So what can make a society turn around? Lots of things I'm
sure, but one thing I've noticed or observed as I read history is this...Hard
Times.
The generation in America that's rapidly dying off
experienced hard times during the 1930's. This shaped and cultivated their
character and they learned (in a worldly wise sense) what really matters, what
is really needed, and the futility of covetousness and the silliness of putting
one's hope in material goods. They learned the same values the old Roman
Republic had...sternness, hard work, frugality, duty, manners, devotion to
family, planning ahead, saving...things along those lines. Do some of these
coincide with Christian values? Somewhat, but they can also become confused.
My
point is that ancient Romans, Chinese, and other peoples learned these things
apart from Christianity. I'm hardly suggesting Christianity isn't necessary for
the world...far from it. But watering it down, changing its definitions in
order to accommodate a social situation is a dangerous thing. Ultimately it
does great harm to the Church. Don't be fooled by those who would use
Christianity to gain or hold power, those who would use it to build yet another
Babel.
The Depression Generation promptly forgot all this during
the years of plenty...the post-war decades of the 1950's and 60's. Glutting
themselves on success they abandoned their ethic and spoiled their children.
Sure, they didn't go over the top as their children and now grandchildren do.
Yet compared to what many of them grew up with, their standard of living became
extravagant, even if it appears modest by today's gluttonous standards. Today
we've gone so far we've lost even the basic ability to make simple judgments between
need and want, what is reasonable and what is decadent.
So many technological advances and lifestyle changes were
embraced without a second thought...and then the 'Greatest Generation' reeled
as they watched their children become adults and in many cases completely
reject the values they had cultivated... in hard times.
America is fat...fat in its soul. It's a disgusting
corpulent consuming beast that has no purpose anymore, other than to consume.
It must consume or die. Society is collapsing. My head spins over the changes
that have taken in place in my lifetime. I can't imagine what people in their
eighties think as they look about.
Is it because America abandoned God? I don't know what to do
with questions like that. I don't think America ever was with God or had God. I
think the question reveals more about the inquirer than any answer that could
be given. It's the wrong question...it's like asking did the car go off the
road because it ran out of coffee? The categories don't belong together.
Even if America was filled with Christians (which it never
has been)...it still wouldn't change the essential status of the country. It
would still be just another country, no different than the nations about it.
Psalm 33:12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the
LORD; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance.
This verse is often appealed to by those who think in
Sacralist terms. Read it carefully....in no way can that verse be attached to
any entity other than the Covenant people of God....Israel in the Old
Testament, and the Church, the Israel of the New. It doesn't belong to the
modern Zionist state in Palestine, nor does it apply to Britain, America,
Russia, Byzantium, the so-called Holy Roman Empire or any other man-made
creation. God did not choose these nations and when Christo-Americans try to
create a narrative that suggests God chose America...they have transgressed the
boundaries of Scripture, are presuming to speak for God, and frankly bring
curse upon themselves. I find it quite outrageous. Be careful interpreting
Providence. We don't have prophecy related to nations today and we won't know
what the Divine plan was until we have the Divine perspective in the age to
come.
Perhaps one could say the Church in America has abandoned
God? Perhaps we could say a society permeated with false Christianity has
invited Judgment? Society at large has become deviant due to success. It's a
rich man with kidney stones and a bad case of gout, and now cancer. We are very
much akin to the debauched culture of latter day Rome. Aimless, lacking any
soul...we sit around dreaming up ways to consume...taking things that are not
evil in and of themselves and making them into dirty, idolatrous, evil things.
So America is drunk on success? Few would argue with
that...well, what happened to Britain? Britain was on the victorious side
during World War II, but apart from Germany came out the biggest loser. She
lost her empire, and took a painfully long time to recover from the war.
Society was transformed. Some of the changes were good, but a tide of
secularization swept across the island. Today there's an overwhelming sense
that something has gone terribly wrong.
'Britain lost her empire because Britain forgot God'...I
heard one Reformed preacher say not too long ago. Very strange sentiment. I
might say Britain would need to lose her empire in order to find God...but then
I too would be speaking in the same error-laden extra-biblical national terms.
How does a nation convert? How is a nation born again? How is a nation Christian?
Only by redefining these terms can we even have such a discussion.
Rather than return to the Christendom model I would suggest
to David Cameron it was that very model which led to Britain's contemporary
situation. Sacralism inoculates a society and Britain was certainly
super-saturated with Christian Sacralism. It permeated society. It turned
Christians into Pharisees and made the unbelieving rail internally, gritting
their teeth as they outwardly conformed. Were they obeying God's commands? Were
these forced conformists pleasing to God? On His side? Read Romans 8 again.
Placing law on the shoulders of unbelievers will only generate wrath and a
backlash. Today's social situation in America and Britain must be understood in
light of Constantinianism...soft, hard, official, or unofficial, whatever form
it has taken....Western Sacralism has run its course and invited a backlash. We
live in the days of wrath, where the Lost of the modern world war against
Sacralism, and in the process battle against both the true and false forms of
the faith. Thanks to Sacralism we who reject the calls of David Cameron, Rick
Santorum, James Dobson and others...will suffer along with them as society
rejects their vision.
And the more they push it and manipulate politics to gain power
and force it on an unwilling society...the greater the backlash. We've gone
beyond the turning point. These people will literally bring persecution upon
the Church, not for the gospel of the Kingdom...but the pseudo-gospel of
Sacralism.
In Revelation17.16 when the kingdoms of the Beast (the
self-deified Empire, the pseudo-Zion) turns on the whore (the false church, the
covenant community in a state of apostasy) and destroys it, the True Church and
heaven rejoice (Revelation 18.20).
Living in the last days of Western Christendom may make lost
people like Pat Buchanan wail and lament...but we should have a different
response. The social tumult isn't pleasant, but does the doom of Christendom
spell disaster for the Church?
Of course not. We have to think in Gospel terms. And in this
age of mass confusion, sorrow, degradation, and post-modern thinking...there is
opportunity, the kind we haven't seen in many an age.
After the World War, it's not too surprising people
said...alright we're not going back to how things were. For those of us who did
not live through the war I think it's hard to grasp how thoroughly it shook the
moral foundations of society. A similar event happened from 1618-48. But
Christendom recovered, and though it was not unified, it grew, and by 1900 sat
astride the globe.
Starting in 1914, the proud tower of Christendom once more imploded
and spent 31 years destroying itself. To many, spoken aloud or not, it was a
referendum. Christendom had failed. Christendom had played its last hand.
That hardly means the power brokers of the day were going to
close up shop and go home. Deep rooted social models don't usually disappear
overnight. Even when radical social changes take place, like with the Russian
Revolution in 1917...many of the old forms remain. Russia never got her
worker's paradise, instead she found out that power uses many vehicles to get
what it wants. Men may gain zeal from ideas, but don't we say it all the
time...power corrupts? Russia ended up with a new super-Tsar instead. While Britain
had run its course by 1945, the United States was just reaching its peak. The
Secularist backlash was under way, but at the same time the Dominionists were
clamouring for a new level of power...a real concrete hard power. No longer was
the United States a continental power alone, no longer was it largely an
agrarian society. It was now an industrial super-power, an international force
beyond anything the world had ever seen. A great social struggle would ensue
and still does. The Dominionists have reached a crisis point. Society at large
has moved so far away from their vision, they are grasping desperately for
political control...to bring the victory (as they define it) by the weight of
law and gain the power to organize and engineer society. I hope they will fail
and I think they probably will, but in the process they will do a lot of damage
and invite a lot of backlash.
The War seemed like a victory for the West, and it was, but a
new West, a reformed West. America might still put 'In God We Trust' on its
currency, but society at large was already moving away from such Sacral
expressions. For Britain, the Sacralist coffin was sealed in the 1950's if not
in 1945.
For Sacralists then, and certainly many today, this is a
real existential crisis. These folks echo the sentiments of Jerome. When news
reached Bethlehem that Rome had been sacked in 410, Jerome lamented...the
Christian Roman Empire was breaking! What would become of the Church? (my
paraphrase)
If Jerome had understood the Gospel and the nature of the
Kingdom he would have realized the utter bankruptcy and foolishness of such a
question. The Church is not tied to, nor does it depend on a political or
cultural structure. What a painfully low view of the Church of Jesus Christ!
In the United States our collective memory usually extends for
only a handful of years, or as one put it...a baseball season. But in Europe
you're surrounded by history and though many people don't always remember the
details, many do have something of a grasp of the large sweep, the big picture.
They might not remember which king came after which queen, but they know
something of war, division, hate, and what Christianity brought to European
civilization. For the most part, the student of the Bible when reading history
must conclude... Christendom did not bring the gospel, it brought a Sacral
Society. Europe was Christianized but that doesn't mean the population was ever
Christian. There have always been Christians in Europe, many at times. And more
often than not they've gone along with the 'Christianization' model. The
Christianized populations have had enough. They don't know where to go, but
they know Christendom is not the answer. The call of David Cameron and others
are empty. The quest for the Sacral Unity bred centuries of war and after 1648,
let alone 1945...Europe has had enough.
PART 3
PART 3