Triumph of Progressivism
As 1940 began, the French were confident. They were at war with Nazi Germany but that they had a big navy, army and air force, they sheltered behind the impregnable Maginot Line, and their allies the British had sent troops. France felt secure. On May 10 Germany invaded and Paris fell on June 14. France was either under Nazi occupation or run by the collaborationist Vichy regime. The swastika, the symbol of the conqueror, flew over Paris.
Today the Pride flag flies outside many churches, sometimes even draped on the altar inside. Symbols matter, and this symbol denies God’s established order as revealed in Scripture and all that the church has taught concerning human sexuality for 2 thousand years. Instead it flaunts the good lie, that we might be as gods rejecting His having created us man and woman. Flying this flag is just not a way of claiming that LGBT persons are welcome within the church: it’s a way of claiming that Christians holding to the reality of Scripture should not welcome. The only people interested in the church by such a display are those that want to rework, even destroy, the church.
We Lost – Move On
The Pride flag declares the triumph of progressivism over the institutional church. The church has been conquered and is held by the invader and by those that share the conqueror’s views. The members have to be prepared to submit or remain silent for the sake of peace.
Despite some ongoing skirmishes, the culture war has been fought and lost. No matter how hard we fight or vociferously comment from the sidelines, there isn’t a going back. Thinking we are able to halt the juggernaut is delusional. Today it’s increasingly difficult for Christians; tomorrow there can be no Christian protected spaces, not in society, not within the churches. Our principal task today is just not to attempt to halt the tide of progressivism but to give attention to constructing the people, networks and practices we’re going to need tomorrow.
This doesn’t mean abandoning the world entirely to its own devices. That could be to reject Christ’s description of his people as salt and light-weight (Matthew 5:13-16). Where we see corruption we’re duty sure to be the disinfectant, after we encounter darkness we’re to shine a lightweight. This is faithfulness. However, we cannot afford to waste time and artistic energy attempting to prop up an inevitably failing social order. Our energies and creativity are needed elsewhere: in understanding a way of surviving the unavoidable collapse of the old West. Our priority is all the time to be the nice of Christ’s people (Galatians 6:10). The best good we are able to do for the world today is prepared the church for tomorrow.
It Begins With Us
How can we who should not willing to ‘go along to get along’ prepare for the long work of strengthening the religion and constructing on it? Any answers we provide you with at this stage are sure to be simplistic. Our task today is to start at first, with ourselves and our own spiritual stance. If we’re to be of any use on the earth we must begin by spending more time aside from the world in prayer and spiritual training.
Our world is a world of the fast: fast food, fast communication, fast results. If now we have to attend at traffic lights we get impatient; our computers must respond immediately. Our each day prayer could well be: ‘Lord God, give me patience. Now!’ We should decelerate and consider. J C Ryle, first Anglican bishop of Liverpool, advised: ‘Beware of perpetual hurried prayers, hurried Bible reading, hurried church-going, hurried communions.’
If we face a determined onslaught against the people and things of God, to suggest that slowing down is the very first thing we must always do could appear counter-intuitive. It does make sense: if we all the time hurry we never find time to contemplate, we encounter events, experiences, even people, without real thought.
Without taking time to contemplate, our prayers slip right into a shopping list of requests, our Bible reading becomes a matter of words floating past our eyes without impact in our mind or soul, our church-going a Sunday morning duty leaving the afternoons free for our own pursuits, and our communion that a part of the service before we go and have ‘fellowship’ over a cup of coffee. It is essential to get better an understanding that these are momentous events in our lives, activities which bring us into contact with the living God, actions of foundational importance for the form of our present and future.
The best danger we face in the longer term is just not the opposition of the world but the vanity of our faith. I actually have a covenanting ancestor who was martyred for his faith in Christ; I seriously doubt whether I could face persecution with the steadfastness with which he and his family faced their oppressors. It needn’t be a life and death situation. If we were told by our company that we needed to be an ‘ally’ of the LGBT movement, would we risk our promotion possibilities by refusing? How often in casual conversation will we fall victim to the world’s most potent weapon, self-censorship?
We too easily fall into the worldly trap of admiring the ‘superstars’ of the church, be they the ‘saints’ of Rome or the favored preachers, the missionary heroes or the theologians of note. Many are to be admired, learned from and emulated, but not placed on a pedestal. If we do that we too easily create in our minds a separation between the ‘real’ Christians and abnormal believers like ourselves. It is ‘abnormal’ Christians equivalent to ourselves who can have to preserve the religion in the times ahead. The future begins with us.
