Reports have come out
regarding street protestors burning Bibles. Already upset by the taking down of
statues and monuments, this story has pushed many Evangelicals over the edge
and while the imagery of the Scriptures being burned is troublesome, there is
also cause for concern to be found in the Evangelical response.
It is of course
deplorable and tragic to think we've come to a point that people want to burn
the Scriptures but at the same time if we're students of the New Testament,
such actions should hardly surprise us. In fact such persecutions and hatreds
are in fact the expected norm for this present evil age. But for many
Christians they have placed their hope and faith into what could only be called
a Christo-American narrative and the security it provides. It establishes a
kind of negation of the present evil age or at the very least it projects the
evil outward to the realm of the 'them' – America's enemies. America on the
contrary is good and 'exceptional'.
And so while they are
upset about attacks on Christianity they have already been very agitated by the
perceived attacks on their historical narratives as displayed and depicted in
the monuments. For them, Christianity and America are virtually synonymous and this
burning of Bibles is but the icing on the cake as it were. In other words their
posture for assessing these events has already started on the wrong foot. They
view such events through a distorted lens and will inevitably misinterpret them
and extrapolate erroneous applications and conclusions.
I had to both laugh and
shake my head in disbelief listening to some pseudo-intellectual would-be
academic on the local Evangelical radio station. He was very upset over the
indoctrination of kids in the public school. They were not being taught that
America was 'great' and they were no longer learning about American
Exceptionalism. Obviously as I'm sure the reader has already noted, he (being a
blind leader of the blind) failed to understand that teaching school kids that
America is great and exceptional is in fact a form of indoctrination. That's
where things are at. There are assumptions being made in some circles that are
taken as axiomatic, givens that cannot be challenged. And since they treat
these ideas as if they were the equivalent of Scripture and are standards of
orthodoxy, there's very little to be said. Such people are almost unreachable. Their
problem in the end is not really a question of historical knowledge which they
surely lack. It's a spiritual problem that has led them to a point where
they're just as confused and deceived as the lost people burning Bibles.
Some Evangelicals seem
shocked that the protestors have made a connection between their own Establishment
views regarding America's history and greatness – and the Bible. I find this
strange because the protestors are merely expressing connections that
Evangelicals have sought to make for decades. They have laboured to tie in the
American Establishment narrative to the Scriptures but then seem puzzled when
the protestors act in light of such connections. They find fault with America,
its founding and history and so therefore it follows they find fault with the
Bible. The Evangelicals should be happy they're making the connection – one
that most historians think is grossly overplayed even to the point of being
mythology.
I too am upset that
protestors are burning the Scriptures but what really grieves me in all of this
is that the actions and history of a nation like America are equated with the
ideas and teachings of that Holy Book. I call such a notion blasphemy. That's
the great error and tragedy in this and it's one the Evangelicals have
zealously promoted. The associations do not come from the Scriptures but from
centuries of false teaching and an active campaign over the past two
generations to play up this legacy and to amplify and even manufacture
connections – even when they are sometimes only tenuous at best.
The truth is America's
legacy is not one of freedom. Or rather we should understand this legacy as
being mixed – freedom and prosperity for some but often at the expense of
others. One man's freedom has all too often been built upon the shoulders of
others and to their hurt. This ranges far beyond slavery but instead touches on
a larger story of intercontinental economic exploitation and war. It's a story
of greed, pride and the sanctification of covetousness. It's a story about the
love of money and the idol mammon.
This American history of
continental and then global imperialism is one that includes both slavery and
its consequent social legacy. And virtually all empires proliferate on the
basis of some kind of notion of race or cultural superiority. This was once
openly embraced and championed but its apologists don't want to talk about it
anymore. The superior culture has a right or duty to seize what belongs to
others because it's their calling or destiny or perhaps because it's deemed a
crime to see resources being wasted by a culture that doesn't know how to
exploit them properly. And thus the superior culture (which often included a
racial element) has the right, even a God-given right to take it by force.
Because a Christian gloss was put on this very pagan notion – it was deemed
moral and even Biblical. But the truth is that it's bestial and Babelish. Those
that sought to draw connections between their nation's deeds and that of
ancient covenanted Israel are guilty of a triple heresy – a heresy in
hermeneutics, theology and ethics. And many of these heretics still flourish in
both Evangelical and Confessional circles. They are among the most popular of
today's false teachers.
For the past century or
more those who have sought to combine Sacralist Christianity (with its
Dominionist-imperialist impulses) with Classical Liberalism have engaged in a
wearisome dance – one in which the music is soon to stop. The two are actually
incompatible and increasing numbers of Dominionist leaders are coming to
realise this. Evangelical, Confessional and even Catholic voices are starting
to question the viability of Liberalism and have realised the 'Christian'
society they would build can't rest upon a democratic foundation with universal
rights.
Some Christian leaders
(especially in light of the Obama-Trump epoch) are beginning to reckon with the
history and yet have not broken with Sacralism. They simply are succumbing to
Enlightenment Liberalism. Others are close to breaking with Liberalism
altogether and are finding greater and greater resonance with Medieval and
overtly Constantinian polities and cultural orders. Sometimes this (in a very
irrational and haphazard manner) is wed to a kind of extremist Libertarian view
which is functionally a kind Right-Anarchist hybrid platform. Sometimes
referred to within the spectrum of Neo-Liberalism it's neither really Liberal
nor is it Christian, but it does resonate with a mammon worshipping
hyper-individualist society and thus it's fairly popular. Utterly ignorant of
history (and apparently sociology and economics) they are able to weave this
narrative in with that of Christendom.
Once again both of these
camps are wrong and both are engaged in activism – one progressive (which in
Christian terms has a long pedigree) and the other reactionary. The debate is
further confused because the reactionary activists who campaign for the police,
military, Wall Street and the mythological view of American history are in
denial and pretend that they have not confused their politics with
Christianity. This is sometimes further confused by a kind of schizophrenia
with regard to institutions like the police and Wall Street. They are both
denounced and praised depending on the context.
This destructive social
(and now ecclesial) dynamic is at work in the era of Trump – and it is this
president who plays to these narratives and stokes the already smoldering and
burning fires at work in Conservative and Right-wing circles.
For some of the
protestors, the Christianity of White America – the old WASP (White Anglo-Saxon
Protestant) Establishment is bogus, hypocritical and a betrayal of the New
Testament. And to some extent they're right but for many of them it's not as if
they actually are interested in New Testament doctrine. At best they have
latched on to certain Biblical subjects which they think resonate with
Liberalism or even Left-wing ideology and have (like their Right-wing
opponents) read ideas into Scriptural passages and have added on layers of
supplemental and corollary ideas – in many cases utterly burying the original
meaning.
Others have dug further
and on the basis of identity politics or an absolutising of Classically Liberal
values or even Scientific Materialism have become very hostile to not just the
Bible but the Bible as a vehicle and tool of those in power – who have
committed the deeds they oppose which (if we are honest and Biblical in our
thinking) have often been terrible and sinful.
It's tragic because both
sides are so woefully ill-informed and mistaken. While I certainly reject the
protestors who are (in many cases) hostile to all religion and especially the
True one, at the same time my New Testament sensibilities are deeply offended
by those who have used the Scriptures to justify their evil deeds and provide a
moral gloss to their theft, avarice and murder – not to mention their flag-draped
cross mythmaking. I also resent the way in which they have built their Babels
and by disguising them as Christian, they have (in true satanic fashion)
obscured and supplanted the very Kingdom of God – if such a thing were
possible.
The Scriptures speak of wicked
men who because of their deeds, the way
of truth shall be evil spoken of. And so it is when one looks at
Christendom, its champions and apologists – those that strengthen the hands of evildoers.
And so we're left with
this sad reality. Those who burn Bibles are wicked but what they do – they do
in response to wicked men who have used the Bible to justify their evil.
These sad lost people are
resisting Christianity but what they are largely resisting is a false
Christianity – and so the tale is doubly sad. It's sad for the sake of the
testimony of the Truth in a lost world but it's also sad in the sense that
because of their Bible burning, many already deceived Christians will drink
even deeper of the delusory reactionary and Judaizing potions they have already
consumed. And indeed the false teachers will wax bold as they rally their
troops to defend their Babel topped with a cross of gold.
It's a sad but dangerous
moment and from what I can see there's very little out there in the way of
discernment – least of all from the so-called discernment ministries. We can
never stand with the protestors and obviously we condemn all sacrilege. But
where's the outrage over the defenders of evil deeds? – deeds they argue have
been done in the name of God, deeds which resulted in what they call blessings.
Blind guides they do not realise the very riches they celebrate as God's
blessings are the finger of accusation against them – whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind
earthly things. These contemporary men that politically agitate and support
past revolutions (and the maintaining of their legacies) in the name of Christ
are destitute of the truth, supposing
that gain is godliness.
The might they celebrate
and greatly treasure will in the end bring about their fall. We're told to
separate from them. We're reaching a point where there really isn't much of a
choice any more.