Mutual Assured Destruction

 

Because some folks read one blog and not the other, I'm posting this on both blogs - I have wrestled with this for months and months. 

Robert L. Withers, August 28, 2020

 

For the past few years, as I’ve been observing the polarization and fragmentation of our society, and the societies of the world, I’ve grappled with words and images to describe what I’m seeing. One of my favorite words since around 2005 has been “tsunami”, for this word conveys sudden and chaotic destruction. Undersea earthquakes hundreds of miles away can visit destruction and death and disorientation on the unsuspecting.

 

There is another phenomenon which I’ve been observing, for which I have no one word but rather a term borrowed from the Cold War, “mutual assured destruction.” This was the Cold War doctrine that if the superpowers each had enough nuclear weapons to destroy our planet many times over that they would not dare initiate nuclear war. What did not happen in the Cold War is happening within our society, and I frankly think the church (a term I use loosely) is an enabler of this insanity.

 

What do I mean?

 

Let me begin with the political climate in the United States. Politics has always been hardball and ugly, a serious student of history knows that for every bright and shining moment in government and politics that there might be ten moments that make one ethically and morally sick. Today we have a situation in Washington, D.C. in which it appears that the avowed goal of both political parties is to destroy the opposition. Not only that, but within each political party there are factions whose agendas seem to be the elimination of their ideological opponents within their own parties.

 

The notion of compromise, of reasoned discussion, of give-and-take, has itself become a target of elimination by both parties.

 

The excesses of the party in power, whether in the White House, the Senate, or the House of Representatives, are surpassed when the party out of power gains the supremacy – then it is payback time. Thus, I find the term “mutual assured destruction” an apt description of the escalation of what payback time looks like. This abdication of moral leadership on the part of both parties, and of the church (which I’ll address below), is propelling us into an abyss from which it is doubtful we will recover. We will likely have the moral equivalent of a nuclear winter.  I am reminded of the title of a book written some years ago by Dr. Richard Swenson, Hurtling Ourselves Into Oblivion – this is what we are culturally doing, politics being the particular rocket that I am focused on in this reflection.

 

Political and social “mutual assured destruction” is not without precedent, it reaches at least as far back at the Roman Republic. In his book, The Storm Before the Storm – The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic, Mike Duncan makes the following observation and quotes Gaius Sallustius Crispus (86 – 35 B.C.) on the political dynamics that led to the Roman Republic’s demise and the rise of the dictatorial Caesars:

 

“But though there were not formal parties, it is true that there were now two broadly opposing worldviews floating in the political ether waiting to be tapped as needed. As the crisis over the Lex Agraria [land reform legislation] revealed, it was no longer a specific issue that mattered so much as the urgent necessity to triumph over rivals. Reflecting on the recurring civil wars of the late Republic, Sallust said, ‘It is this spirit which has commonly ruined great nations, when one party desires to triumph over another by any and every means and to avenge itself on the vanquished with excessive cruelty.’ Accepting defeat was no longer an option.” [Italics mine].

 

Duncan observes that in the late Roman Republic “it was no longer a specific issue that mattered so much as the urgent necessity to triumph over rivals.” This is what we have come to in the United States. We have abandoned long-term thinking for short-term victories. We have hardened ourselves across the political spectrum against the suffering and needs of others as we look to vanquish our opponents. The term “culture war” is an apt term indeed, but we ought to expand it to, “a culture war of mutual assured destruction.” Many of those leading this war have their economic bomb shelters which they think make them invulnerable, impervious to the spiritual and moral nuclear winter descending on humanity – they are the wolves licking the knife bathed in blood, their insatiable appetites will consume them.

 

Through all of this, the professing church has been an enabler through its identification with political parties, by identifying with competing worldly worldviews, and by the abdication of its Biblical mandate to be “in the world but not of the world”, to be seeking a City whose builder and maker is God. We are called to be witnesses to Jesus Christ, not advocates for a political party or for a worldly worldview – and when we are seduced into adopting a view of life and of the world that is other than a Biblical view – which all sub-Christian views necessarily are, then we exchange the glory of God for the glory of man, God’s vision for man’s vision.

 

In the United States, our syncretistic civil religion, with its blend of pseudo-patriotism and Christianity, is particularly seductive. While there are professing – Christians who lament political correctness and the thought police, many of those same Christians are quick to condemn the notion that we are a deeply sinful nation with an ingrained sinful past, and that Christians are citizens of heaven (Philippians 3:20) before we are citizens of anywhere else. (I will mention that the concept of dual citizenship is not helpful here, for there can be no parity in our thinking or dual allegiance in our hearts, “no one can serve two masters”).

 

The Church is not called to take sides in culture wars, doing so pulls us down into the toxic morass of the present age. We are called to bear witness to Jesus Christ, to be His faithful Bride (not the harlot of an element of the world-system – no matter how attractive it may appear – note what happens to harlots in Revelation 17:16). The Church is called to be separate and distinct from the war of mutual assured destruction swirling around it.

 

The people of the world; our families, friends, neighbors, coworkers; need to hear us speak from heaven, not from earth. The world needs us to wear the white linen of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, not the red and blue garments of political parties.

 

In the war of mutual assured destruction, we are called to be peacemakers (Matthew 5:9), agents of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:20), and medics on the battlefield (Matthew 5:43 – 48).

 

Consider these words from John the Baptist (John 3:29 - 30):

 

“He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made full. He [Jesus] must increase, but I must decrease.”

 

And then of Paul (2 Corinthians 11:2 – 3):

 

“For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy, for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.”

 

Let me be straightforward here; pastors, priests, elders, deacons, evangelists, church leaders, are called to wed the Church to Jesus Christ in a monogamous marriage, a pure marriage, a holy marriage. The “Christian” leader who in any way suggests and encourages God’s People to dye the white linen of Jesus Christ with the colors of this world, including blue or red, is not acting as a friend of the Bridegroom. (There are many other colors we could include here, including green – the color of money - one of the gods of our pantheon).

 

Dear friends, the people of the world need us to bear witness to Jesus Christ, not political or economic or social agendas. They need the Church to demonstrate the Gospel and what it is to love one another as Christ loves us, they need to see us actually living in community across ethnic, racial, socio-economic, political, and educational barriers…yes, even nationalistic barriers.

 

There are two women portrayed throughout the Bible; the harlot, and the Bride of Christ (Proverbs Chapter 9, Revelation Chapter 17; 19:7 – 10; Chapter 21).

 

Which one are we?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heavenly Mindedness (4)

 

Reflections on Geerhardus Vos’s Message on “Heavenly Mindedness”:

 

What we read in this chapter about the various activities and acts of faith in the lives of the Old Testament saints might perhaps at first create the impression, that the word faith is used in a looser sense, and that many things are attributed to it not strictly belonging there on the author’s own definition. One might be inclined in more precise language to classify them with other Christian graces. There is certainly large variety of costume in the procession that is made to pass before our eyes. The understanding that the worlds were framed out of nothing, the ability to offer God an acceptable sacrifice, the experience of translation unto God, the preparing of the ark, the responsiveness to the call to leave one’s country, the power to conceive seed when past age, the willingness to sacrifice an only son, Joseph’s making mention beforehand of the deliverance from Egypt, and his giving commandment concerning his bones, the hiding of the child Moses, the choice by Moses, when grown up, of the reproach of God’s people in preference to the treasures of Egypt, all this and more is represented as belonging to the one rubric of faith. But let us not misunderstand the writer. When he affirms that by faith all these things were suffered and done, his idea is not that what is enumerated was in each case the direct expression of faith. What he means is that in the last analysis faith alone made possible every one of the acts described, that as an underlying frame of mind it enabled all these other graces to function, and to produce the rich fruitage here set forth.

 

When I read this message of Vos’s, and attempt to comment on it, I feel as if I might as well try to describe the Grand Canyon or the wonders of Yellowstone; it is so many – faceted, and so vast.

 

We see again Vos’s vision of faith as an underlying frame of mind – that faith is a way of life, a way of thinking, of feeling, of the will, of decision making. Our wills are trained in the way of faith, pruned in the way of faith, molded in the image of faith. Our souls are taught to swim in the ocean of faith. Our lungs are taught to breathe the air of faith. Our eyes are taught to see the light of faith. Our inner selves hunger for the food of faith. Our hearts beat for the beauty of faith.

 

Faith is not a tool in a toolbox, it is a way of life. Faith is not something we exercise when we need it for special occasions, it is the way we live. I breathe air all of the time; I breathe differently when I am exerting my body, when I am running, riding a bike, climbing a hill or mountain, or swimming – the way I breathe at times may be different, but I am always breathing…unless I am dead.

 

Faith is the biosphere in which Christians are called to live.

 

The obedience, the self-sacrifice, the patience, the fortitude, of all these the exercise in the profound Christian sense would have been impossible, if the saints had not had through faith their eye firmly fixed on the unseen and promised world. Whether the call was to believe or to follow, to do or to bear, the obedience to it sprang not from any earth-fed sources but from the infinite reservoir of strength stored up in the mountain-land above. If Moses endured it was not due to the power of resistance in his human frame, but because the weakness in him was compensated by the vision of Him who is invisible. If Abraham, who had gladly received the promises, offered up his only-begotten son, it was not because in heroic resignation he steeled himself to obedience, but because through faith he saw God as greater and stronger than the most inexorable physical law of nature : “For he accounted that God is able to raise up even from the dead.” And so in all the other instances. Through faith the powers of the higher world were placed at the disposal of those whom this world threatened to overwhelm, and so the miracle resulted that from weakness they were made strong. No mistake could be greater than to naturalize the contents of this chapter, and to conceive of the thing portrayed as some instinct of idealism, some sort of sixth sense for what lies above the common plane of life, as people speak of men of vision, who see farther than the mass. The entire description rests on the basis of supernaturalism; these are annals of grace, magnalia Christi [mighty works of Christ]. Even the most illustrious names in the history of worldly achievement are not, as such, entitled to a place among them.  G. Vos.

 

May I ask you a question about the above paragraph? Do you believe it? Do you believe that Vos has a Biblical foundation for saying what he says? (I am asking myself the same question).

 

I have no reservation about crying “Amen!” to Vos’s message, and I have no alternative but to be humbled by the truth of what he says, for he, by God’s grace, does nothing but crystalize the message of the Bible in his faithfulness to the text of the NT book of Hebrews.

 

Consider Hebrews 12:22 - 24, “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angles, to the general assembly of the firstborn and are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.”

 

When faith is our underlying frame of mind, when it is our biosphere, we do not think in terms of one day coming to Mount Zion, but rather we live in a mysterious awareness that we have come to Mount Zion…and to the general assembly of the firstborn. (Yes, we anticipate a complete breaking forth of the City of God on earth as we “see” the New Jerusalem descending, we know the entire creation waits in agony for the manifestation of the sons of God).

 

As we deposit treasure in the mountain–land above we find that we can make withdrawals from the collective treasures which are there; the infinite reservoir of strength is that of the communion of the saints, rooted and grounded in the Trinity.

 

Through faith the powers of the higher world were placed at the disposal of those whom this world threatened to overwhelm, and so the miracle resulted that from weakness they were made strong.

 

Is this the mindset of the church? How often do we choose Saul over David? How often do we dismiss Paul in his weakness and choose the slick religious person who caters to our whims and fancies? How often do we seek to strengthen ourselves in the natural world, glossing over our weaknesses, instead of drawing upon the treasures of heaven?

 

And how should this inform our epistemology and pedagogy? Are we children of the Kingdom or of humanism and the Enlightenment? I wonder how Vos’s seminary audience received his message. Was it simply beautiful and idealistic rhetoric?

 

The entire description rests on the basis of supernaturalism…

 

Our lives are to be naturally supernatural. But do we believe this? Do we live this? Do we embrace the Divine life of Christ within us? Do we teach our people to live in the supernatural biosphere of faith? Or…are we focused on cultivating intellectual and emotional lives functionally outside the supernatural?

 

What is our underlying frame of mind? The seen or the unseen? The natural or the spiritual? The flesh or the spirit?

 

Let us be obedient to the heavenly vision.

Heavenly Mindedness (3)

 

Reflections on Geerhardus Vos’s Message on “Heavenly Mindedness”

Nevertheless, taking the two representations as a whole, [see previous posts] the distinctness of the point of view in each should not be neglected. It can be best appreciated by observing that, while in these other writings Christ is the object of faith, the One towards whom the sinner’s trust is directed, here the Savior is described as Himself exercising faith, in fact as the one perfect, ideal believer. The writer exhorts his readers: “Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the leader and perfector of our faith.”

 

Faith in that other sense of specific trust, through which a guilty sinner becomes just in the sight of God, our Lord could not exercise, because He was sinless. But the faith that is an assurance of things hoped for and a proving of things not seen had a large place in his experience. By very reason of the contrast between the higher world to which He belonged and this dark lower world of suffering and death to which He had surrendered Himself it could not be otherwise than that faith, as a projection of his soul into the unseen and future, should have been the fundamental habit of the earthly life of his human nature, and should have developed in Him a degree of intensity not attained elsewhere.

 

But, although, for the reason stated, in the unique case of Jesus the two types of faith did not go together, they by no means exclude each other in the mind of the Christian. For, after all, justifying faith is but a special application in one particular direction of the frame of mind here described. Among all the realities of the invisible world, mediated to us by the disclosures and promises of God, and to which our faith responds, there is none that more strongly calls into action this faculty for grasping the unseen than the divine pronouncement through the Gospel, that, though sinners, we are righteous in the judgment of God. That is not only the invisible, it seems the impossible; it is the paradox of all paradoxes; it requires a unique energy of believing; it is the supreme victory of faith over the apparent reality of things; it credits God with calling the things that are not as though they were; it penetrates more deeply into the deity of God than any other act of faith. G. Vos

 

The above, as with all of Vos’s message, bears reading and rereading. It is dense, and yet its density ought to be our way of life. Let’s, by God’s grace, touch on this denseness.

 

When speaking of the Divine, of the invisible, language is a problem, a limitation; and yet the limitation can be a blessing. Language, at least language given to the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, cannot fully express the mysteries and glories of the Divine, and so we must choose our words carefully and humbly. This is a blessing in that it should force us to slow down, ponder, pray, and proceed with caution and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit.

 

Vos speaks of “types” of faith and “aspects” of faith. Is “faith” one with many expressions, or do we have faith of one “nature” here and another “nature” there? I think Vos uses “type” and “aspect” interchangeably, and after all, in Hebrews faith is rooted in the Person of Christ and His Incarnational Nature – as Vos quotes, “Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Perfector of our faith.” Vos wants us to take “the two representations [of faith] as a whole”. So we have “representations,” “types”, and “aspects” as synonyms.

 

Vos uses “frame of mind” to convey the idea of a way of life, a way of thinking; he will also speak of an “underlying frame of mind”. This is a way of being, and as we grow in Christ it becomes a supernaturally - natural way of being. A frame of mind is a state of mind that sees life within a certain framework. This is a particular challenge in a post-modern world in which there is no unifying vision, no concept of a universally united way of thinking about life. We compartmentalize our lives and our thinking – the idea of having a constant and consistent frame of mind, a way of living, it difficult for us to embrace. We are one person at home, another at work, another with neighbors, another regarding entertainment, another at church – our living is fragmented more often than not – sadly this often includes our theology and preaching.

 

Vos speaks of the faith of the Incarnational Christ, “"as a projection of his soul into the unseen and future,” terming it “the fundamental habit of the earthly life of his human nature”. If Jesus Christ is the Author and Perfector of our faith, then as His faith lives in us we ought to anticipate that this “fundamental habit” of Christ’s becomes our fundamental habit. It is not too much to suggest that as we grow in Christ that our fundamental habit of life and that of Jesus Christ’s become indistinguishable – after all, this will eventually be the case as we, individually and collectively, are fully transformed into His image; after all, He is the Head and we are His Body. Why not, in faith, embrace Christ in us, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27)?

 

Vos says, in speaking of faith apprehending our salvation, and perhaps in particular of apprehending our justification; “the supreme victory of faith over the apparent reality of things; it credits God with calling the things that are not as though they were; it penetrates more deeply into the deity of God than any other act of faith.” What is our “frame of mind” regarding justification and salvation? (When I write of salvation, I refer to salvation holistically and comprehensively – I do not stop at Romans 5:11 – we have half a Gospel, at most, if we stop at Romans 5:11).

 

Are we living as those whom God has justified? That is, as those who have not only never sinned but who have always kept the Law? Are we living with consciences that are not plagued with sin and the remembrance of sin (Hebrews 10:22)? When Hebrews contrasts the Old and New covenants, one of the points of distinction is that in the Old we have the constant reminder of sin, in the New we are free from that mindset, that guilt,  that old conscience, that old identity – and now God’s Laws and Ways are written within us and we are living in the Holy of Holies. In the Old we live in the earthly Tabernacle, in the New we learn to live in the Heavenly Tabernacle.

 

Well, as Vos says, this is “the supreme victory of faith over the apparent reality of things.”

 

One aspect of faith is when we trust in Christ. Another aspect of faith is when the faith of Jesus Christ lives in us, grows in us, and teaches us to see those things that are invisible – most especially the True and Living God. Is this becoming our frame of mind? Is this our way of life?

Heavenly Mindedness (2)

 

Continuing our reflections on Geerhardus Vos’s message on “Heavenly Mindedness”:

It [faith] is the organ for apprehension of unseen and future realities, giving access to and contact with another world. It is the hand stretched out through the vast distances of space and time, whereby the Christian draws to himself the things far beyond, so that they become actual to him. The earlier Epistles are not unfamiliar with this aspect of faith. Paul in II Corinthians declares that for the present the Christian walks through a land of faith and not of sight. And on the other hand this chapter [Hebrews Chapter 11] is not unfamiliar with the justifying function of faith, for we are told of Noah, that he became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.  G. Vos

 

What strikes you about this passage? 

May I say that it affirms unashamedly that our life in Christ is to be a supernatural life in which our citizenship and our life experience is in Christ in the heavens (Philippians 3:20; Ephesians 2:6). We are called to “see” and apprehend unseen and future realities. This is not the same as saying, “I believe such and such;” Vos says that “the things far beyond…become actual.”

 

Vos directs our thoughts to 2 Corinthians, Paul’s great letter of suffering. Is it a coincidence that in the midst of Paul’s suffering that Paul writes of “not looking at the things that are seen but rather those that are unseen, for the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18)? Is it a coincidence that Paul writes, “for we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7)? Is it a coincidence that Paul writes, “For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17, compare with Rom. 8:18)? Regarding Paul’s “light affliction,” note his description in 2 Cor. 1:8 – 9 in which he and his coworkers “were burdened beyond strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed we had the sentence of death within ourselves.”

 

Vos preaches that faith gives us “access to and contact with another world. It is the hand stretched out through the vast distances of space and time…” Vos demonstrates this in the very message he is preaching, for his chapel message transcends time and space, he ranges into the unseen and sees Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – perhaps he sees the Patriarchs with greater clarity than he sees his Princeton Seminary audience.

 

Note that Vos reminds us that we can see complementary “angles of vision” (see previous post) when he speaks of Noah being justified by faith and becoming the heir of righteousness which is according to faith. Noah gives us a wonderful example of justifying faith and of “heavenly – minded” faith; an example of the unity of faith. “By faith Noah being warned about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith” (Heb 11:7). Noah is an example of what we might style “holistic faith”; that is, faith manifesting itself in complimentary ways, healthy and growing.

 

What reception would Vos’s language have in the church today? What reception would his language have in his Reformed tradition? Would we incorporate Vos’s teaching into the thinking and experience of our congregations? What might the challenges be?

 

On the other hand, if Vos is faithfully preaching the Word of God, if Vos is capturing the essence of Hebrews 11, then “What shall we do to be saved”? Remembering that Biblical salvation is holistic and complete, it is not simply focusing on moving from death to life, from light to darkness – it is about living in Christ, for Christ, unto Christ, as Christ.

 

Well, we are only in the beginning of Vos’s message, and while there is much more to say and think about, we can’t do it all at once.

A Reminder from Narnia

Sometimes a story says it best, God speaks to us in the Bible through stories and images - and by His grace He speaks to us through those to whom He has given the gift of story and image, such as C.S. Lewis. Next to the Bible, the Chronicles of Narnia are the books I would take with me on the proverbial lonely island if I could take no other books. 

Here's a vignette worth pondering - what do you see? 

Aslan and Jill (The Silver Chair, by C.S. Lewis)

 

“Are you not thirsty?” said the lion.

 

“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.

 

“Then drink,” said the lion.

 

“May I – would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.

 

The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.

 

The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.

 

“Will you promise not to – do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.

 

“I make no promise,” said the Lion.

 

Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.

 

“Do you eat girls?” she said.

 

“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.

 

“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.

 

“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.

 

“Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”

 

“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.