to establish slavery.  Intended result:  fostering race hatred.
• A mania for ideology. Every aspect of life is infused with politics.  I used to watch some NFL and NBA games.  No more.  The leftist politics is pervasive and insufferable in pro sports.
• Loyalty supersedes expertise. Example:  At universities within the U of California system, tenure track applicants must affirm their commitment to “equity, diversity, and inclusion” and have demonstrated such commitment.  Other public and private schools are also demanding loyalty oaths.  One of Lenin’s secret police chiefs instructed his agents to ask an accused rebel to what class he belongs.  Words and deeds had nothing to do with guilt or innocence.  “One was presumed guilty based entirely on one’s class and social status.”

Dreher:  “A revolution that began as an attempt to right historical injustices quickly became an exterminationist exercise of raw power.”  Anyone in opposition could be destroyed, cancelled, imprisoned, even executed for the cause of “achieving historical justice over alleged exploiters of privilege.”

So-called conservatives don’t realize they are part of the problem, because they are not fighting against the real problems, which are spiritual.  The American dream, after all, is about wealth creation and the freedom to create whatever life you desire.  In contrast, the Puritan ideal was to use freedom to live a virtuous life as defined by Scripture.  A Christian worldview will not lead to libertarian politics . . . Do what thou wilt . . . is Satan’s message.

Social justice is today’s national religion since Christianity has been marginalized.  The SJW (Social Justice Warrior) zealots are intensely dogmatic, forgetting that dogmatism was a favorite criticism aimed at Christians a generation ago.  “For the social justice inquisitors, ‘dialogue’ is the process by which opponents confess their sins and submit in fear and trembling to the social justice creed.”  There are no debates to be had.  Mao, of course, perfected this approach when he subjugated 550 million Chinese in the 1950s.

Secular conservatives do not have a “religion” that competes in fervor or doctrine with the SJW crowd.  Materialism and “do what thou wilt” is a pitiful worldview.  Truly biblical Christians do have the right message, but are too timid to proclaim it.

Recognize the true enemy of the SJW.  In order of increasing despicability, the oppressors are white, male, heterosexual, and Christian.  The oppressed include skin-color minorities, women, those who love a diversity of sexual sins, and religious minorities.  The “poor” are of little significance.  “A white Pentecostal man living on disability in a trailer park is an oppressor; a black lesbian Ivy League professor is oppressed.”

Let’s talk about how to “live not by lies.”

Dreher spent time with Yuri Sipko, a retired Baptist pastor who, when he was 11 years old, was the only youth in his village who refused to wear the red scarf and pin (with Lenin’s image) of the Young Pioneers, a communist version of the Boy Scouts.  He and his teachers were pressured relentlessly to coerce him to submit.  But young Yuri knew that to be a Baptist, a follower of Jesus Christ, was to live apart, to be the permanent outsider.

Yuri recounts how other Baptists in Russia suffered worse.  “They lost any kind of status.  They were mocked and ridiculed in society.  Sometimes they even lost their children.  Just because they were Baptists, the state was willing to take away their kids and send them to orphanages.  These believers were unable to find jobs.  Their children were not able to enter universities.  And still, they believed.”

They stood alone, but they did stand.

Vladimir Grygorenko and Olga Rusanova immigrated to the U.S. from Ukraine in 2000 and now live in Texas.  They are disturbed by Americans’ waning support for the First Amendment, a sign that society “prefers the false peace of conformity to the tensions of liberty,” as Dreher puts it.  “To grow indifferent, even hostile to free speech is suicidal for a free people.”  Grygorenko:  “We don’t need to invent anything new – we just need to have the courage to protect what we have.”

We must teach history to our children.  Dreher tells of a cheerful 26-year-old California woman who told him she thinks of herself as a communist.  “It’s just so beautiful, this dream of everybody being equal,” she gushed.  She asked Dreher what he was working on.  He told her about Alexander Ogorodnikov, whom he had recently interviewed in Moscow, a Christian dissident imprisoned and tortured by the Soviets.

She fell silent.  “Don’t you know about the gulag?” he asked.  Of course she didn’t.  Nobody ever told her.  It certainly was not covered in her schooling.

A Budapest teacher, Tamas Salyi, noted that the Hungarians survived German and Soviet occupation, but thirty years of freedom has destroyed their cultural memory.  “What neither Nazism nor Communism could do, victorious liberal capitalism has done.”  He observes Progressives trying to erase all memory of the past so they can write whatever they want on that blank slate.  Cut off the people’s traditions, destroy their history, and you create completely isolated human beings . . . perfect drones for the totalitarian state.

Olga Rusanova commented, “In the Soviet Union, they killed all the people who could remember history.”

Czech mathematician and dissident Vaclav Benda knew there was no place in the public square for noncommunists, and so he worked to create a parallel polis – an alternative, grassroots set of social structures to preserve culture and history and free thought.

Sir Roger Scruton worked with Benda to establish an underground university that granted degrees secretly.  Other Western academics joined in, too.  Of course, the New Testament church was designed by God to fulfill just this function throughout history, from its roots under Roman persecution.  The Christian faith would not have survived for 2,000 years except for this design.  Modern churches know nothing of this, however.  (See my “church” essays in the Discipleship section of this site.)  Yet any particular family can raise its children to know truth, to understand the Bible, to become lights shining in darkness.  In this, homeschooling is essential.

Families have been under vicious assault throughout the last century, within the communist states who will tolerate no loyalty to anything other than the state, but now, in the West, by leftists and wokists who work to redefine and destroy the family structure designed by God for human fulfillment and prosperity – both spiritual and material.

Sexual immorality and sanctioned perversions certainly work to destroy the family, but so does greed, workaholism, the lust to acquire stuff.  Dreher:  “The loving, secure Christian home is a place that forms children who are capable of loving and serving others within the family, the church, the neighborhood, and indeed the nation.  The family does not exist for itself alone, but first for God, and then for the sake of the broader community – a family of families.”

It’s up to the family and groups of families to preserve truth and reach out to others with it.  Yuri Sipko explains what began under Stalin and lasted for sixty years.  “They took the preachers and pastors to prison.  Other men stood up and filled their shoes.  Then they took their houses of prayer.  Then at that point began the practice of small groups – people who lived close to one another would gather in small groups.  There was no formal structure of pastors or deacons.  There were just brothers and sisters who read the Bible together, prayed together and sang.”

And so they rediscovered God’s original design for the local church.  “Sixty years of terror, they were unable to get rid of the faith.  It was saved specifically in small groups.  There was no literature, no organizations for teaching, and even movement was forbidden.  Believers wrote biblical texts by hand . . . they preserved the true faith.”

Sipko goes on:  “Christianity has become a secondary foundation in people’s lives, not the main foundation.  Now it’s all about career, material success, and one’s standing in society.  In these small groups, the center was Christ, and his word that was being read, and being interpreted as applicable to your own life.”

Sipko reports that even with greatly increased freedom in Russia today, some evangelicals have returned to these simple structures that communism once forced upon them.  “They have a very clear understanding that their faith in Christ means they are going to have to reject this secular world.”

Some Christians look back on their days in Moscow in the 1970s as the happiest in their lives, worshipping and praying and building each other up.  “They bent under the weight of the Soviet state, but they did not break, because God was with them – and so were their brothers and sisters in Christ.”

The greatest challenge in these scenarios is one that Dreher says very little about, perhaps because of his Orthodox background.  That is, the obligation of the follower of Jesus to reach out with the Gospel to those around us.  Even if one establishes and takes part in an alternate Christian community, with supportive small groups, the temptation will be to hunker down and hide.  But our life’s purpose is to be about what Jesus was about, to preach the Gospel of salvation to the lost, even with great risk.  Care, caution, with much prayer and wisdom are certainly required, but the Gospel must be preached, even if whispered, even if by ‘subversive’ literature, namely Gospel tracts.  With Christians in the West timid and neglectful to their responsibility with the freedom they enjoy today, how likely is it that they will grow bolder under blatant persecution?

Dreher writes a poignant chapter entitled, “The Gift of Suffering,” a Christian principle that is both foreign and anathema to Western evangelicals.  We ought not to go out looking for it, of course, but if it comes due to our obedience, then we must be ready to bear it by God’s grace.

In Dreher’s conclusion, he notes that the great lie of this generation is the secular liberal ideal of freedom, that it comes “by liberating the self from all binding commitments (to God, to marriage, to family), and by increasing worldly comforts – that is a road that leads to hell.”

Timo Krizka, a Czech filmmaker who has documented still-living Slovak survivors of communist persecution, sees that the West is experiencing the beginning of old-fashioned totalitarianism.  “Once again, we are all being told that Christian values stand in the way of the people having a better life.  History has already shown us how far this kind of thing can go.”

C.S. Lewis put it that the world is “enemy-occupied territory” for the Christian.  “Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”  Dreher again asserts that the culture war is over – and we lost.  Now, trapped behind enemy lines, the fight is still on.

The Biblically-prescribed method of sabotage is, of course, the Great Commission.  That’s always been the true quest.  Souls hang in the balance between eternal life and death every moment!  What are you doing about it?  At least hand someone a Gospel tract . . . and then someone else, and then another, and another.  Visit ThinkTracts.com – if you can’t afford to buy Gospel tracts, just ask me for some.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com

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