It's hard to miss. In Evangelical and Confessional circles there's a heavy despondency over the Biden presidency and the fact that Trump lost the election. There's an ominous tone of coming persecution and hard times. America is in a state of crisis we're told. If we don't do something to stop this trajectory there won't be any Christian America anymore.
And yet the very same sentiments, ideas, and even words were
expressed in 2009 when Obama came into office. Did any of these things really
happen? Sure, they lost more battles in the Culture War. That's been the case
since it was inaugurated by the Moral Majority in the late 1970's. They haven't
done any better under Republican administrations than the Democrats.
And yet I can also remember the very same thing happening
when Bill Clinton took office in 1993. The world was coming to end. The United
States was going socialist, maybe even communist. The music had stopped and the
dream was over. Doom and gloom prevailed. There was a near hysteria. Businesses
were sure to collapse, the dollar would fail, guns would be taken, and churches
closed.
And what happened? Nothing much. Not really. Most of the
predictions proved to be just flat wrong. Yes, the culture has continued to
slip into perversion and deviance but that was happening long before Clinton
came into office. And no Republican administration has been able to stop it.
And few have even bothered to try. The Christian Right hasn't been able to
figure that out yet. They haven't even been able to figure out what is driving
the cultural decline.
And while the Evangelicals can fume about it, the very laissez faire, free market economic
model and ethics they promote leads to decadence and decadence always results
in deviance. It's terrible to behold and unpleasant. I didn't appreciate the
man with breasts waiting on me the other day. It is revolting, but we live in
Sodom. It's never been Zion. It never can be. At best it was just a counterfeit
and now its true nature is becoming manifest. The basic ideals and foundations
of the nation are in fact anti-Christian and this has been borne out over the
course of its history.
And remember it's a bipartisan result. Both contemporary parties
are the parties of Wall Street and the Empire. Both have made their
contributions to the present state of decay.
So if the hype over Clinton and Obama proved to be
effectively nothing, should we expect any different with Biden? The answer should
be obvious. American culture will continue to decline and reap the harvest of
its material decadence, avarice, murder, and usury. The fact that Biden is in
charge will make little difference.
This is all the more true for Christians who are called to be
strangers and pilgrims, a people who can also take comfort in the fact that we
know that the powers that be are ordained by God (Romans 13.1) – even if it's
Nero. If Biden's election is a form of judgment (which I'm sure it is), then we
ought to submit to it in faith. Trump's election most certainly was judgment on
the nation and the ever-apostatizing American Church. Of that there can be no
doubt.
It's interesting how many Christians act as if Romans 12
isn't in their Bible. But many even ignore key elements of Romans 13, the very
passage they mistakenly appeal to as an impetus for their political action.
They read and see what they want to. One thing is clear, they have not taken to
heart the Kingdom message taught by Christ and the apostles. Instead they seek
Babel and somehow think they've transformed it and secured a great victory by capturing
it and Christianizing it – whatever that happens to mean. It's not a Biblical
concept.
The truth is all the negative hype and hysteria that takes
place when a Democratic president comes into office is damaging. It turns the
Church away from Christ and instead promotes an obsessive focus on the culture
and the petty scandals and squabbles driven by the news cycle and the
entertainment industry that manages it.
In every case, whether under Clinton, Obama, and now Biden
the Church takes a bad turn. It's bad enough when someone like George W Bush is
in office and the Church champions his wars and torture, but in some respects
it's worse when a Democrat is voted in. People are worked up and in the ensuing
frenzy the Kingdom is forgotten and its ethics are abandoned. And I must say after
the nastiness that was unleashed during the Obama era, a cancer that fed and
grew under Trump – what's happening now is truly beyond the pale. Churches are
increasingly filled with people that either have never known Christ or have
patently abandoned Him and substituted Him for an idol of their own Right-wing
dreams and aspirations. We are witnessing a massive defection, a sweeping
apostasy. Sometimes it takes my breath away.
Further, something else needs to be said. If you're
despondent because Trump lost and Biden is president then you need to repent.
You've lost your way. You've put your faith in the myth that is the
'Judeo-Christian' West and not the Kingdom which hath foundations, whose
builder and maker is God.(Hebrews 11.10)*
Instead of putting your hope in a city that is eternal in
which holiness dwells, you've put your faith and hope in a socio-political and
economic order that is doomed to fail and will burn up with the other works of
men at the eschaton. (2 Peter 3.10, 1 John 2.17, Hebrews 1.11-12)
And make no mistake. America is just such a work of man. Born
of blood and rebellion, the nation was a haven to fleeing Christians but its
ideals were never Christian and in the long run it has proved to be as much of
a curse and poison as it ever was a blessing. The 'City on the Hill' heresy and
the Reagan-ite myths concerning it have perhaps been the most damaging of all.
You're not thinking like a pilgrim, like a foreigner living
in an alien land. Dominionism has emphasized the transformation of this world
and has sought to negate the plain teaching of the Scripture that this age,
this order is an evil one. (Galatians 1.4) The Biblical teaching is caricatured
and nowadays is actually labeled as Gnostic. It's misleading on almost every
front. There is no problem with matter or creation per se, but this creation, this order is fallen. God proclaimed it good but then it fell – and
fell under curse. Those who quote the so-called Cultural Mandate of Genesis 1
more often than not seem to ignore the events of Genesis 3. Others argue that
it is reiterated after the flood, but that too is misleading. Man is told to
multiply, but no longer will he subdue. No longer are his labours part of
Edenic life. No longer do they include the Tree of Life. Rather there is the
darkness of death and enmity between man and creation and the shadow of death
hangs over all their endeavours – a reality that would become all too apparent
with the subsequent Babel episode.
Christ is coming to judge this world and burn it with fire.
We are not seeking deliverance from matter or a body. We will certainly have
those things in the Age to Come, in the New Heavens and New Earth – not in this
present age and Earth which is doomed, and thus our bodies are referred to in
the New Testament as unredeemed, vile, lowly, and mere tents. Dominionist
thought has played no small role in this error throughout the centuries, this
attempt to transform, redeem, and sanctify this order. The error is built on a
false foundation and a false conception of the Holy Kingdom – one in which the
unredeemed help to build it and participate in its life. Such a 'kingdom' is
neither the work nor the province of the Holy Spirit.
Contrary to the New Testament, this teaching has promoted
worldliness and impiety. It builds a counterfeit Kingdom and so it is with the
West. It is an order that is deeply flawed and has nothing to do with
godliness. Its history alone testifies to this. And in many cases the very
things that men glory in are in reality occasions for shame – another Biblical
concept in application – and a concept and condemnation rooted in the
condemnation of those who serve their bellies and mind earthly things
(Philippians 3.19).
The West's foundations have been flawed from the beginning.
This was true with the Bestial Greeks and Romans, with Constantine, with the
Medieval order and certainly with the Liberal Enlightenment schema that reigns
today.
To the Christians in a state of woe and despair we must say –
you cannot blame the present state of affairs on outside forces or even surreptitious
elements. While they may exist and external forces have sought to break down
the integrity of the order, the reality is that it was already compromised, flawed
and built on bad foundations – any by the very thinking that leads to your
despair. As such the cracks have appeared and the rotten seed is bearing a
rotten harvest. This is so painfully clear in the anti-social libertarian and
hyper-individualist element that seems to be growing exponentially. Whether
Left, Right, or neither, it is this self-obsession and mammonism that is
driving the wickedness in our culture. They may complain but they love to have
it so.
It needs to be understood that when the West (or America,
Britain, or some variant of these) is equated with the Kingdom of Heaven, the Earthly
battles regarding politics and geopolitics become spiritual combat. Rather than
viewing all nations as evil and fallen, instead one side becomes the 'good
guys' and they're out to destroy the 'bad guys'. Christian ethics are abandoned
and man-made parties, factions and ideals are turned into holy endeavours and
divine doctrines. It's wicked and destructive and gives the enemies of Christ
occasion to blaspheme.
The New Testament is filled with threats of heresy and
apostasy and yet this way of thinking broadens the scope of such passages to
the point of rendering them meaningless. They're viewed culturally and
politically instead of (what a careful read reveals) being within the confines
of the covenant.
The truth is the West long ago fell into a rationalist and
materialist trap and this combined with mammonism have led it to where it is
today – it is Sodom on a massive scale and Sodom must be understood as
something much bigger than homosexuality – which is merely the outcome or final
stage. One doesn't need to be 'woke' to understand the West is immoral,
grasping, avaricious, thieving, murderous and all around evil. It's a beast and
that's what beasts do. All empires are built on forms of racism (we're better
than you and have the right to dominate you, steal you, your work, your land
and possessions) but that's just an outcome of the aforementioned core evils.
To focus merely on the evils of racism is to miss the point.
And after building their Babel, all such bestial societies,
cultures, and nations begin to self-destruct and then either implode, are
conquered – or more likely a bit of both. The same is true with America and the
West.
The deception at work is not on the part of some dreamt up Marxist
conspiracy which scarcely exists. The far greater deception is the doctrine
that wed the Church to this monstrosity, this abomination – the Beast with an
endless supply of heads and crowns, is a monstrosity that reappears over and
over again throughout the history of this present evil age which still lies
under the aegis of the god of this world.
The deception is in the apostasy and the strong delusion of
the hour – delusion among those who seek to make peace with the world, who seek
mammon and power, and those who think the long history of the West and its
quest to build the Tower Babel topped with a sham cross of counterfeit gold
somehow glorifies God and is a manifestation of His Kingdom.
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*It's a myth because the civilisation birthed by Constantine never reflected New Testament Christianity but was instead a defection from it. And in the context of the United States there's no 'Judeo-Christian' about it. America is the progeny of the Enlightenment and forms of Christianity that were compromised by the Enlightenment. Old Testament Judaism has nothing to do with democracy, rights, social contracts, consent of the governed, or any of things Westerners (rightly or wrongly) cherish and count as Christian. It was a Theocratic order in the truest sense and really has nothing to do with civilisation that arose in the wake of the Roman Empire.