Deconstructing the Empire of Lies
“To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law."
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn[1]
The general malaise and moral confusion of the culture being what it is reminds me of Saint Francis’s claim. He would need to go to the city center in Assisi and stand on his head to see the world aright. The early Christians were given credit for turning the world upside down.[2] The Christian worldview required everyone outside of the Christian faith to stand on their heads to make sense of things. But now, the world is back where Christians found it and now, they find themselves along with Saint Francis standing on their heads to see it aright. Light has been declared darkness and darkness declared light. Right is wrong, wrong is right, up is down and down is up. The old greeting, “What’s Up?” requires the answer, “Who knows?” I don’t find myself standing on my head as much as simply scratching my head, befuddled as to how so many have gotten it so wrong. But as Solzhenitsyn said, apparently, they have construed their actions as “good.”
When you watch elected leaders attempt to prosecute people who use legally held firearms to defend themselves against protesters who threaten to burn down their home, but hundreds of looters are freed with no bail, you scratch your head. When a mayor of a world class city allows anarchists to take over a part of the city and the mayor refers to it as a street festival or a summer of love, you scratch your head. When leaders decide that a Marxist-Socialist movement has a right to protest during a pandemic, tear down statues, attack police, and destroy public property, but schools must remain closed because we can’t deny the protesters their rights, you start scratching with both hands. When marijuana dispensaries remain open along with liquor stores because people can’t live without them, but churches are considered non-essential, you just put your head into your hands and moan - the irony is almost laughable.
In previous articles or programs, I have quoted Charles Malik’s important words, that our challenge is both to “win souls, but also to save minds.” If we lose the minds, we have lost the souls, and as a result, the culture, the battle, and the war. So, what is our defense? Even better, what is our offense? I learned early on in basketball, defense must be played, but putting the ball in the basket is what we count. This is where the Apostle Paul’s words to the Corinthian Christian community comes into play.
“We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 NLT.
The Corinthian church was new, small, and culturally unimportant, but it was located in a large and important city. Rebuilt in 44 BC by Julius Caesar after the desolation of war, it was located on a small isthmus that saved sailors weeks of sailing and where they could move goods and services much more quickly. Therefore, it was a busy cosmopolitan seaport that brought the best and worst to the tiny strip of land. The new Corinth had some of the staples of the old Corinth. There was the Temple of Aphrodite, along with the Roman gods of Mithras and Isis. The church was primarily composed of Gentiles who had been trained to glorify wisdom, ecstatic utterance, eating meat sacrificed to local gods, promiscuity, and prostitution.[3] The Temple of Aphrodite provided one stop shopping with its hundreds of prostitutes, juicy steaks, and Viking Cruise level lectures on pop philosophy and travel.
If anything, the church had less to hold on to culturally and historically than we do today. They had no unified Christian worldview culture to stand on and compare to what they were experiencing. The Bible was in the process of being written and orthodoxy was three-hundred years in the future; all they had were Paul’s words and their lived experience. They were learning as they went along. Paul and his rivals were their only lifeline to making it in a culture that worked against them in every part of life. That is why Paul encouraged them to keep it in perspective:
“The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God. As the Scriptures say, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and discard the intelligence of the intelligent.’” – 1 Corinthians 1:18,19 NLT.
But Paul didn’t tell them to hide in the castle and pull up the drawbridge. He said in his second letter to them, “Let’s go on offense.” He made it clear:
“We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do…” - 2 Corinthians 10:3a
We are at war! I think this means that we must take a cold hard look at what confronts us in the 21st century. Our opponent isn’t interested in Truth. He has no interest in a national conversation on race, justice, poverty, capitalism, socialism, abortion, school choice, or even what is right and wrong and why it is right or wrong. Truth doesn’t matter to our enemy, for he is a liar, the father of lies, and he is only interested in winning, winning, winning. He has come to lie, to kill and to destroy. He lied and tempted Christ in the wilderness. He is after one thing, to destroy what God loves most, his creation. And even though he knows he cannot win, he will fight to the death knowing that even if he loses, at least he can take millions of dead corpses with him, and that hurts God. Paul understands this and stands a bit straighter and sticks out his chest and says, “We are going to take down Lucifer’s empire of lies.”
Most of Lucifer’s disciples don’t know they are his disciples. In fact, he is the great deceiver and has convinced them through an elaborate system of lies, images, and emotions that they are doing good. In fact, they believe they are morally superior to Christians and are calling on Christians to repent, to confess, to shut up and listen, and to cancel, deny, and remove all that we and our ancestors have done wrong. Christians hate, but they love. Christians are intolerant, but they are open minded. Christians repress the true glory of humanity, but they want everyone to flourish and express their full potential. They believe black lives matter too. Oh yeah, and when pressed, that all lives matter, except for those millions of unborn innocents that are killed year after year, decade after decade. But there is money to be made on their tiny little parts. But that is different because women need their freedom to conduct their lives any way they want without reality, or reaping, or taking responsibility. The battle is on and the battlefield already has two dead corpses - truth and reasoning. So, how do we begin? We must use our own special weapons that the enemy doesn’t possess that oddly enough will “knock down and destroy their strongholds of human reasoning and destroy their arguments.”
What weapons is Paul referring to? These words have been used to launch apologetic ministries. They have inspired our greatest minds to write books and to engage the enemies best and brightest. Isn’t this what Charles Malik refers to when he says that if we lose the mind, we have lost the soul? It is true you can’t bypass the mind if you want a whole person who understands the reasons for their own actions. Yet Lucifer has done a spectacular job of getting vast throngs to watch five hundred episodes of the Simpsons, Seinfeld, Friends, or some other repeatable series that will cause you to bypass your mind and to straight away program your emotions to be cynical about a life without meaning, but at least you can have sex with anyone you want. And then get an abortion because you might not get promoted if you miss work.
Paul’s immediate context is his authority with the Corinthian church. His words, I believe, concern what will expose the lies of his opponents - his truthfulness of life, his belief in prayer, and the full armor of God as detailed to the Ephesians (6:10-18). He believed that when he arrived, his personal presence, his anointing from God, and the power of God working through him would destroy all their arguments. This is the underlying assumption of his words; he is speaking of the intangible of spiritual authority and presence. In that immediate context, this issue for Paul was of first importance. This is of equal importance to us right now as we interact with those we meet personally.
There is a broader context that leaps off the page and across the generations as well that speaks to Malik’s words and warning. Malik was concerned in his 1982 speech at Wheaton College that we had lost the culture. And I think we have lost the culture. The train has left the station and we find ourselves standing on the platform asking, “what happened and what can we do about it?”
The 90-10 Rule
My take is that 90% of protesters, and people in general, are thinking normally and are operating from a moral basis provided by a Christian based Western civilization. If you combine the image of God in every person along with a moral base of the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus, you get a basis on which to relate to one another. And when everyone agrees there is authority and who has it, then you don’t waste your time fighting about it. 90% of people fall into this category. That means they aren’t for insurrection, when they chant or agree with Black Lives Matter as a motto, they simply mean that blacks have had a tough go and we need to improve race relations and take a hard look at ourselves. Those people, I believe, are open to normal human interaction, will discuss issues, and will listen. In that sense, being loving, kind, and interested in them will often break down some of their arguments against God.
The 10% however, are the protagonists of the elite culture, the media, the academy, the entertainment community, the loony left and right, who are determined to marshal an aggressive intellectual and cultural campaign to win over the American public to their side. They want to remake America; they want to tear it down and rebuild a new Tower of Babel. This is for the purpose of holding both political and cultural power. Generally, they are angry and hostile toward their opponents and are ungoverned by moral principles. This is where Christians are at a disadvantage. Christians are limited in tactics and are constrained by divine revelation. We must fight fair - no lying, stealing, cheating, slandering, or murdering. This removes many useful tools from our arsenal.
What is our goal?
Paul tells us, “We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God.” To put it like a motto, our mission is “To know Christ and to make him known.” That is the focus of all this warfare and the activity we engage in. In order to do that, we will need to destroy these proud obstacles, expose them, and teach this through the world. In fact, much of this information is inherent to the gospel.
When you say you know God, people are immediately suspicious; the wisdom of God seems like foolishness to them. When you show them Jesus turning over tables and screaming at the Pharisees, they are baffled how a peacemaker becomes so confrontational. The idea that the meek and mild Jesus would one day return in the world’s last battle, with King of kings and Lord of lords tattooed on his thighs, and slay the nations with a word from his mouth, blasts all their categories into smithereens. Before the Apocalypse, however, we must live in this age of argumentation and disagreement, debate and conflict.
What are some of the lies that have been constructed that keep people from knowing God?
What is the Empire of Lies?
To be continued…
[1] The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
[2] Acts 17:6 KJV - Typically the expression “turned the world upside down” is a pejorative and part of the accusation made by those in authority. The Greek text speaks more literally of them being troublemakers and agitators, those motivated by insurrection.
[3] Paul addressed all of these ills in his Corinthian correspondence. Philosophy, 1 Corinthians chapters 1 & 2 - acquiring the mind of Christ; promiscuity in 1 Corinthians chapter 6; ecstatic utterance in 1 Corinthians 12-14; the cult of celebrity 1 Corinthians chapter 4; decadent living in 1 Corinthians chapter 5.
