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Category: Society
The big beach book that I read last year was Niall Ferguson’s The Square and the Tower. It was a book about networks. Who knew that the network effects of globalism would be illustrated in 2020 by a global pandemic!
But the other network effect has been to drive people around the world away from text and into video.
Ferguson says:
The rate of growth of the global network may be slowing, in terms of the number of new Internet users and smartphone owners added each year, but ti shows no sign of stopping. In other respects– for example, the transitions from text to image and video, and from keyboard to microphone interphace– it is speeding up. Literacy will ultimately cease to be a barrier to connectedness.
The Square and the Tower, Ch. 58, Network Outage, 401.
As I get ready for another Zoom call (should have bought stock in them) and have now filmed nine videos in the last two weeks, I can agree with Ferguson’s prediction.
We need to be thoughtful about how our lives will be changed by the Covid-19 virus, but also by its social consequences, networks all.
John Bunyan wrote a book called Antichrist and his Ruin. I’m guessing it’s one of his works that are seldom read today. People, at least in the church circles I run in don’t talk much about the Antichrist. They don’t talk about the judgement to come either. Maybe that’s why we don’t share the gospel very often.
Since I’ve been preaching through the book of Daniel, I’ve had to re-engage with the topic of the Antichrist and to consider his ‘ruin’ as Bunyan put it. And although many antichrists have been identified through history (Joe Carter lists over a half dozen), these days fewer people seem to care about the reality of godless, supernatural opposition to Christ and the gospel. We tend to be fixated on politics– good or bad– as the only level of warfare in existence. As American Senator Ben Sasse has observed, “so many of those local tribes of textured meaning [i.e. family, neighbourhood, workplace, local church] are in collapse, and people are looking for substitute tribes in politics. And I don’t think that’s going to work out very well.” So I’ve looked with interest at what a wise guide like Bunyan has to say about the Antichrist, and the spirit of antichrist which is at work “already in the world” (1 John 4:3).
Bunyan’s Introduction to the Identity of the Antichrist
In one of his opening descriptions, Bunyan sets out the way that the Antichrist is the antonym of Christ, yet deceptively so. This sense of being the opposite of Christ, but with a false veneer or duplicitous camouflage, is the character of Antichrist which Bunyan seeks to emphasize. He writes:
Antichrist is the adversary of Christ; an adversary really, a friend pretendedly: So then, Antichrist is one that is against Christ; one that is for Christ, and one that is contrary to him: (And this is that mystery of iniquity (2 Thess 2:7). Against him in deed; for him in word, and contrary to him in practice. Antichrist is so proud as to go before Christ; so humble as to pretend to come after him, and so audacious as to say that himself is he. Antichrist will cry up Christ; Antichrist will cry down Christ: Antichrist will proclaim that himself is one above Christ. Antichrist is the man of sin, the son of perdition; a beast, [that] hath two horns like a lamb, but speaks as a dragon (Rev 13:11).
Works, Volume II, 46.
Consider that according to Bunyan’s reading of Scripture, the Antichrist is obviously against Christ, but less obviously seen to be against Christ. He is against Christ in activity, but presents himself publically as a supporter of Christ (“for him in word”), even “pretending” to come after him in humility, but all with an “audacious” arrogance.
All of this means that Antichrist has a religious connection, engaged with church circles.
Antichrist subverts the church with false support.
Bunyan’s List of Contrasts Between Christ and Antichrist
Another way that Bunyan helps us to understand the Antichrist is by contrasting him with the vast superiority of Jesus Christ. In fact, even Bunyan’s contrasts are inadequate because Jesus Christ the Son of God is in a category by himself, and is utterly incomparable. But for the purposes of giving an introduction, Bunyan suggests the follow antonymic comparisons:
- Christ is the Son of God; Antichrist is the son of Hell.
- Christ is holy, meek, and forbearing: Antichrist is wicked, outrageous, and exacting.
- Christ seeketh the good of the soul: Antichrist seeks his own avarice and revenge.
- Christ is content to rule by his word: Antichrist saith, The word is not sufficient.
- Christ preferreth his Father’s will above heaven and earth: Antichrist preferreth himself and his traditions above all that is written, or that is called God, or worshiped.
- Christ has given us such laws and rules as are helpful and healthful to the soul: Antichrist seeketh to abuse those rules to our hurt and destruction. (Works, Volume II, 46.)
The descriptors which Bunyan uses to describe Jesus Christ are beautiful. Against our cultural moment, Christ is forbearing, seeks the good of the soul, rules by his word, prefers his Father’s will, and gives what is helpful and healthful to the soul. Bunyan saw in the Lord Jesus Christ one who is gratuitous in his help toward his creatures.
By contrast, the Antichrist is the opposite, though he feigns to hide his true intentions.
If we take the Bunyan’s descriptions and lay them up against our cultural moment, the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, then you can see clearly how much the spirit of antichrist is upon us.
Think about how everyone and everything is so exacting these days. If the Antichrist is, according to Bunyan, “wicked, outrageous, and exacting” then the spirit of Antichrist is clearly evident in our social media. If you misspell something on Facebook, or mess up some grammar, someone will correct you in exacting detail. If you tweet something that is out of line with the prevailing cultural orthodoxies, you’re statement will be parsed, critiqued, and judged with an execution of shame. Twitter can be an exacting platform, that is at the same time outrageous, and not so subtly wicked.
We see that growing tendency for people to turn quickly against leaders, public servants, customer service reps, believers, churches, organizations and anyone else when they feel they have been wronged. It’s as if there is a spirit of revenge that is waiting to burst out at the slightest injury. How strikingly different is the impulse of Christ himself, who “seeketh the good of the soul”.
And of course, the church is wrestling with the problem of whether or not they will follow Christ’s rule by his word, or listen to the spirit of Antichrist which says that “the word is not sufficient”
It is a simple binary. Follow Christ or heed the Antichrist. Christ is Lord. He is God, the Son incarnate. He is above all and over all. The Antichrist would presume to set himself above the Creator. Yet the spirit of antichrist prevails even in such unlikely places as critical New Testament scholarship. For example, Robert Yarbrough documents how critical NT scholars, set themselves above Scripture, rather than under it. As reported from Yarbrough’s lectures in 2018:
Elitism, dating back only a few centuries to Germann scholars, he explained, does not necessarily take the Bible at face value and views the Bible from “a superior vantage point,” often dismissing or reinterpreting claims of Scripture. It is the viewpoint of the academy, Yarbrough said, and is marked by a critical study of the Bible that rejects a doctrinal interpretation of it.
Scholarly ‘populism’ provides a way forward in New Testament theology, says Yarbrough at SBTS Gheens Lectures, SBTS News, March 2018
Bunyan would argue that such critical scholarship is an example of the spirit of antichrist, inspiring creatures to set themselves above Christ, to pass judgement on him and his word, and to draw attention to themselves for their cleverness and omniscience.
Of course, this type of spirit is everywhere in society. Yet how different it is to find the humbled, diligent follower of Jesus Christ, who confesses him as her Lord, who enjoys his gratuity with thanksgiving tempered with awe and wonder!
The Illusion of Culture Wars?
If the spirit of antichrist presents the advance claims of “the man of lawlessness”, then we should admit that we might be wrong in our perception of where the battle lines are drawn. We need to admit that we are likely wrong that our primary battlefront is in the culture war. The culture war is the diversion. Rather, the real warfare is against the spirit of antichrist, which aims to deceive the church (Matt 24:4).
As Paul told the Ephesians:
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
Ephesians 6:12
Therefore, then as now, we need to, “take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.” (Eph 6:13)
This is a list of resources that you may find helpful. It is a curation based on my own choices, like any curation. Let this be a sieve for you to drain and collect what is useful.
captive by philosophy
There are some philosophies entering into the church which Christians need to be aware of. The philosophies are in a cluster composed of Critical Theory and Intersectionality.
intersectionality
Rosaria Butterfield, the former lesbian university professor, now Christian believer, has written about intersectionality for Table Talk at Ligonier ministries. She says:
How did we get to a place where it makes sense for a person to reject truth not because it’s false but because it hurts? How did we get to a place where we label people—image bearers of a holy God—as knowable primarily by their political and social group, as if that is their truest and most indelible virtue? Under what worldview could my words cause suicide but the genital mutilation that allows a biological man to masquerade as a woman cause celebration and affirmation?
READ THE REST: Intersectionality and the Church
critical theory
While I was at the Immanuel Network conference hosted by my friend Ryan Fullerton and his church, I was given a booklet by Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer titled, Engaging Critical Theory and the Social Justice Movement (you can download a copy for the price of an email here).
Shenvi says that Critical Theory is a worldview that is antithetical to Christianity. He writes:
The story of critical theory begins not with creation, but with oppression. The omission of a creation element is very important because it changes our answer to the question: “who are we?” There is no transcendent Creator who has a purpose and a design for our lives and our identities. We don’t primarily exist in relation to God, but in relation to other people and to other groups. Our identity is not defined primarily in terms of who we are as God’s creatures. Instead, we define ourselves in terms of race, class, sexuality, and gender identity. Oppression, not sin, is our fundamental problem. What is the solution? Activism. Changing structures. Raising awareness. We work to overthrow and dismantle hegemonic power. That is our primary moral duty. What is our purpose in life? To work for the liberation of all oppressed groups so that we can achieve a state of equity.
READ MORE from Shenvi’s blog series
The current spirit of the age involves these variations of a cultural Marxism which has morphed into Critical Theory. It relates to issues of ethnicity (Critical Race Theory), gender and (LGBTQ+ advocacy), politics and more.
I have written about cultural Marxism, and the helpful analysis of Albert Mohler and Robert Smith, here.
Paul’s warning to the Colossians is very applicable here:
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
Colossians 2:8
idealized cultures
Some more articles in this vein are Leonardo De Chirico on Pope Francis and his new statement Querida Amazonia. :
Querida Amazonia tends to have a very positive view of indigenous cultures – at times somewhat naïve – and in so doing it lacks biblical realism. According to the Bible, cultures are not to be idealized nor demonized: they are mixed bags of idolatry and common grace in need of redemption. Pope Francis tends to idealize native cultures, seeing them as already infused by the grace of God.
READ THE REST
This seems to derive from a similar philosophy to the intersectional/cultural marxist ones mentioned above.
What Does the Bible Say About…
Lust, Homosexuality, Transgenderism? Owen Strachan and my fellow pastor Gavin Peacock have written a trilogy of books that address simply what the bible says about three areas of hot contention. In these areas, some of the philosophies mentioned above are deeply embedded. Highly recommended.
Albert Mohler has said: Convictions are not merely beliefs we hold; they are those beliefs that hold us.
How to prepare for persecution, we have to have this in mind. We might know what beliefs Daniel held, but what beliefs held Daniel?
Reading Daniel 6:10 we discover that when Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem.
Daniel didn’t suddenly change his beliefs and his lifestyle because the persecution document had been signed.
In fact, he continued on in his public witness, knowing that everyone would see him.
(When you’re with clients, or with team-mates, or with certain relatives, do you hesitate to pray openly before a meal, even though you always pray before a meal? )
You see Daniel had an ordered life. He had been regularly sharpened day in day out, three times a day, repeatedly, same time, same place— and the order of his life was put to the test at this moment.
If you are worried about the loss of cultural power or influence in society, you can calmly let go of your worry, and instead, prepare for being a Christian witness.
As David French wrote, “We want easy when Christ never promised easy. It’s time to learn to live with (somewhat) hard.”
The ability to be calm and free of anxiety when it’s hard will only come from this kind of orderly discipline of prayer.
Of course no one is calling for rote ritual. Mindless chants and euphoric mantras. This is not what is needed. Rather it is the discipline of the closet (Mat 6:6), that holds true no matter what is going on outside your door.
What you may realize is that the persecution, opposition or social shame isn’t as big of a deal as you initially feared. Or it may be significant and costly, but you will find that God has prepared you for it.
The preparation has nothing to do with political power, but everything to do with the power of the prayer closet.
image: “Praying Hands” by Albrecht Durer, 1508
In our day Christians are being stretched. With every distraction and every demand of our full calendars, we are being stretched in all our capacities.
Who among us is not feeling spread thin by the repetitious news cycle which demands our attention second to second and so creating in us the dreaded “fear of missing out”?
Our desires are being stretched too. Careers that offered fulfilled dreams have been ended with mere severance. Or they continue to demand time and, toil yet our desire is not slaked.
All people in the West possess great convenience epitomized in the power of our fingertips on ready touchscreen apps. Who has not felt tired but wired with all of this instant power, yet less and less instant gratification?
Stretched Thin or Just Crushed?
This stretching we feel is not a capacity that we are growing in, but a sense of being flattened or crushed. Crushed by the desire for relationships. Crushed by the desire for justice. Crushed by the need for meaning.
As Douglas Murray noted in The Strange Death of Europe, “one of the notable characteristics of Western culture is precisely that it permanently fears itself to be in decline”.
This fear acts like a double-drum compactor rolling over the happiness and hope of people like they are so much asphalt. Radical calls for justice in this life show how heavy these fears can be. It is easy to be flattened with frustration that there is no sufficient justice in this world. We can agonize at the question, “why does the way of the wicked prosper?” (Jer 12:1, Psa 73:3, Job 21:7, Ecc 8:14).
At the same time, there is the weight of fear which crushes the comfortable and the privileged. It is the fear that their status and privileges will be lost. The fear of losing power, prestige or influence can turn the comfortable life into a life of panic.
In the culture wars of the West, we fear the loss of power and influence on the right, and we fear unaddressed injustice on the left. Both can be easily captive to the concerns of this-world and think little of the world to come.
Fear and Panic in Renewal Time
Christians can also get paranoid at what they see as they assume the worst. Fear rolls over them. Even as the small reformed renewal enters into its intermediate to mature stage, Christians can see the expansion of churches and the few renewed institutions in Evangelicalism and be rolled over with the fear of its collapse. It is easy to be disillusioned when someone sees the sins of their heroes within the ‘gospel-centred’ movement.
Likewise Christians can be suspicious of the visible success of the reformed renewal, and have the uneasy feeling that they must divert its strength to address the more relevant concerns of society. Then a ‘gospel-centred’ movement is no longer enough. It must also be a movement to mimic the issues in the news cycle.
Fears about losing the big conferences, the public champions, and the mass of Christian publishing can be so crushing that people can be anxious to shut down refining critiques, or overinflate the importance of the movement as if it is too big to fail.
Either way, fear dominates many of us, so that we can’t see the gospel good being done, nor see that the renewal is neither a full-on revival, nor is it heaven.
All of this kind of fearful stretching is bringing a fatigue to churches. It is not the kind of stretching that we need. Instead, today more than ever, we require a renewal of our desires. We need to be stretched heaven-ward.
Of Springs and Soap Bubbles
Our desires have lost their elasticity and vigour, because they have been attached too long and too tightly to the world that is. “This-world” desires have overstretched us and our spring is unsprung.
In the church, it started with good intentions. There was the recapturing of the doctrine of vocation, rendering to God worship through the work of one’s hands. But as Michael Allen writes in his book, Grounded in Heaven:
“Too often a desire to value the ordinary and the everyday, the mundane and the material, has not led to what ought to be common-sense to any Bible-reader: that heaven and the spiritual realm matter most highly.”
Nowadays we are trying to find meaning in our work, but struggling to suffer in it, mistakenly assuming that emphasis on “faith and work” brings more heaven on earth.
On the one hand, there has been an increase in books that revel in the ‘ordinary’. This may have started with Anne Voskamp’s best-seller and her extended meditations on ordinary things like soap bubbles. On the other hand, even the books on heaven have been reduced to “tourism” to gain lessons for what really matters, life in the now. Allen goes on to say:
“Too rarely do we speak of heavenly-mindedness, spiritual-mindedness, self-denial, or any of the terminology that has marked the ascetical tradition (in its patristic or, later, in its Reformed iterations).”
It is not to say that we shouldn’t see the dignity of God’s creation, nor value the mundane work we must do as an opportunity to glorify God according to the priesthood of all believers. But we need to re-calibrate where our strongest passions and deepest desires are directed. Are we conscious of the will of God being done in heaven first and fundamentally? Then we can reset our desires to pray that God’s will be done, “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10).
Augustine’s Grocery Bag
Augustine offers a picture of the ways that we need to be stretched and it offers a compelling alternative to the chase-your-own-tail existence of the modern social media feed. Augustine likens our desires to something like a grocery bag. It is folded and narrow to begin with, but when it is stretched wide, it can receive a large capacity of things to put in it. He says:
“so God, by deferring our hope, stretches our desire; by the desiring, stretches the mind; by stretching, makes it more capacious.”
Our desires are to be stretched heaven-ward, to the beatific vision of being in the presence of God.
As John put it in 1 John 3:2-3, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”
There is a pressing need to be stretched. Christians need to be stretched in our desires for heaven. Such stretching will deliver us from the emptiness of Your Best Life Now, and the exhaustion of the news cycle’s incessant demands.
Our fear of catastrophe can be dispelled by this invincible hope, not in movements or men, but in the Lamb and his eschatological kingdom, which shall have no end.
As Augustine said, “Let us desire therefore, my brethren, for we shall be filled.”
A version of this article was published at The Gospel Coalition Canada on April 8, 2019 under the title, Being Stretched.
image: Vittore Carpacaccio (1502)
There is a growing disdain for the term ‘evangelical’. This is not merely because evangelical is a pejorative term used by non-Christians. Nor is it merely because there are people who used to identify as evangelicals, but now call themselves exangelicals. But the term ‘evangelical’ has become associated with a political lobby group that is viewed as supporting the Trump presidency, which support is seen as unethical.
The problem with the label ‘evangelical’ is that it’s pretty elastic depending on who is doing the stretching. On the one hand, there is the scholarly study of evangelicals which trace them back to the Enlightenment (Bebbington), or beyond (Haykin and Stewart). On the other hand, ‘evangelical’ has come to be defined in modern journalism as anyone who is non- Catholic and non-mainline Protestant. Even this latter elasticity can be stretched further to include evangelical Catholics and evangelical renewal movements in liberal mainline denominations.
So what do we do with this elastic label? Some are ceasing to call themselves evangelical. Others are at least questioning what it means to be self-identified by the label. What is an evangelical to do? Let me offer three ways that over-stretched evangelicals can recover their integrity.
Pick Theology over Sociology
Nobody would care if evangelicals had no social influence. But in the US evangelicals still have a large, if waning voice in society. So it is tempting to adopt a sociological approach to being an evangelical. This may mean that following social practices but doesn’t require you to confess anything definitive regarding theology.
Picking theology over sociology is the better move. ‘Prosperity Gospel’preachers have false understandings of the doctrine of salvation, so their ‘gospel’ is not the same as the historic Christian gospel. Therefore, on a theological basis, prosperity gospel preachers are not “evangelicals”, even if the media mislabels them as such.
Picking theology over sociology works in a different way as well. For those with a distaste for the American (and therefore McDonaldized) evangelical sub-culture, they may be tempted to jettison the evangelical label. Their distaste for middle-America Jesus culture may make them want to be affiliated somewhere else.
But this is where high church Presbyterians, Anglicans, or others are in danger of denying their brothers and sisters who believe the essential bulk of what they confess. As well, they can deny their own history, or at least be selective about it. For example, the catholicity of Scottish Presbyterians like Chalmers, M’Cheyne and the Bonar brothers was matched with the mission-sending efforts of Calvinistic Baptists, William Carey and Andrew Fuller. The history of revived Calvinism saw the advance of evangelicals from Anglican, Presbyterian and Baptist denominations
Pick the Rabble Outside the Camp
The tough part about belonging to a local church or to a denomination or movement is feeling the crushing reality that your crowd is populated with fools, idiots and goofballs. Such associations are not great for winning friends and influencing people. In fact, the wisdom of today says that you should drop anyone who isn’t advancing you and your interests.
But when you start pointing fingers at the folly of others it’s easy to have the fingers pointing back at you. Being associated with true-believing evangelicals means that you are in the company of the foolish, among whom you likely are chief. In fact, God “chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise” (1 Cor 1:27).
So we have to be careful lest we disdain the not-yet sanctified fools who we will spend eternity with. Even in this life, we choose to metaphorically leave the inner ring (CS Lewis) and suffer outside the camp (Heb 13:13). It is in this refuse heap (Ex 29:14) that all of the fools for Christ’s sake congregate. Believers are saved by faith alone, yet such a faith that never remains alone. Therefore we can confidently speak of right doctrine and right practice as indicators for who is suffering outside the camp with Jesus.
Choosing to Give Grace to Evangelical Folly
When Christians can cherish biblical truths that have been confessed through the ages, they can have the confidence to discuss and debate with each other about the issues that Christians have always been less clear about. This means we have to do something like a theological triage (Mohler), but it means more. It also means that as evangelicals get caught up in temporary manias (from Napoleon as Antichrist, to pro-Trump/never-Trump), we need to extend each other the grace— the undeserved favour, that will esteem the important confessions of faith which we know others possess, while lovingly critiquing their errors as we see them, and welcoming their watchfulness over our own.
So should we abandon the label ‘evangelical’? I don’t think so. It’s a good term when it is well defined. As we strive for that definition in each generation, we have the opportunity to remember that there are many people going to heaven with whom we disagree. We also know that there are many people who think they are going to heaven, whose gospel is not sufficient to save them. It is for these confused people we must strive to bring true gospel clarity.
photocredit
Like many people, I have been trying to learn more about the trends and philosophies that are blanketing society like a freezing blizzard of unbelief.
The search has lead me to find a surprising amount of consensus from different sources. On the one hand, I would expect to find Albert Mohler’s commentary ably exposing the latent philosophies which are opposed to a Christian worldview. Yet I’ve been surprised to find non-christian voices like Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, and many others making observations that resonate with elements of the Christian worldview.
Who would have thought a decade ago that the New Atheists would ever be siding with Christians. But now they both affirm the scientific verity of binary sexes, making them outlaws together! Darwinists and Christians together! These are strange days indeed.
The swirl of discussion centres around social justice, racism, sexism, class warfare, and the general ‘oikophobia‘, or disdain for one’s own oikos, household or country.
Although concern for equity is great in the Scriptures since God himself is called, Jehovah Tsidkenu, ‘The Lord Our Righteousness” (Jer 23:6), there is also the concern that mankind does not subvert God’s intent. It is easy for man to ascribe to himself the role of ultimate lawgiver, casting off the bonds of God’s law in favor of his own (cf. Psalm 2).
This casting off of the bonds of God is ably summarized in Robert Smith’s exposition of “cultural marxism”. His essay in Themelios is a rare combination of thorough background study, sound synthesis and a useful application to the leading issues of our own day.
Some observations about the article, as it relates to Cultural Marxism and Critical Theory:
The disdain for Western civilization
Smith writes regarding the Frankfurt school’s philosophy:
the general consensus of its members was that Western civilization was effectively responsible for all the manifestations of aggression, oppression, racism, slavery, classism and sexism that marked post-industrial society. Marcuse even went so far as to call democracy “the most efficient system of domination.”
3.4. Assessing the Work of the Frankfurt School
The philosophy of minority elitism aiming to suppress majorities
Smith quotes from Charles Taylor, the Canadian Roman Catholic philosopher:
“It is also profoundly elitist, for it ultimately forces Marcuse to see the majority of people “not as semi-rational human beings … but rather as irrational objects of manipulation … The majority must be liberated from themselves by the Marcusian minority which alone is rational.”
Smith, quoting Taylor fn 130, Charles Taylor, “Marcuse’s Authoritarian Utopia,” Canadian Dimension 7.3 (1970): 51.
The intent to undermine institutions based on Christian morality
Smith has a summary here:
While majoritarian systems always have the potential to become tyrannous, and the track-record of Western civilization is far from unblemished, to demonize the key elements and attainments of Western culture—e.g., Christian morality, family, hierarchy, loyalty, tradition, the rule of law, sexual restraint, universal suffrage, property rights, patriotism, capitalism, and technology—is both myopic and ungrateful. Furthermore, criticizing an imperfect system when you have no idea how to build a better one is more than idealistic; it is irresponsible.
3.4. Assessing the Work of the Frankfurt School
Evaluation of philosophies impacting the contemporary scene
Smith summarizes:
Nevertheless, as ongoing interest in their work testifies,149 there is no denying that the first generation of the Frankfurt School (in general) and Marcuse (in particular) have played a significant role in shaping the contours of the current Western civilizational divide. Political correctness,150 the new intolerant-tolerance and ever-increasing erotic liberty are part of their legacy.151 Similarly, Gramsci’s ideas have also borne very real (and not particularly appetizing) fruit—not least in the arena of identity politics, intersectionality and the rise of victimhood culture (today’s versions of “class consciousness”), as well as in the fact that, in the fields of media and academia (and politics too), the “long march through the institutions” is virtually complete.152
4.1. Cultural Marxism: Fact or Fiction?
Being careful about using the Cultural Marxism label, yet without discarding it.
Smith cautions:
Given the existence of conspiratorial explanations of the nature and goals of Cultural Marxism, is there a case for avoiding the term and using an alternative (e.g., neo-Marxism or Critical Theory)? In my view, there is no inherent problem with the label, but Christians ought to be careful with how (and to whom) it is applied.
4.3 This Calls for Wisdom
The structure of an alternative to God’s order (cf. ‘stoichea tou kosmou’ Gal. 4:3,9;Col. 2:8,20)
Here is the alternative structure which Smith points out:
For this reason, Marxism, whether in classical or cultural form, can be viewed as a corruption or parody of the gospel—replete with its own false prophet (Marx), false Bible (Das Kapital), false doctrine (dialectical materialism), false apostles (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Marcuse), and false hope (a communist utopia).162 Therefore, the fact that Cultural Marxism is a real ideology making a real impact on our world is not good news.
4.3 This Calls For Wisdom
Speaking up, graciously but clearly
Smith quotes Albert Mohler:
While we have solid biblical reasons for seeing ourselves as “strangers and exiles on earth” (Heb 11:13), “we must not exile ourselves, and we certainly must not retreat into silence while we still have a platform, a voice, and an opportunity. We must remind ourselves again and again of the compassion of truth and the truth of compassion.”
fn 170, [170] R. Albert Mohler, We Cannot Be Silent: Speaking Truth to a Culture Redefining Sex, Marriage, and the Very Meaning of Right and Wrong (Nashville: Nelson, 2015), 151.
Closing thoughts
This article is long on philosophy, so it makes for technical reading. However, it is the kind of summary article which provides an introduction to the background of many cultural currents in the West today. The benefit of the article is that it finishes with Christian wisdom, highlighting the need to be charitable so as not to presume people’s motives, yet clear-thinking to apply biblical truth to “take every thought captive” (2 Cor 10:5).
Read the whole article here: Cultural Marxism: Imaginary Conspiracy or Revolutionary Reality?
Photo credit: Members of the Frankfurt School. Photograph taken in Heidelberg, April 1964,by Jeremy J. Shapiro at the Max Weber-Soziologentag. Horkheimer is front left, Adorno front right, and Habermas is in the background, right, running his hand through his hair. Siegfried Landshut is in the background left. (wiki)
The Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote:
Imperceptibly, through decades of gradual erosion, the meaning of life in the West has ceased to be seen as anything more lofty than the “pursuit of happiness” a goal that has even been solemnly guaranteed by constitutions. The concepts of good and evil have been ridiculed for several centuries; banished from common use, they have been replaced by political or class considerations of short lived value. It has become embarrassing to state that evil makes its home in the individual human heart before it enters a political system. Yet it is not considered shameful to make dally concessions to an integral evil. Judging by the continuing landslide of concessions made before the eyes of our very own generation, the West is ineluctably slipping toward the abyss. Western societies are losing more and more of their religious essence as they thoughtlessly yield up their younger generation to atheism.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “Godlessness: the First Step to the Gulag”. Templeton Prize Lecture, 10 May 1983 (London).
Most of us have never been in a landslide. I know I haven’t. So I needed to look up “how to survive a landslide“. There are only three options:
- Run at a right angle and try to get to the outside of it
- Get to the rooftop
- Cover yourself with something strong
Solzhenitsyn said there was a “landslide of concessions” being made in the West (in 1983!). Those concessions to godlessness or “secularism” as it is more politely known have only multiplied since then. The tremors are unmistakable
The Trees are Tilting
One of the warning signs for a coming landslide is that that trees tilt. Normally, the stability of the ground is able to uphold tall trees, utility poles and any other high structures. When a landslide is going to come the earth beneath the trees shifts and the trees begin to tilt.
Living in a commuter community you can expect that the tremors of change in the cities may take a long time to reach you. But I’ve found that the trees are tilting. An example of this is how I was informed that the public library in my ultra-conservative town is hosting the drag queen storytimes for children.
I cite this, simply to note that in every sphere of public life, reaching beyond the dense urban centres to the family-laden enclaves of the suburbs, an ideology is being promoted that undermines biological nature and the responsibility to protect children from sexualized grooming.
The modest mandate of the public library (to lend books) inflates with ideological purposes foreign to it. So we have to conclude that manipulation of the foundations is sweeping through. The trees are tilting.
Alarmism and Anti-Alarmism
In any natural disaster, whether it’s impending or engulfing you, there is a temptation to panic. Fear of a landslide can cause people to think irrationally. They may see the cracks in the foundations or hear the rumblings, but instead of staying calm and using the time that they have to make a wise plan of action, they shout and scream and rail against the coming landslide. This is the alarmist response. It wastes precious time and energy decrying reality, not dealing with it.
The anti-alarmist impulse can paralyze a person. Since the landslide is so large, and so horrible, a person simple escapes into a false reality. We know that one of the great challenges during wildfire disasters is convincing people to leave their homes. Often, they have let themselves have escapist fantasies that the danger is not that bad, and the alarmists are exaggerating. What they don’t realize is that the danger is real, and their ignorance of it puts them in danger too.
If we take the categories of alarmist and anti-alarmist, they can helpfully clarify how many people are responding to the landslide. For example, there are Christians who see the landslide coming, but their response is to angrily decry it without giving too much thought to how to respond wisely. Their alarmism is not constructive. Their alarm scales up in its confirmation bias as the landslide gets bigger and bigger, but the only positive conclusion they offer is “I told you so”.
Likewise, the anti-alarmist impulse is prevalent among Christians. This has happened among pastors I know. Recently, after hearing a talk on the landslide issues of our day– sexuality and ethics, a pastor confessed that he had been intentionally ignoring the landslide all around him. He was afraid to bring up the reality of how bad things really were. And he was also afraid that his anti-alarmist church would view his attempts at pointing to the landslide as so much hysteria.
So we have to recognize that both the alarmist and anti-alarmist impulses are either misdirected or escapist. For Christians, when parachurch ministries engage in polemics for entertainment, they are merely alarmists who distract from constructive preparations by cleverly shouting the obvious. At the same time, evangelical denominations and institutions tend to be anti-alarmist in bent. They are so quick to tsk-tsk the alarmists, that act blissfully unaware of the landslide, and trust their own self-righteousness as a clever enough solution to any disaster that may come. Sadly they are hopelessly deluded.
Failed Emergency Plans
Not everyone has responded to the landslide in thoughtless ways. Yet many of the emergency responses people have had are flawed or failed.
When you think about a landslide, one failed emergency response might be to run away from the landslide, thinking that if you can just stay ahead of the landslide you’ll be okay.
When it comes to our modern-day, the two groups who are gripped by the “keep ahead of the landslide” plan are the Boomer generation and the corporations (and their politicians of course). Both of these groups (with lots of overlap between them), have successfully run ahead of the landslide up until now. They have been alarmed at the rumblings, but have had false confidence in their ability to outrun it.
If the landslide undermines monogamous male-female marriage, then Boomers and corporations will start with accepting divorce, then move to a series of what Solzhenitzn called, “concessions”, such as co-habitation, then abortion, then intentional childlessness, then gay relationships, then gay marriages, and then gender-fluid ‘unions’. At each point, the Boomers and the corporations have been swift enough to run ahead just enough.
But you can’t outrun a landslide.
This is why noted lesbian activist, the former tennis star Martina Navratilova is being overwhelmed by the transgender movement. She thought she could run ahead of the landslide, but her lesbianism is no longer enough. Her panic is expressed when she hastily offers obeisance and apology toward the trans movement lest she be consumed. Examples are accruing, but a common theme is how Boomers or corporations have successfully run ahead of the landslide, but now are getting completely run over.
Another failed emergency plan is the person who runs toward the landslide, like a child can run into a small wave and hop over its height. This is typified in the bombastic culture warrior who assumes that the good old days are just beyond the shifting ground under his feet. The nostalgia for lost pasts drives a person to irrationally seek to run into the slide, thinking that they have the ability to withstand the wave or to keep their heads above it and exit on the far side relatively unscathed.
The hubris of this approach appeals to many people and might be exemplified the most in the populist movements of Trumpism, Brexit and others around the world. Often the idea is that if a person can only muster up enough resistance to the wave, that person will be able to stand against it and prevail.
But since the landslide is more than a small political wave that laps the beaches of our day, resistance to it is futile. It is a wave of a zeitgeist that is deep and broad that can’t be hopped over, you’ll only be crushed.
What to Do in Disaster
There is no sense wasting breath decrying the landslide endlessly, or acting as if it’s all much ado about nothing. It won’t help to try to stay a few paces ahead of it, nor can you run at it with your fist raised in foolish rage. So what to do?
As the wiki informed me, you can run at 90 degrees from it, get to the rooftops and wait it out, or you can hide under something strong and hope you don’t get crushed or suffocated.
The 90 Degree Run
The first option seems to be the best. Evacuate the area of the landslide with a realistic view of its scope and danger. Run at 90 degrees and try to get somewhere in your life, your church, your society where you can have peace and rest again.
This first option recognizes that things will never be the same again in landslide’s path. This might be the most frightening dread of all for people. When they realize that they must leave everything behind and get away, they become displaced refugees, socially, ideologically, and even perhaps physically.
I spoke with someone who was contemplating leaving his country because of the landslide of social and political changes that are happening. He said that his great-grandparents left their country to come to a better one. Why wouldn’t he consider uprooting and moving too?
Yet even if a person remains in their country, in the same society, they have to make radical decisions about their lives. The 90 degree run must take place in the church they join, the job they do, the schooling they give, and the priorities they hold.
History is full of people who had to make these 90 degree runs. From the earliest days of the Christian church, persecution resulted in martyrdoms, yes, but also in radical flight. The Christians left their homes and in the case of the Jewish Christians, their societal networks, in order to reform them in new ways and new places. Whether it was refugees moving to Calvin’s Geneva, the Huegenot flight from France, or the Pilgrims departure to the Americas, there have been many people who have made radical choices to try to get to the outside of the landslide.
The Rooftop
The second option in a landslide is to get to the rooftop. If you’ve ever seen pictures of people who have been caught in a landslide, the survivors remain on their roofs for long periods of time, while all that is around them lies devastated by floods and mud.
In the landslide of our time, there are people who know there isn’t time to get out. They are trapped. They have either ignored the warning signs, or they have acted irrationally and are now caught.
People who are caught in our landslide are those who tried to ‘manage’ what Albert Mohler has called, “the sexual revolution”. Often people who are caught are those who are Boomers with career capital tied to institutions that are already engulfed in the landslide.
If your salary or pension is tied to one of those “tilting trees” then you likely will be hesitant to flee until it’s too late. However, some people will realize the danger, and all they can do is cut ties with their previous security (salary, pension, career status), and try to survive.
Survival on the rooftop, like all survival will involve a great restriction of life to the bare essentials. The Christian believer will become focussed locally, on their own growth in Christ, their family’s training in the faith, their local church’s order and faithfulness, and a sustainable vocation that meets their basic needs.
Like anyone who is in this position, the rooftop survivor of the landslide is not in a position to flourish. But they can survive. What they need to prepare for is to take enough provisions with them so that they can last through the initial devastation, and also the enduring aftermath. This is similar to what Rod Dreher has advocated as The Benedict Option.
It can be difficult for comfortable Western Christians to imagine a society in the aftermath of the landslide. But history is the best guide. Whether the biblical history of Israel and its fall, or the collapse of the Roman Empire, or more recently, the capitulations under Nazism or the landslide of the Russian Revolution. In each case, the aftermath of the landslide was utterly different than life before it swept through. Christians must use the wisdom of history, and the recognition of the common, fallen nature of mankind, to anticipate the possibility of a landslide that defaces all we have known in our lifetime. Getting to the rooftop might be an option that is still available to us.
Hide Under Something Strong
The most desperate measure is still better than none at all. For the person in a landslide, they might be completely caught off guard. They might be totally unaware of how engulfing the landslide will be. And when it comes, they are swallowed up.
In those brief moments, a person may be able to hide under something strong. Maybe they can have just enough of an air pocket to keep from suffocating. Maybe they can have just enough protection to keep from being crushed. But their hope is that someone else will find them and rescue them.
Thankfully, the gospel message is the strongest shield that anyone can hide under. In our cultural moment, we already see how people who have been engulfed by the landslide have found rescue from the only One who could possibly do so, Jesus Christ. Who are the survivors? The formerly gay, or trans or racists, or exploiters or adulterers. Or as Paul put it:
Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.
1 Cor 6:10-11 NAS
Already in gospel-shielded churches, there are people entering who had been swept up in the landslide, who had only survived its devastating perversions by a miracle, the miracle of faith in Christ.
Constructing an Emergency Disaster Plan
If you hear the rumblings, feel the tremors and see the cracking foundations, you may still have time to act wisely and make realistic plans to survive and hopefully thrive.
A constructive plan will involve the following:
- Seeking after the Triune God, according to the Word of God.
- Catechizing yourself and your family with the Scripture, theology and song.
- Investing in the local church and it’s biblically mandated mission. Support biblical soundness in pastors, and promoting the training of new pastors.
- Believe in God as Creator, and the nature which he has assigned to mankind.
- Uphold the unity and distinction of male and female created in the image of God.
- Preserve and promote fathers in families.
- Protect and prioritize mothers in families.
- Untether yourself from institutions or structures that have given you security, but are being engulfed by the landslide.
- Develop parallel networks for trade and service which are not dependent on the infrastructure that may be wiped away by the landslide.
- Pray for miracles of deliverance from the landslide, and in its aftermath.
May God have mercy on us all.
Long before Black Sabbath’s Iron Man or any Marvel comic, Mary Shelley wrote about, “Adam”—a modern genesis story. In her novel, Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus (published in 1818), a god-like scientist named Victor Frankenstein created a human-like machine with artificial intelligence that goes horribly wrong.
Since then, we’ve had two centuries to think about the fearful consequences of technology. Now when we hear about Artificial Intelligence that has gone wrong, it sounds like a story from modern tech journalism more than Victorian gothic fantasy. Yet Shelley anticipated these horrors over 200 years ago.
Horror
When Frankenstein was written (1816), Mary Shelley was travelling across Europe with a small group of friends along with her philandering husband Percy. At the time, Shelley and her small group were living the free love, bohemian dream. They rented a house beside Lake Geneva in Switzerland where they could work on writing and navigate their love triangles. One project was to write a ghost story. The setting was perfect since the weather was especially dreary. It was called the Summer Without Sun (or the Year Without Summer), and all of the Gothic novelists were inspired in their self-indulgent, dark fantasies.
Who could have known that the nineteen-year old’s godless creation myth would become the modern parable of the technological age? Frankenstein is more than a Halloween horror story. It is the horror of fallen humanity creating a fallen world after its own image.
Revival
Six weeks after the Victorian hippies left Geneva, another visitor came to town.
He wasn’t crafting stories, but he did carry another of his own.
Robert Haldane was in today’s terms a billionaire. He had been spiritually awakened after completing an architectural masterpiece at his estate (now part of the University of Sterling). He had sold it and started giving money to missionary work. And that’s why he came to Geneva.
Just after Napoleon’s surrender, Haldane was practically a tourist. He was crossing France and visiting Geneva, in part to see the post-war state of the churches.
When he got to Geneva, he might have expected the rich heritage of live orthodoxy that John Calvin had nurtured in the 16th century. Instead what he found was a climate that was enamoured with the same ideas as Mary Shelley and her circle.
When Haldane toured Geneva, his guide was a seminary student. What Haldane discovered was that this would-be pastor was completely ignorant of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Haldane suggested that the young man meet him for a bible study. As others from the seminary accompanied him, the study grew.
All that Haldane did was work methodically through the book of Romans. The power of the Word of God shocked these students who had been numbed by French philosophers like Voltaire and Rousseau. Many of these seminarians had never read the bible before.
The contrast between Shelley’s home group and Haldane’s couldn’t be more clear. Shelley’s aimed to create without God. Haldane’s aimed to see new creations by God.
Frankenstein and his monster are (in)famous. Haldane’s name is mostly forgotten. But the bible study yielded more eternal significance than an old horror story. Some of the key French Protestant leaders of the 19th century were converted in what some called, “Haldane’s Revival.”
The difference of a few months in one city was the difference between the horrors of fallen imagination and the delight of forgiveness of sins in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Now more than ever our world needs Geneva’s revival more than we need new Frankensteins of technology. But can we believe that Halloween fixations on horror can give way to awakening to the gospel of Jesus Christ? Even in Frankenstein’s shadow, God is able to make the dead come alive.
A version of this post originally appeared at The Gospel Coalition Canada