Foundations of all kinds are being assaulted daily – foundations of thought, culture, tradition and belief. They will disappear from under your feet if you let them. However, there is one foundation which cannot be removed and upon which all truth and all that is eternal stands: Jesus Christ. Are you standing on the Rock which cannot be moved?
Anyone who buys a house first makes certain that it has a foundation. No-one, whatever their spiritual or political perspective, would pay huge amounts of money for a house or any other structure with no foundation. However, it seems that an enormous amount of people are busily hammering away, chipping away and blowing away the foundations of our society and our culture, while standing on the structure which supports them. How is a collapse not going to be destructive for everyone?
TO BE CONTRARY. There is, in your average teen, the desire to reject the norm and the mundane and to go for the new, often not considering the possible consequences. I know because I was like that myself to a destructive degree. Anything my parents did, thought or said was to be consigned to the past and replaced: appearances, art, music, morality, language, literature, tastes, attitudes, figures of speech, clothing styles and just about anything you can name. All their pearls of wisdom were to be forgotten. That’s perhaps to an extent “normal” and predictable in our age, if unwise.
This attitude contributes to the rapid change in our world. Currently the West is like a teen tossing away everything of the past with total abandon. If you say “big” the trend will be to say “small”. If you say “jump” the woke will sit down. If you say “stop” they’ll be determined to go – simply to be contrary and in order to put the rest of us in our place – which shouldn’t even exist, in their eyes. Change gives the impression of progress, and the faster the change the greater the illusion or the effect.
POST-REASON. Men can be women – really? Women and men are the same? Surely the age of reason is past. Surely science – which in some cases has capitulated to the nonsense – is no longer interested in observable, testable reality. People who insist that men can have babies and breastfeed and menstruate are no longer living in the real world: they are constructing their own “reality” in determined opposition to all that’s gone before. They are mocking their creator and their ancestors. They’ve abandoned truth and embraced utter foolishness at the cost of self-respect, dignity, integrity, unity and a normal life. Logic doesn’t matter anymore to these people, besides fallacies so great that Hitler would be impressed were he alive to hear them. What was once patent insanity is now packaged as normality, fairness, inclusiveness and even “love”.
ABANDONING TRUTH. Paul wrote to Timothy the following: “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons” (1 Timothy 4:1). I think Paul had in mind something a little more middle-of-the-road in terms of deception, because in that first century setting not even the Romans and the Greeks were going to such incredible lengths to turn their backs on sanity as our culture is today. Paul’s warning to Timothy concerned the Church, and we’ve seen in the Church some extreme departures from Biblical truth and towards delusion, issuing forth from people claiming to be speaking the very words of God via what they claim is God’s Holy Spirit.
In some circles claiming to be Christian ministries people as daft as a brush have found their way to the pulpit. At the least, too many ministers have been quiet about the things that really matter. The result of the denial of more and more Biblical Scripture is that people are denied the only opportunity they might have to gain truth, reason and a sound mind. Once that happens – in the Christian or the secular world – the culture is untethered from moorings which have held it for hundreds of years, like a great ocean liner being let loose, its radar being disconnected, its engine room a wasteland and its bridge abandoned or taken over by a troop of monkeys.
Paul’s warning continues: “Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron” (verse 2). Conscience has been lost, denied, ignored, trashed and burned. Once someone is intent on ignoring their God-given conscience, or when they are separated from the information they need to feed their consciences, they’re fit only to ride along on that drifting liner with no concern over where it’s going. If they do have an idea of where they would like it to go, they’ve already destroyed everything which would help them steady their course: factual history, tradition, experience, wisdom and sanity, and centuries of accumulated knowledge.
DESTROYING TO BUILD BACK BETTER. Karl Marx proclaimed that the way to get what he and his ilk wanted was to destroy:
“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win” (The Communist Manifesto, chapter 4).
“All existing social conditions” included “the bourgeoisie family”. What Marx meant was that the Church’s idea of family, and the Church itself along with other institutions was to be destroyed by whatever means necessary. We see the work of modern Marxists and people of the same mentality at work today. Everything which has been held dear and served as familiar foundation stones or markers has to be destroyed and replaced. No matter that the destroyers are standing upon the structure they’re hammering at: they assume blindly that once they’ve succeeded the world will suddenly become Utopia, or a playground which they will be able to rule over or win in a “Lord of the Flies” – type tussle for final supremacy.
For all the wonderful and good Muslim people there truly are, Islam is totally incompatible with Western values of freedom. Therefore, the Left’s determination that we will accept people from said political and ideological movement – which at its core is intent on ruling the world – into our midst by the million is nothing but crass stupidity. It’s the teenage girl bringing her new boyfriend and a troop of others she doesn’t even know into the parents’ house for a wild party, without regard for consequences.
BOUNDARIES. The Old Testament – now ignored in some sections of the Church as being irrelevant and for the past – speaks of boundary stones as markers: “Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your ancestors” (Proverbs 22:28). The connotation relates as much to boundaries of thought and belief as much as any physical boundary. Some things just should not be changed without very serious consideration, if at all.
DISTRACTION. We are living in an age of deception like no other. When tribes or nations were living under a lie in past ages they were at least in the same mess together: they had some measure of togetherness and commonality. Today in a culture which claims that “diversity is our strength” almost all unity has been lost. I’m not at all talking about colour: I’m talking about philosophy, religion and ideology. The phrase is an oxymoron. Now each one scrolls on his or her own device, in his or her own little world, being disconnected and at odds with each other. I don’t think it’s cynicism to see this as an intentional set-up. While we amuse ourselves to death we’re not paying constructive or logical attention to the world which globalists, Marxists and others are working to shape in their own image. Trump is a very temporary stopgap. We are inoculated from truth; drained of all unity of purpose, meaning and direction; intellectually emaciated and intentionally emasculated; separated from all that once held society together and stripped even of the knowledge of how to put it back together again.
A WHOLE LOT OF SHAKING GOING ON. What is the Christian to do? On the one hand our world is shaking itself from its roots and its clarity of thought. On the other, God himself has said,
“Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens” (Hebrews 12:26).
The point of this shaking is “so that what cannot be shaken may remain” (verse 27).
In another place we’re told that “what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18b). Paul counsels us to “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen” (verse 18a).
God provides institutions for us as stability in the world He created, though they are corrupted by human nature. No wonder, then, that in a once loosely Christian society people such as Marx propose the destruction of all institutions, because they hate all our creator stands for, as their master does. They wish to destroy so that they can build the world in their image. What makes our world familiar and kinder is constantly at risk of destruction, and at the right time, God Himself will shake whatever there is left to shake. Isn’t life already shaky enough?
I totally believe in political engagement: why turn our backs and let the Destroyer do his work unhindered? However, in the midst of the fray there’s only one way for the believer to survive and stay strong mentally and spiritually. We have to fix our eyes on Jesus Christ and on what is unseen, and to grab on no matter what shakes around us. The eye of the storm is Christ in us as individuals (don’t trust in your church). Peter had the perfect lesson in this, when Jesus invited him to walk on the waves. He started out well but began to sink when he looked around at the waves. However, Christ’s hand reached out and held him firmly, saving him in the worst possible situation. His hand will also hold us. The creator of all things will never leave us or forsake us.
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 