In 1991, the United States faced off against Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army for the first time. The actual war was an overwhelming American victory-every contact between American and Iraqi troops was completely one sided. Almost immediately the Iraqi army began to run, retreating from the country that they had invaded (Kuwait) back to their own soil. America was on the edge of victory when the decision was made to stop the war-as soon as the Iraqi army made it back to their home soil, American units stopped their pursuit. Militarily, America had their first overwhelming victory in a major war since World War 2, but that victory did not become reality in Iraq. Most of the elite Republican Guard survived the war, and continued to brutally oppress the people of Iraq until a second, more final invasion in 2003. Because the American army wasn’t allowed to fully claim their victory, Iraq spent anther decade under the control of the only world leader in the 20th century caught using chemical weapons on his own people. Quite the victory.
The conservative Church in North America seems to follow the same logic as the politicians who decided to call off the war in Iraq before the war actually reached Iraq. The same people who boldly declare that Jesus Christ is victorious over the powers of darkness and that we are “more than conquerors” in Him run in fear at the thought of living in our evil world. The same people support their children being missionaries overseas try to shelter them as much as possible from the pagan land in which we live. I’ve seen far too much of it over the last few months, and it has convicted me far more strongly than I’ve ever been convicted before! As such, I figured that I would type up my conviction on the subject, and, seeing as how many of the worst offenders of the Christian double life prefer to use “fire and brimstone” terminology, I figure I might as well be frank as well.
First off, I have to agree-America is becoming a pagan nation. Modern western culture stands in direct opposition to Christ, and I agree that our culture is used by the devil to weaken the Church. This is not because America is any more godless than any nation before her or any nation that shall come after her, it is the way of the world-every culture in human history, bar none, from the beginning of civilization until the end of time, is the product of a fallen and sinful world, and there has never been a civilization that was dedicated to God. America is godless, as was colonial Europe, the Roman Empire, the Greek Empire, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and every other tongue, tribe and nation! As well, America never was a Christian nation, as Christ did not come to establish Christian nations!! His one and only Kingdom is His Church, established in His people-He is not looking for a country! I have heard people sadly say that America is no longer a Christian country-I beg to differ. America was never a Christian country to begin with-it was simply founded by largely Christian leadership, and the loss of Christian nation status that saddens so many Evangelicals is simply the Christian facade being torn off our society so that we can comprehend who we truly are. I agree that our society is getting worse rather than better over time-its called entropy. Everything on this earth gets worse over time rather than better-we live in a fallen, decaying world! No engineer is surprised that a bridge becomes weaker rather than stronger as it ages, and anybody with a knowledge of history can vouch that civilizations do the same thing as bridges-they become weaker, then collapse. Why should the Western world be any different? There has never been a time in human history when Hell hasn’t been extending its presence to earth, and the same holds true for North America today. The Devil’s work can be found in the poor and the homeless, rejected by a society so focused on personal gratification that they would love to make them just go away and stop bothering people. It can be found in lives destroyed by drug addictions, marriages destroyed by lust, pornography and adultery, in children scarred by abuse and babies lost through abortion. Make no mistake-ours is not a safe, Christian society.
The question once we accept the fact that the devil works in our society is how we should respond. The answer runs the gauntlet from Churches that refuse to acknowledge the very existence of sin for fear of offending sinners to groups such as the Amish who have nothing to do with society at all. I believe that there are serious problems with both extremes, but conservative Evangelical Christians have devoted more than enough time to condemning the heresy of the first group, so I figure its time to say something about the latter. I, a Canadian, am a Christian today because Paul, following God’s leading, left Israel and spread the Gospel across the decidedly pagan Roman Empire. This Gospel went all the way to the godless barbarians who inhabited Europe at the time, where it flourished, and was further spread several centuries later by missionaries who were willing to leave the safety of their monasteries to travel to a vast, dark, godless continent, live among a pagan people, and spread their faith to them. In other words, I am saved today due to generations of Christians who determined that their Savior was more powerful than the devil and their faith stronger than the godlessness of the pagans and infidels of the world around them, and who, once equipped for service, left the sanctuary they came from and lived out their faith in lands of complete godlessness. If I will stand in Heaven someday due to the willingness of these people to engage a godless world, it would be nothing less than the work of Satan himself for me to refuse to do the same. If a Christian does not show Christ to a godless world, he may be personally saved, but he will be absolutely worthless to the Kingdom of God, and it is impossible for me to show Christ to a godless world when I refuse to be seen anywhere close to that world! I see 2 very strong problems with any doctrine that attempts to allow for faith to be lived out without actively engaging the world:
1.It isn’t consistent.
Even the most sheltered Christians cannot deny the Great Commission. Near the end of the book of Matthew, Jesus commands His disciples to go out to Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. As I said earlier, we can know the Gospel today because of a history of Christians taking this commandment seriously. However, this is more than a call to overseas missions. I find it to be quite interesting when the same people who call for us to be willing to go to the farthest reaches of the world and spread the Gospel to the most barbaric tribes in the world also tell us that we be very careful at school, because we live around non Christians. The same people who speak of the need for us to go and redeem other godless cultures for Christ tell us to stay away from the more “unchristian” parts of our culture, then wonder why our culture seems to be going downhill. We can find common ground with the native mythology of Brazilian tribes to lead them to Christ, but we cant do the same with secular music, movies, or culture to lead people to Christ here. We need missionaries to spread the love of Jesus to those who do not know Him-what a joy it would be if many Churches could commission missionaries to reach the unreached sitting right outside their own front doors! If we could equip and commission missionaries to venture all the way to their neighbours and find some common ground, such as an invitation to a football night, to engage them and spread the gospel to them! Imagine what would happen if the crowds that gather at restaurants after Church Sunday morning would take a quick break from discussing the things of God among each other to actually speak of the Gospel to the waitress standing in front of them taking their order! And what would happen if we took children and teenagers with a strong and living faith and, in addition to sending them on missions trips to Central America and Africa, sent them on a missions trip everyday as students at our public schools and universities! Can you imagine the revival that would sweep the nation?? I’ve heard, and been a part of, so many conversations regarding the pagans who live around us, and it has taken me years to see this, but each time the subject comes up Christ has the same message for us-”Yes, I know that those people are godless! That’s why I brought you here, oh you who have God!” It is stupid, inconsistent and unbiblical for us to think that we are not missionaries setting foot on the mission field God has us in the second that we step outside of our Church doors on Sunday morning.
2.It makes my God seem weak!
At its core, any attempt to shelter my faith from the wicked world around me is based on one subconscious assumption: that engaging the world will weaken my faith. I believe that I can see why some would be worried about this-the result of a sheltered and overly protected faith is a weak faith! Paul lived in a pagan world-every sin imaginable took place in the Roman Empire, and he will have seen the worst of it during lifetime of travel. The reason that he could keep going and face the evil world was not a naive belief that things “weren’t all that bad”, but rather the assurance that Jesus within him was stronger than anything around him. I know that gravity is one of the strongest forces on earth-no matter how hard I jump, I’m bound by it! Yet I truly believe that, when I fly home in a week, the plane that I’m on will defy gravity and soar thousands of feet above the ground. I don’t need to be blissfully ignorant of the nature of gravity to believe in flight, I simply have to believe that lift that a Canadair Regional Jet can produce is greater than the force of gravity that this earth can produce! Any argument that says that a Christian should never go to a secular college because of the high number of Christians who seem to lose their faith during college is based on the unstated assumption that the Lord and Creator of the universe, who declared me mine through His death on the cross and now dwells inside of me, simply isnt capable of winning a fight with a few college professors. The high rate of Christians falling away in our university is a problem, but the solution is making sure that my generation has a real, storm tested relationship with God that can face a secular school rather than a weak, sheltered faith that has never been exposed to the world before. Anybody who says that the solution to the problem is to keep Christians out of university demeans the power of my God.
To clarify, I believe that we do need to be careful with our use of our freedom in Christ, and we need to follow our personal convictions. A personal conviction is something that God lays on each individual’s heart, but that isn’t necessarily a Biblical commandment. For example, the fact that I should not commit adultery is a commandment-it applies to all Christians. However, if God gives me the conviction that guarding myself from lust and adultery means that I cant go to a football game due to the lack of clothing on the cheerleading team, it is a conviction-it would be wrong for me to go to a football game, but there is no Biblical commandment against football games, and another Christian male who doesn’t struggle with cheerleader induced lust could still go the game and be right in God’s eyes, provided that he isn’t convicted about it as well. The problem comes when those who are “strongly convicted” (they cant set foot outside their homes without being barraged by temptation) begin to condemn other Christians for not following their convictions, or try to pass their convictions as Biblical commandments. As well, we must be very careful that we use our freedom in Christ to engage the world for Him and not for ourselves-engaging sinners shouldn’t mean sinning with sinners, and we need to ensure that we remain above reproach when engaging a godless world-it is possible for the light to be dimmed with sin just as easily as it can be hidden inside a Church for safekeeping! Engaging the world without becoming like the world in this manner is extremely difficult-we expose ourselves to greater temptation, and far more complicated moral situations-it is far easier to say “Abortion is murder!!” in a Bible school classroom than to sit down with a pregnant 16 year old who is too frightened to make a rational decision and condemn her for even considering murder. It seems far easier to live out our faith in the safety of the Church, far from the challenges of the world, but any attempt to do so faces one flaw-impossibility. The Great Commission isn’t optional, and it is far too blunt and direct for us to dismiss it as non applicable to our lives. I believe that there is one part of Satan’s world system that is far less mentioned among conservative Christians than all the rest, one too sad, convicting and downright awkward to be discussed much-Satan’s world system can exert the power it has today due to evangelical Christians so terrified and hateful of a non Christian society that they barricade themselves as far from it as they can get, leaving behind a nation unengaged by those Christ sent to engage the world, and, thanks in part to us, at the mercy of the forces of Hell on earth.
Engaging the world means getting rid of our halfhearted idea of missions being the equipping of the chosen few to go overseas among every godless tribe and nation, and choosing instead to equip the entire Church to go out into a godless world-taking mature believers out of their sheltered “Christian society” and sending them to the heart of our universities, our inner cities, the houses next door to us, and everything else that we describe as Satan’s bastions in our world.
