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They Won’t Go Away Quietly
By J. Jeff Toler for Shenandoah Christian Alliance j.toler@sca4christ.org
- “For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” —Psalm 30:5 KJV
We should be very concerned with the political tactic of comparing the opposition candidate to Adolph Hitler. Another bad sign would be the euthanization of a domesticated pet squirrel by armed government agents. But I digress. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoMvq7HjiA4]
America shouldn’t have had to come this close to political disaster.
It’s taken me much too long to realize there are two explanations for resorting to such a puerile politics. One is understanding the Hitlerian comparison preys on a pitiable lack of understanding of recorded history. The second would be a display of sheer desperation. The accuser knows his history well enough to be worried that you and I don’t.
Sadly, the first reason is we can’t expect much more than this from a very sizable percentage of the population. This cohort would mostly include the generation under the age of 50. It’s notable that these same people were graduated from the public schools, at most, by 1992.
Such people were the innocent victims of Benjamin S. Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Values, which by 1984 had become the leading educational manual for America’s public-school teachers—and more than a few private and parochial school teachers as well. Bloom was a masterful manipulator.
The second explanation is a little more murky. We ought to be certain someone is a true believer before we can dismiss him as merely delusional. He would exhibit the symptoms and signs of the true psychopath. Nevertheless, it’s hard to know what to look for. This is especially true if our own minds have no interest in trying.
Human psychiatry has a definition for the worst of this lot—the person occupying the psychopathy known as the dark tetrad. I identified him in the January 2, 2023 essay, Whose Responsible for This Mess? [https://mailchi.mp/50665e299a37/can-pastors-save-a-nation-17009487] He conservatively represents 1.2 to 4.3% of the general population depending on whose test results you choose to use.
For the vast majority of us, or so it would seem, they operate on what many believe out of ignorance far more than by what the faithful believe through knowing and understanding. Yes, we live by faith, but only through the knowledge of God.
What do these observations mean to us now that the election is over and the winners are have been declared?
This election’s most contestable issues are a reflection of the simple but accurate bromide many Christians certainly should know: we live in a lost and dying world. The concerns leading up to Tuesday’s election results won’t now, or anytime soon, simply go away. America is as broken, divided, and spiritually sick as ever in our history. There is no getting around it. We will never be the same.
It’s essential that we shouldn’t believe it will.
But there is another way we might look at it. This could be an amazing opportunity for which the faithful Christian can and should embrace. A spiritual revival is very unlikely to break out when the people are satisfied; enjoying the comity, harmony, and unity of a nation at peace with itself and the world.
No. A spiritual awakening takes a crisis. We narrowly averted one of existential proportions.
Many could have seen this long before now except for their delusion. They weren’t simply blind and deaf. They prated and boasted of their unbelief. They hunkered down in their sin and delusion. Then they posted about it on social media. Many called them thought leaders. This is what scripture said of a people once like them:
“Judah’s sin is engraved with an iron tool, inscribed with a flint point, on the tablets of their hearts and on the horns of their altars.
2 Even their children remember their altars and Asherah poles beside the spreading trees and on the high hills.
3 My mountain in the land and your wealth and all your treasures I will give away as plunder, together with your high places, because of sin throughout your country.
4 Through your own fault you will lose the inheritance I gave you. I will enslave you to your enemies in a land you do not know, for you have kindled my anger, and it will burn forever.”
5 This is what the Lord says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
6 That person will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes. They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.
7 “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.
8 They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” —Jeremiah 17:1-8
A spiritual awakening is desperately needed now more than ever. But we must confront the mess we find ourselves in. The struggle is far from over. People of faith must now shoulder the responsibility that we were given, and speak truth to the power that we enabled the powerful to take from us.
We should be sobered by the example of ancient Israelites, who were warned by God, “The sights you see will drive you mad.” —Deuteronomy 28:34
More accurately our reaction, if not madness, has been amazed disgust. We keep wondering, “when will all of this stop?” The answer is, until America realizes we’ve abandoned God.
Pastor/Author/Podcaster Doug Wilson
As Doug Wilson has said, “Our sins are themselves judgements. What collective madness would cause a people to start slaughtering their own kids? Yes, a people will be judged for committing such things, but it is also true that a people should be considered already under judgment when God gives them over to such things.” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv4fE0dD2VI]
Electing a strong man to lead us out of this insanity is not a perfect plan. Legislating and adjudicating is no better an idea for long term relief.
More than half the country repudiated the Democratic Party’s efforts to cling to power—pushing on us their wretched ideologies. While this victory looks promising to most observers, I’m not one of them.
The reason for this is simple. I think we’ll continue to see many people who will blindly fail to see prosperity when it comes. They will desire to dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. Because they aren’t hearing a compelling and hopeful alternative.
This could be the time when Christians strive harder to be the proselytes of Christ in their own land a little more than they prefer to be theologians in their Sunday School classes—not that any Christian shouldn’t be a theologian.
But for now, we can rightly celebrate and give thanks to God for the forbearance He has granted us over our enemies.
MAGFA: Make America God-Fearing Again!
