Tisha B'Av

While many churches have directed a lot of attention to such hot-button moral issues as abortion, homosexual marriage, and euthanasia, they have been mostly silent on issues requiring a uniquely Biblical perspective. For instance, Catholicism and Mormonism differ little from Bible-based Christianity on the basis of morality alone.

Consequently, the Laodicean church treads very dangerous waters. Humanism and ecumenicalism continue to erode the church's position on Israel. Christian dialogue today accommodates the growing secularist bias against the Jewish state. While this pattern has seen its ebbs and flows during the course of history, it's clear that anti-Israel sentiment is currently creeping through the churches. And it has crept in under the guise of pro-Palestinian independence/anti-Israeli government arguments.

Church apathy regarding Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip — and U.S. President Bush's support for it — is just one example of increasing international prejudice towards Jewish sovereignty.

The forced evacuation of Jewish settlers in Gaza and the northern West Bank began today. The formal deadline given for leaving the settlements fell on the 14th of August, which this year was also the Ninth Day of the Jewish calendar month of Av (Tisha B'Av in Hebrew).

Tisha B'Av occurs at the end of a three-week mourning period which commemorates the destruction of the first Temple (built by King Solomon) in Jerusalem in 586 B.C. and the second Temple in 70 A.D. Both events took place on the Ninth of Av.

Two writers with Biblical worldviews have posted superb analyses of the Gaza pullout. While each focuses on two very different aspects of the situation, they both believe the move will bring further instability to the region.

Joel Rosenberg is a Jewish believer and popular writer of Christian fiction. In a recent piece for the National Review Online, Rosenberg breaks down the political consequences:

Almost nobody in Israel wants to keep Gaza or govern the daily lives of over one million Palestinian souls crammed into the tiny sliver of seaside real estate. But the current so-called “unilateral withdrawal” is unilateral surrender. Israel will give away long-fought-over territory without requiring the Palestinian Authority to wage a real war against Hamas and other terror groups and without requiring the PA to pursue real internal democratic reforms to give pro-peace Palestinian moderates the freedom to speak their mind in public and in the media without fear of reprisals.

As such, Sharon’s gamble is bad for Israel. It is bad for the U.S. and our war on terror....

In his weekly commentary for the online site Apostasy Watch!, Steve Lumbley offers a tremendous spiritual insight into the controversy :

Many in Israel today vilify the settlers because they have the nerve to actually believe the promises of God. They are seen as obstacles to peace and religious zealots. They are blamed for the violence and terrorism being perpetrated against all Israel.

There is coming a time very soon when true Christians will face the same anger and resentment right here in the U.S.A. And just like in Israel our greatest opposition will come not from atheists and unbelievers but from those who call themselves Christians.

Please read his full article, titled "A Day of Mourning," here.

The Name Game

Over the past year, the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has mounted a public relations campaign, called "Not in the Name of Islam," which repudiates Islamic terrorism. Part of their petition drive states, "We refuse to allow our faith to be held hostage by the criminal actions of a tiny minority acting outside the teachings of both the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad." Last week, the Fiqh Council of North America issued a fatwa (religious ruling) against terrorism, which was endorsed by numerous American Islamic organizations, including CAIR.

This growing struggle within Islam, most notably in America and Europe, is about religious proprietary rights. Who can lay claim to the name of Islam, the "moderates" or the "radicals"? Such divisions should be familiar in the West, where Christians have long fought over whose version of Christianity is the correct one — to the delight of the secular media and intelligentsia. For decades, the consensus Western view of religion, especially when it comes to Christianity and Islam, is that two basic sides exist: the mainstream, or moderate, position and the fundamentalist, or extremist, position. Consequently, the favorable (i.e. mainstream) aspects of incompatible belief systems are conflated, unfavorable (i.e. fundamentalist) aspects are excised, and syncretized "faith" becomes the standard. Faith-based humanism, under its various aliases, is now the de facto religion of the West.

The real tragedy for Bible-believing Christians is the erosion of Scriptural truth. From U.S. President George W. Bush's oft-quoted declaration that "Islam is a religion of peace" to British PM Tony Blair's vague condemnations of the "ideology of hatred," the true nature of anything is distorted through the lens of a pluralistic, humanistic worldview. To Bible prophecy watchers, today's "fluid" definitions of Christianity and Islam are part of the inexorable push towards the one world religion (the Great Harlot) of Revelation 17. The Western penchant for religious pluralism has meant the ascendancy of inherently arbitrary relationship and/or experiential-based theology over textual orthodoxy. Relativism's effects are felt upon not only Christianity but gradually the religions that are brought over by immigrants to the West.

Cultural (or nominal) Islam in the Arab world is nowhere near as entrenched as cultural Christianity is in the Americas and Europe. However, the second- and third-generation children of Muslim immigrants to the West have begun to assimilate secularism, democracy, and other Western concepts into their worldview. The London transit terrorists constitute a minority. The majority of Westernized Muslims are more likely to be joining hands with the interfaith crowd and winning converts or sympathizers in that manner, just as the "purpose-driven" Christian church does as it brings in droves to its mega-churches. CAIR's petition against terrorism illustrates this trend toward the so-called mainstream. The Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Islamic Society of North America represent further examples of a new breed of Western-influenced Islam which, similar to humanist Christianity, touts morals and works while glossing over deeper doctrinal matters. Jihad may, in fact, be as foreign a concept to many Westernized Muslims as fornication is to their cultural Christian counterparts. Theological disconnect doesn't change the facts of history, however; Islam was born out of bloody conquests in the 7th century which continue to this day in the form of Islamic terrorism.

Postmodern relativism and pluralism can be found in today's Western Islamic thinkers. Salman Rushdie is perhaps the most celebrated (or notorious). Another example is Irshad Manji, the Canadian-born author of "The Trouble with Islam Today." She is adored by bastions of liberal humanism like the New York Times and decried by Islamic leaders. In a recent Los Angeles Times opinion piece, she wrote: "Why do we Muslims hang on to the mantra that the Koran — and Islam — are pristine? God may very well be perfect, but God transcends a book, a prophet and a belief system." Manji's words share the same perspective Christian humanists have on the Bible, a fact which she implicitly acknowledges when she continues with, "How about joining with the moderates of Judaism and Christianity in confessing some 'sins of Scripture,' as Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong has said of the Bible?" Manji cites Bishop Spong here as inspiration, as if her advocacy for faith-based humanism weren't clear enough already.

A recent survey conducted by the Daily Telegraph found that one out of four Muslims in the U.K. sympathized with the motives of the London terror bombers. Newspaper polls like these are intended to generate news rather than uncover hard facts. No doubt such support among Western Muslim communities exists, but the reasons can be multifarious. For Muslims living in Europe and the U.S., lingering resentment of Western hegemony may fuel the sympathy more than theological orthodoxy or religious fervor. There may also be the sneaking suspicion on the part of Westernized Muslims (as with nominal Christians) that their fundamentalist brethren are the true torch bearers of their faith; in other words, there exists a love-hate relationship to which they won't readily admit.*

So where is this all going? Contemporary "faith" is often a guise for humanism, owing more to Nimrod than Abraham (of the Bible, that is). Man in his natural state gravitates towards the worship of mankind or a god defined on his terms. Humanistic Christianity and Islam will have more cachet in terms of a one world religion. Faith-based humanists like Manji, Spong, or the interfaith advocates at Fuller Seminary see no real distinction between foundational texts, at least in a modern context, or don't really care. For them, the Bible and the Qur'an are open to interpretation, represent neither absolute truth nor absolute falsehood, and are bridges to a broader universal understanding. The humanist credo is best summed up by "follow your bliss," (Hinduism through the filter of the atheist Joseph Campbell) which applies to its secular and religious varieties. Because humanism comes in so many forms, names and labels like "Muslim" and "Christian" have less meaning, which of course is one of its goals.

Jesus said in Matthew Chapter 7 (KJV):

²¹ Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
²² Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
²³ And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

Islamic terrorism truly poses a grave danger to Israel, the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere. But the greater danger to Christianity is humanism, whose guises are many and whose master masquerades as an angel of light and despises most of all Jesus' victory on the Cross of Calvary.

*Comparisons between cultural Christianity and Westernized Islam can only go so far. While moderate rank-and-file Muslims might be confused or in a state of denial, their leaders have not accounted for their religion's intense antagonism toward Jews and Christians. Bruce Thornton has written an in-depth article on the subject.

Appeasement Today and Yesterday

The July 7th terror bombings may not have surprised security-conscious Londoners, but the calculated brutality of the attacks remind us in the West that strife and human suffering are far from eradicated in the 21st century. While humanism has effectively sanitized the Judeo-Christian foundations in Europe and the U.S., it has largely been rebuffed in the Islamic world. The punditry and rhetoric among policy-makers and the media in the wake of these latest heinous acts reflect secularists' expected failure to grasp the spiritual motivations of Islamic terrorism, or jihad. Humanism's shades of gray only appease evil. Conservative commentator Victor Hanson writes, "[The West] has lost confidence in its old commitment to rationalism, free speech and empiricism, and now embraces the deductive near-religious doctrines of moral equivalence and utopian pacifism." (See here for more of Hanson's article.)

Over the past few days, observers have made allusions to that much-maligned figure of appeasement, Neville Chamberlain. As the U.K.'s Prime Minister in the late 1930s, Chamberlain is known for essentially handing Adolf Hitler the keys to Europe. After signing the Munich Agreement in 1938, Chamberlain famously declared, "My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time." Securing peace, however ephemeral, was more important than recognizing evil for what it was — a political reality that is not dissimilar to the one that exists today, especially when it comes to European leaders' handling of Islamic terrorism (see Spain, Italy).

In remarks following the Thursday morning blasts, British Prime Minister Tony Blair sounded almost apologetic for any implied saber-rattling:

In addition, I welcome the statement that has been put out by the Muslim Council of Great Britain. We know that [the terrorists] act in the name of Islam, but we also know that the vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims, here and abroad, are decent and law-abiding people who abhor this act of terrorism every bit as much as we do.

Britain has, for years, granted asylum to and harbored militant Islamists. Among diplomats (including the French) and Middle East observers, London is dubiously known as "Londonistan." Curiously, Camille Tawil, the terrorism expert at the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat, told the New Statesman in a December 2002 story that, "the Islamists use Britain as a propaganda base but wouldn't do anything to a country that harbors them and gives them freedom of speech."

Secular and religious humanists claim that Arab terrorism is born out of poverty, lack of education, and the West's foreign policy, particularly regarding the Israeli-Palistinean conflict. The Islamic world often echoes these sentiments while tacitly supporting the ideology of the terrorists. Last month, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the Prime Minister of predominantly Muslim Malaysia, said that "we can address the problem of extremism and terrorism by delivering better and more widespread [economic] development" in the Muslim nations. However, Abdullah's revered predecessor, Mahathir Mohamad, also known as the "father" of modern Malaysia, recently told the Guardian newspaper that the Bush administration is a "rogue regime" and that "Israel and other Jews control the most powerful nation in the world."

Cultural Christianity in the West may take little stock in doctrinal orthodoxy, but Dr. Ergun Caner, a Turkish Muslim-turned-Christian apologetic and author of "Unveiling Islam," says that is not the case for Islam in the Arab world. In an interview with CBN, Dr. Caner said, "Islam has never known culture to be casual, even in my country, Turkey.... You do not call yourself a Muslim in public if you're not practicing."

Well-intentioned religionists and secularists blame the corrosiveness of the West's cultural exports (i.e. Hollywood) and the war in Iraq for stirring diabolical "extremism." Their theology/philosophy of guilt does not, however, take into account the bloody origins of Islam or that eradication of Judeo-Christian civilization is fulfillment of Quranic prophecy. A passage (Surah 9:5) from the Qur'an states:

And when the sacred months are passed, kill those who join other gods with God wherever ye shall find them; and seize them, besiege them, and lay wait for them with every kind of ambush: but if they shall convert, and observe prayer, and pay the obligatory alms, then let them go their way, for God is gracious, merciful.

The Christian humanists at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, may believe that Christians and Muslims worship the same god and that a million-dollar program can take the place of sound doctrine, but consider these words from the British Islamist Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad in an interview with Al-Hayat:

Allah willing, we will transform the West into Dar Al-Islam [i.e. a region under Islamic rule] by means of invasion from without. If an Islamic state arises and invades [the West] we will be its army and its soldiers from within. If not, [we will change the West] through ideological invasion from here, without war and killing.

Many political leaders and humanist academics in Europe and the U.S. believe that Palestinian independence is the panacea for Middle East terrorism. Back at the 1938 Munich Agreement, Chamberlain believed that annexing Sudetenland to Germany would stem the tide of Nazi aggression. The Islamists' ultimate goal is not an independent Palestine but the annihilation of the Jewish state. Steven Plaut, a professor at the University of Haifa (Israel), wrote in the Middle East Quarterly: "'Palestinian self-determination' serves as the banner for Arab aggression against Israel."

In an op-ed piece (subscription req'd) for the July 10th edition of the Los Angeles Times, Jewish radio talk show host Dennis Prager wrote:

If the west understood the meaning of the Muslim terrorism against Israel and of contemporary Muslim anti-Semitism, it would be far better prepared to fight the sort of terrorism that struck London last week.... The Muslim world is obsessed with the Jews and with annihilating the one Jewish state, an obsession analogous to that of the Nazis.

It is essential for Jews and Christians, at the very least, to understand the true motives of the Islamic terrorists and the governments that support them. The ancient Roman empire was itself crippled by appeasement in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries as its decadent society was unable to stand up to the Germanic barbarians. A lack of clear Biblical thinking in America and Europe is pushing the West in a similar direction. Dissension from within and enemies from without are a deadly combination.

The Old Testament depicts appeasement in ancient Israel. The prophet Jeremiah witnessed the disintegration of Judah in the 6th century B.C. as its people turned from God and its leaders ignored the (prophesied) threat of the Babylonians. Referring to the religious and political leaders of Judah, God spoke to Jeremiah in Jeremiah Chapter 6:

¹⁴ "They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. 'Peace, peace,' they say, when there is no peace.
¹⁵ Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen; they will be brought down when I punish them."

The Truth is Not Popular

A new editorial in Christianity Today entitled "We're Prime Time, Baby" (July 2005) touts the growing acceptance of evangelicals by the American mainstream media. As if the self-congratulatory tone of the piece isn't enough, its words reveal a real keenness for worldly approbation.

We've been mainstreamed....We really can't play the persecution card anymore. As "players," we will be criticized sharply still, but that's just part of life in America.

The unctuous use of the word "players" — in or out of quotes — reeks of entitlement, implying that Christians have grown up enough to sit at the big table with the adults. The editorial suggests that Christians are now ready to transition from their ugly duckling stage (i.e. too much negativity), as if they were preparing to go to one of those coming-out balls from a Jane Austen novel. As such, Christians must play some kind of game (cultural/social) in order for the Gospel to have maximum impact. This line of thinking is less concerned about Biblical truth and more concerned about the appearances of truth as standardized by worldly men and women. It is fertile soil for ecumenical, interfaith nonsense.

The apostle John wrote in 1 John Chapter 2:

¹⁵ Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
¹⁶ For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.
¹⁷ The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

The gist of the editorial is also a not-so-subtle dig at Christians who can't or won't be "players," that is, the ones still stuck playing the "persecution card" and who apparently didn't get the purpose-driven memo. While a persecution complex can indeed be self-fulfilling prophecy, the inference here is that persecution for Christians is more perception than reality. Yet in many of the less developed nations around the world, Christians are violently persecuted. This simplified and provincial assessment of Christianity's advances doesn't give the whole picture.

The Christianity Today piece concludes with words reminiscent of a political rally:

Let's remember that how we got here is how we will stay here: Careful scholarship. Measured proclamations. Majoring on the majors. Grassroots organizing. Patience. Prayer.

There is a certain plain honesty to CT's editorial — they are promoting not so much Christianity but rather a movement. Evangelicalism is a movement in the same way as feminism, socialism, and other -isms. Movements are man's province. God needs no movements, for His Word still has the power to change people's hearts. For the Gospel to be popular, it must cease to be the Truth. We naturally desire reassurance of our own goodness, but the Gospel does the opposite.

Popularity is an idol of the human heart. The pressure on Christians today to conform to the world is very strong — so strong that it is an incipient form of persecution. And that pressure to conform may just come most strenuously from those who call themselves Christians.

Jesus said of the last days in Matthew Chapter 10:

²¹ Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death.
²² All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.

Pop Theology

This past week, millions of moviegoers around the world flocked to cineplexes to see "Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith," the final installment of George Lucas's science fiction film saga. As one of the cinema's most enduring series, "Star Wars" has attained the status of modern mythology or even global meta-narrative — a mythology which also demonstrates the growing influence of popular culture (over the last several decades) on the beliefs and worldview of people today. The intense media frenzy anticipating the movie's opening says a lot more about our culture than the cinematic merits (or lack thereof) of "Revenge of the Sith." That is, society is far more passionate about fantasy than God's truth.

In the nearly three decades since the original film's release, Christians have debated amongst themselves the hermeneutics of "Star Wars" in relation to Biblical truth and Christian living. A great deal of Christian ambivalence towards "Star Wars" can be attributed to the series' pantheistic mix of Eastern monism and Judeo-Christian allegory, i.e. themes of redemption and good versus evil.*

Some believe, however, that "Star Wars" movies should remain immune to Christian criticism because they're so-called family-friendly entertainment, that they are just make-believe. Indeed it is rare when a pop culture product these days isn't a soul-destroying enterprise. But the "Star Wars" series have attained a prominence reaching far beyond the world of cinema. In Western society where Bible-based Christianity has largely been abandoned, shallow and transient worldviews, such as those promoted in the very popular "Star Wars" films, rush in to fill the void. "Star Wars" has cultural resonance not so much for its intrinsic truth, but because of the lack of truth in contemporary society.

The apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians Chapter Five (KJV):

⁶ Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?

Secularism's modern preeminence has caused a lot of churches to panic, and as a result Christians are desperately trying to re-identify with the world. Often this entails swallowing a toxic chunk of the prevailing culture to get a microscopic grain of Biblical truth. Dissonance between worldly patterns of thinking and God's ways is largely ignored. Because it is natural for people to seek the approval of their peers, believers are tempted to give spiritual poison an entrance to their souls.

Take, for example, the recently published book titled Christian Wisdom of the Jedi Masters. Written by Dick Staub, director of the Center for Faith and Culture in Seattle, Washington, this book follows in a long tradition of preaching the Gospel by appealing to worldliness. Some modern Christians fear cultural irrelevance so greatly, they bend over backwards to accommodate the latest trends. Such books are intended as a bridge to non-believers. However, Christians end up championing them, and non-believers simply ignore them as banal.

"Star Wars" is not a gateway to the Christian faith. Those who are already Christians may identify with the central themes of the series, and such identification can be positive. Christian allegory in art can have an enriching influence on society if that society values, at the very least, some kind of absolute truth. Works like Dante's Divine Comedy and Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities may win Christians to classic literature, but they won't win literate non-believers to Christ. Only the Gospel of Jesus Christ has the power to change the hearts of men.

Christianity is not the enemy of art and entertainment. But for believers, art functions best as a tool of resistance to the encroaching shadows of a sin-darkened world. When art functions as the lamp stand, it gradually becomes an idol that gives man a false assurance in his inherent goodness. Lucas's space saga doesn't resist the world because, philosophically, "Star Wars" embraces it. The central theme of good versus evil isn't an effective evangelizing tool when most of the world's religions also share this dualistic worldview. In an interview some years ago, George Lucas admitted his own universalist inclinations:

The conclusion I've come to is that all of the religions are true, they all just see a different part of the elephant. Religion is basically a container for faith. Faith is the glue that holds our society together; faith in our...culture, in our world...whatever it is that we're trying to hang onto. Faith is a very important part of our attempt to remain stable...to remain balanced.

Postmodern relativism has played an important role in the shaping of the "Star Wars" mythos. Lawrence Kasdan, the talented screenwriter of Lucas's second "Star Wars" movie "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980), analyzed the Force, the film series' theological leitmotif:

One of the longest conversations that George [Lucas] and I had in our first story conference was on the philosophical background of the "Empire" story and on the meaning of the Force. Basically, George is for good and against evil, but everyone has his own interpretation of what that means. In my opinion, what emerges about the Force are its similarities to Zen and to basic Christian thought.

In her review of "Revenge of the Sith," Annabelle Robertson, the entertainment writer for the Christian website Crosswalk, challenged the film's underlying resistance to absolute truth:

Rather than any form of true faith, therefore, “Star Wars” instead embraces a radical, New Age style individualism – something that cannot help but lead to conflict and disharmony, the very thing it purports to seek.

Although Christian radio talk show host Paul McGuire praised "Sith" as cinema, he, too, found something wanting in Lucas's worldview:

Lucas is using Judeo-Christian imagery and themes, even though he disavows absolutes....As philosopher or theologian his world view is weak. He has not properly thought out his position like Tolkien did in the Lord of the Rings.

In "Revenge of the Sith" a character describes the antagonists by saying, "Only the Sith deal in absolutes." This line suggests that Lucas is now less than convinced by his own dualistic Wagnerian melodrama. Yet Christians, taking a page from postmodern criticism, have decided to mostly ignore the authorial intent of "Star Wars" for experiential interpretations. But it's clear that Lucas sees himself as an artist with a specific story to tell and a specific message to promote. To Lucas, Christians finding meaning in his films is evidence that the stories tap into broader universal truths. In other words, based on the theology he has espoused publicly, Christianity is only part of a larger truth, not the whole truth.

Allegorical art need not be utilitarian, literalist, or facile, and it can be very effective in revealing a part or parts of truth through detail and specificity. Great works have often been deemed great because they express the spirit of God's truth without explicitly calling attention to it. But this argument does not adequately defend "Star Wars." At its best, the series is ad hoc Christian allegory; at worst, it is a shallow and confused blend of "truths" purposefully designed to form some kind of metatruth. The message of "Star Wars" then is that man can find his own truth, and by extension, truth is protean and relative.

Yet, for all that, the real fault of "Star Wars" is extrinsic. Lucas is a filmmaker; he makes movies. He is not a theologian, nor does he need to be. And while "Star Wars" has had a long life as a pop culture phenomenon, it will be replaced by something else sooner rather than later. Much of contemporary society, however, has chosen to exchange the enduring truth of God's Word for ephemeral lies. The hypnotic hold which "Star Wars" possesses over its legions of fans is just more evidence that the things of today's world are the gods of the modern age. Can Christians lead the way by rejecting even the comfortable, PG-rated idols that the world offers, or will they continue to be lulled to sleep by pleasing half-truths? In 2 Corinthians 6:14, the apostle Paul asks, "What fellowship can light have with darkness?"

* Berit Kjos recently posted a valuable article on the theology behind "Revenge of the Sith" on her website. Albert Mohler also weighed in on the subject (from an article originally published in 1999).

Also:
Remember the Bereans

A Powerful Delusion

In his terrific May 7 and May 13, 2005, entries of the With Christ web log, Dan S. analyzed the conflict between Biblically-defined (or Godly) love and relativistically-defined (or postmodern) love. The incompatibility of these two concepts fuels the growing, impassioned prejudice toward conservative born-again Christians. Dan wrote:

For the past several decades, the meaning of love has been hijacked and largely redefined for use within the pervasive framework of moral relativism — even by Christians. This new love doesn't engage in any form of judgment and is characterized by a perverted form of tolerance. This so-called love is tolerant of all manner of evil and wickedness, and intolerant toward those who would seek to identify and scripturally restrain the same. Thus, when a Bible-based Christian sets forth Scriptural truth with any degree of certainty, they are viewed as being unloving, abusive and attempting to force their views on others.

On the grounds of the aforementioned conflict, some Christians today have joined the secular humanists in their efforts to suppress Bible-believing Christians. They have made a terrible mistake. Nominal Christians charge that their born-again brethren have failed to heed Jesus' commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22:39) They do not, however, buttress their argument for relativist love with Jesus' preceding commandment: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment." (Matthew 22:37-38) Because these last two verses so definitively clash with emotion/ideology-based love, they are typically ignored. God is referred to here as Lord, demanding submission of the soul (emotion) and mind (ideology). Loving our neighbor is the subordinate commandment, so it follows that loving our neighbor is entirely defined by loving the Lord.

Secularists use an ill-defined concept of love to silence believers. It is an effective cover to oppose God's laws. As the apostle Paul warned, "Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light." (2 Corinthians 11:14) Human beings are designed to love, and the devil uses this to his advantage. For who will stand against love, right? Conservative Christians are singled out in the postmodern culture because they make (Bible-based) distinctions between what is and what isn't love. This is deeply offensive not only in a godless society but in an ecumenical/pantheistic/universalist society, as well.

On his blog, Dan S. commented that "love and compassion are pervasive buzzwords in the culture war." Words like "tolerance" and "diversity" can also be added to that list. As part of a modern system of brainwashing, these terms are used to wipe the slate clean — the slate, in this case, being the typical Judeo-Christian, classically educated mind. In its place, secularists aim to create a societally mandated morality with a counterfeit love as its core principle.

Jesus said in John Chapter Eight:

³¹ If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.
³² Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

The Bible tells us that God's truth will free us from the bondage of this world — not love. Apart from God, man's "truths" are like a house of cards ready to fall. And God's truth defines love within the context of submission to the Lord. In 1 Timothy 4:1, Paul writes: "The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons." Christians who persist in denying the sufficiency of Biblical truth dangerously open themselves up to further spiritual deception.

The culture at large brands Bible-believing Christians as narrow-minded zealots who are not only out of touch with the modern world, but who are also enemies of love, knowledge, and humanity in general. Today, secularists claim that conservative believers in the U.S. are attempting to hijack the government to enforce some kind of theocratic rule. These accusations reveal a decided lack of understanding of mankind — that, in reality, the inertia of the world is sin, and that natural man resists God and His Laws with his entire being. For any totalitarian regime to succeed, first it must either deny the existence of a Supreme Being (atheism) or assert such a being in absentia (agnosticism), then it must appeal to man's natural passions. It is no wonder that atheists such as Sartre and Voltaire are ready-made apologists for totalitarianism.

Man, in his sin nature, is predisposed to replace God's laws with counterfeits. Yet counterfeits are ultimately worthless. Secularists may tout the principles of tolerance, diversity, love, and compassion, but their real-life applications seem to always be in opposition to God's Word. When society progresses in this direction, people won't be able to tell the real from the fake.

The apostle Paul wrote in 2 Thessalonians Chapter 10:

¹⁰ They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
¹¹ For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie
¹² and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

Christian, Interrupted

An intense spiritual assault is being waged against believers today, anticipating fulfillment of Bible prophecy. The devastation has been wrought on two major fronts: behavioral and doctrinal.

The personal lives of Christians are under attack. The vacuum created by Christians' retreat from the public forum has been filled by a relativist and toxic culture. As the postmodern sphere of influence widens, major and minor temptations bully their way into the inner lives of believers. From time to time we hear stories in the news about a church scandal or of an egregious act committed by a Christian. Our resolve is weakened by personal failure, doubts, and compromises with the world. To resist sin, we shift vainly from reliance on Christ to reliance on our perceived goodness. When faith in God is reduced to faith in humanity, but is not labeled or regarded as such, the inevitable disillusionment can be crippling. The tragic result is behavior begins to determine doctrine, and it is now very commonplace.

Christ summons us to Him as we are, in our state of forlorn imperfection. The prerequisite for submission to Jesus is not "self-improvement" but rather a broken and contrite heart. Attempts to live the Christian life through human merit and endeavor lead only to disillusionment, despair, and an ultimate decline in faith. To the devil, believers present an enticing, albeit challenging, spiritual target. The spiritually oppressed believer is an ineffective Christian soldier who can do more harm than good to unbelievers. In his letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul wrote, "Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes." (Ephesians 6:11) The full armor of God means immersion in His Word and total faith in Christ, not in ourselves or others.

The other major front is the attack on doctrine, in essence an attack from within. Perhaps it is more accurately described as the gradual usurpation of doctrine. Jesus warned of this danger when he said, "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves." (Matthew 7:15) False or incomplete doctrine will lead a Christian down a path of "virtual" Christianity. That is where the spirit of Antichrist (i.e. "in the place of Christ") is most powerful.

Contemporary humanist theologies attempt to resolve the Biblical discrepancy between God's standard for perfection and man's real world inability to measure up by convincing people of the "inherent goodness" in mankind. It is, of course, in total opposition to God's Word — that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation. In many Christian churches today, these incompatible concepts are presented together without a second thought, and indeed with great arrogance. This kind of compromise can be recognized in the words of church leaders like Rick Warren, Jim Wallis, and Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The world of Christian publishing is replete with successful books like John Eldredge's Wild at Heart, which are simply "self-help" books with a Christian sheen. Targeted at Christian men, Eldredge's book attempts to build a Christian identity from a pop culture paradigm.

Such exercises in vanity only serve to drive believers away from Christ rather than to Him. Tricia Tillin of Banner Ministries expands on Christ's metaphor of a person (personal identity) as a house (cf. Matthew 12:43-45). For many believers, the Holy Spirit is kept in one corner of the house, but something has to occupy the rest of it. Ritualistic or utilitarian Christianity (legalism) may exercise a high level of human cognition, but not a powerful indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Or, at the opposite end, Christianity in the grip of humanistic philosophy and ill-defined "love" ceases to be Christianity altogether.

In her most recent book Total Truth, Nancy Pearcey describes modern evangelical Christians as "boxed-in," unwilling or unable to translate the truth of Christianity to the world in which they live. They exchange their Christian beliefs for secular or even pantheistic ones when interacting with the world outside of a personal "faith-based" sphere.

The pressure on Christians to conform to what Pearcey describes as the "sacred/secular" dichotomy was ever so present in the Terri Schiavo tragedy. By not acting on behalf of the dying woman in Pinellas Park, Florida, the sitting U.S. President failed to act upon his conviction, a classic example of a Christian interrupted by a self-imposed public ban on his belief system. This kind of self-imposition is quickly being manipulated into imposition from without, which is why the scared Christian will transition into the persecuted Christian.

Because many Christians today struggle to maintain a sense of Christian separation (being not of this world), they have consequently been unable to push back the rising tides of amorality and unbelief. When belief is diluted, its distinction in the world is muted. By definition, Christians must stand in opposition to the spirit of this world. The difficulty of this struggle is heightened in nations where Christianity is culturally ingrained. Since the secular arena has so successfully co-opted many Christian precepts (charity, moderation, justice), and Western Christianity in turn has allowed so much humanism to creep into it, nominal Christians are now artfully deceived into denying the core truths, that Jesus is the only path to salvation.

Only the hard truths can break the hardened hearts of man, and believers must be at the point of the charge. If the tip is dull, the sword can crack or fail to penetrate.