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| Series Theme: "Culture Wars" |
| Chapter 5: Spiritual Realities & a Language Check
CONTENTS:
PART 5.1 Understanding the Enemy Focus Signs of enemy activity
PART 5.2 Understanding the Fall Focus Where Next? Facing the Concept of Sin God has a Design? Examples of getting it wrong Wider Impact Summary-Recap
PART 5.3 Understand the Language – get informed Focus Health Warnings Conflict Language Adversarial Language Woke? And Christ? Summary-Recap
PART 5.1 Understanding the Enemy
Gen 3:9,10 “ the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?' He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid …. so I hid.'”
Focus: We live in a world with a spiritual as well as material dimension, which the Bible clearly reveals [see Eph 6:10-18]. Our starting point in observing this spiritual dimension is to note the fallen angel called Satan or the Accuser, who is subtly at work behind the scenes. Signs of Enemy Activity: Many ‘believers' are sadly often naïve and often poorly taught to talk about ‘spiritual war', which has tended to fall out of fashion with preachers. To quote John Mark Comer, in his book, “Live no Lies” , “For Jesus, the secular theories that attempt to explain evil as simply a lack of education, inadequate wealth redistribution, Marxist power analysis, or even the toxicity of religion gone bad, all fall short of explaining reality. The only way to make sense of evil in all its malevolence – from large global systems of evil such as systematic racism or economic colonialism, to much smaller human-scale evil, such as our inability to stop our self-destructive drinking or hold back biting comments towards our friends – is to see an animating force behind it adding fuel to the proverbial fire. Dividing humanity against itself in a kind of societal suicide.”
So let me summarise the things we will find as we explore these culture wars, that you might say are purely ‘bad humanity' but the Bible speaks of as enemy activities that need our recognition, rejection, and prayer:
- divisive hostility observed in excessive and extreme and often ill-founded verbal abuse, - seeking to impose guilt that so often shuts down a rational response, - untruths and extreme statements posing as truths that need challenging and calling out, - fear that undermines authority and rational thinking and suggests ‘ducking for cover'.
How does Satan, the devil, Lucifer, the serpent, come into all this? Well the Bible describes him as a fallen angel who is a liar, a deceiver, a destroyer, a tempter, and an accuser acting behind the scenes – and sometimes not so subtly – in all these ways, playing on the minds of mankind, always in direct conflict with the good will or design or God. [You can find details of his activities etc. in our section on Spiritual Warfare elsewhere on this site, where you may also be surprised to find that God actually uses him for His own purposes when sinful mankind is in rebellion against God, seen in a host of ways that these pages will reveal.]
Indeed the more one reads about the works of the culture activists, the more we will see genuine concern for legitimate injustices BUT being twisted and warped to cause wholesale deception, disruption, division, and destruction. According to the Bible, the origin of such works is very obvious.
PART 5.2 Understanding the Fall
Gen 3:9,10 “ the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?' He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid …. so I hid.'”
Focus: We live in what theologians call a ‘fallen world' and we need to know what that means, and the general effect is has on modern life. It is not just a theological term but a practical reality, a genuine description of how the world now is today, how it works, and how it differs from how God originally made it.
Where Next? We must confront the world, face it as it is, not as it was when God first created it, perfect. It is impossible, I would suggest, to understand the world and understand mankind, without an understanding of what we call ‘the Fall' seen in Genesis 3. Whether you want to understand it as literal history or as a fable to explain something significant, I leave up to you. I'm for the former explanation. To cut the story short, Adam and Eve, the first two beings in relationship with God, disobey the one negative instruction He's given them. Instinctively they feel bad and hide. God calls them out, they make excuses with Adam first blaming Eve, then Eve blaming Satan. However, we interpret what follows, things are never the same again, God is at a distance and the world starts malfunctioning as it is misused and as we now see it today, impacted and changed by Sin. We live in a dysfunctional world, and yet a world that God is working into, to redeem.
Facing the Concept of Sin: What the accounts in Genesis 2 & 3 tell us is that we, as the human race, have a thing called free-will that means we can make decisions – often wrong choices. What we so often forget is that those decisions ALWAYS have consequences, as we've just seen in the Adam and Eve account – even if you limit it to blaming each other and having a relational breakdown. There is more to it than that, but that will do for the moment. My own definition for ‘Sin', and remember this is from a Christian perspective, (others will try to explain away bad behaviour in some other way) is “Self-centred godlessness resulting in bad behaviour.” ‘Bad' in this context means harmful to me or to others, and the biblical word for this behaviour-outcome is ‘unrighteousness'.
God has a Design? In the Old Testament, the Law of Moses appears as God's blueprint for putting Israel back on track after the Fall, at least in terms of daily living. This is His mandate for that group of fallen people, a people called into existence to reveal Him, and to manage their fallen, imperfect lives, at that time . We may be able to learn about God and His desires for us, through that Law, but it was primarily for Israel (see Ex 20:1,2)
The Law sought to hedge them off from doing wrong, for example the Ten Commandments (Ex 20), but it also had ‘contingency plans' for how to deal with life when it ‘goes wrong' e.g. murder versus manslaughter (Ex 21:12-14), violent quarrels (21:18,19) etc. In other words, God has strategies, ways of for us to sort out wrongs. The Law reveals the need to counter the Fall. Laws in every society in the world are designed to restrain wrong-doing.
Examples of getting it wrong: Now there's nothing mystical or super-spiritual about this for we see it being worked out in daily life for, to take some big examples: (1) in the past century, the wrong and careless use of drugs, meant that a few babies (few in terms of the total numbers born) were born with deformed arms or legs. The drug was called Thalidomide, (and a very few today, for unknown reasons, are born with mixed genitalia, but they are a tiny minority), (2) the wrong or careless use of the world results in the environmental climate crisis we are now clearly facing, (3) the careless control of research in China appears to have been the cause of the Covid Pandemic thought to have caused at least 8 million deaths worldwide at the time of writing (mid 2022).
Wider Impact: Perhaps the bigger impact of the Fall was Sin being demonstrated in terms of the way people think and feel, which is the usual order (although that is being challenged today) – with feelings flowing from what we believe, what we think. But it's not only thought and feelings, but also the actions that follow AND the consequences that follow actions. The Bible, as so often, is succinct and to the point: “A man reaps what he sows.” (Gal 6:7) King David was the classic example when he looked out of his window, saw the beautiful Bathsheba bathing …. and the rest as they say is history! The chapters that follow that folly produce a stream of one-after-another consequences, bad outcomes!
Summary-Recap: The Fall of Genesis 3 reveals the effects of free-will being wrongly used. We and our world are now dysfunctional, not operating as originally designed by God, with serious consequences. As far as human beings are concerned, it is the way we think and subsequently act, the choices and decisions that we make, are what reveal just how dysfunctional this world has become, ongoing from the Fall.
PART 5.3 Understand the Language – get informed
Gal 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Focus: To read, to listen, and to understand, requires that we recognise and understand the language that is being used in culture wars today – as difficult as we may find it.
Health Warnings: Y ou may need to pray for help in this Part for we are going to look at the language that the enemy seeks to use in the culture wars that have been enveloping the West in recent decades. If you thought the world hadn't changed, see the language and think again! God is for all peoples, and this truth should bring a unity not a divisiveness. The language we're about to look at speaks of divisiveness and we'll look at the enemy's work of division in a later chapter. Paul's declaration above should be the call to us all in the Christian community to understand this.
Jesus frequently met, ate, and drank with people who the religious elite of the day would have considered ‘low life'. A tendency can be within the church, that in our defensiveness we consider as ‘hostiles' all those espousing ‘different values' to us. This is not to ask that we accept those values but learn somehow to accept those people while disagreeing graciously and humbly with them, after we've clarified WHY we disagree. THAT is grace and wisdom & being Jesus.
Conflict Language: New words and new phrases have entered our vocabulary in recent decades. Before I move into them, I will suggest they not only reveal fault lines in society that is cracking up, but also areas of need, and if Jesus through you and me cannot meet this need, he's not the Jesus the Bible says he is! How literate are you in this new world? I'm just going to let the Internet inform us, so check these out. If they now show you how much of this modern world you are missing out on, be glad. On the other hand much of this comes out of unhappy perspectives, perceived injustices or just simply different ways of thinking. Although, I suggest, completely absent from the kingdom of God, they do reveal the anguishes that are out there in the world today.
i) General Stuff: Some of the basics and not-quite-so-basics:
‘Social Justice' ? It's about “ wealth, opportunities, and privileges within society”, i.e., who has what and is it fair? Always a good ground for the enemy to stir strife through envy. ‘Identity Politics' ? “A tendency for people of a particular religion, race, social background, etc., to form exclusive political alliances, moving away from traditional broad-based party politics.” i.e., my group versus yours. Useful for causing divisiveness! Let's try something a bit harder: ‘Intersectionality' ? Breath in: “ the interconnected nature of social groupings such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage .” The focus is on the last three words, so it's also more about privilege and divisiveness. ‘BAME' – or b lack, A sian and m inority e thnic – basically means “not white”. ‘Gaslighting' – “a colloquialism , loosely defined as making someone question their own reality, to work to convince them that something obvious isn't true, a form of psychological manipulation in which the abuser attempts to sow self-doubt and confusion in their victim's mind. Typically, gaslighters are seeking to gain power and control over the other person, by distorting reality and forcing them to question their own judgment and intuition.” ‘Clicktivism' - the bare minimum that anyone can do to help a cause e.g. a name on a petition that isn't backed up with anything more substantive, or a mindless “like” click on Twitter. Clicktivism is less about actually helping the oppressed and more about signalling to the rest of the world that you don't want to be associated with the oppressors. ‘Cultural Appropriation' – seen and understood as when members of a majority group adopt cultural elements of a minority group in an exploitative, disrespectful, or stereotypical way.
ii) Sexual(??) Language: well at least from the average person's perspective:
‘Bisexual' - a sexual identity based on one's attraction to people of the opposite and the same gender, thus “bi,” a prefix meaning two. It doesn't have to be an equal attraction. ‘Cisgender' - If your gender identity matches the body you were born with, you're cisgender. Since gender identity isn't the same as sexuality, you can be gay, straight, lesbian, bi, and etc. while being cis. ‘Gender spectrum' - Instead of a male/female binary, the more inclusive view is that gender belongs on a spectrum. The gender spectrum posits the idea that there are a multitude of gender identities that are in between (or outside!) the categories of male or female. ‘Heteronormativity' - the idea that heterosexuality is the norm, and that people naturally fall under heterosexual male/female roles. ‘Nonbinary or Gender Fluid' - If you're nonbinary, this means that your gender identity does not conform to the gender binary. It's an umbrella term, and under it are people who believe that they're more than one gender, have a fluid gender, or have no experience of gender at all and think that they don't even belong to the gender spectrum. ‘Transgender' - If your gender identity does not match your assigned sex, then you're trans. ‘Non-inclusive language' - such as “police man ,” “fire man ” or “housewife.” !!!!
iii) Internet Misuse Language – fairly obvious:
‘Internet troll' – “An internet troll, or online bully, deliberately tries to offend, cause trouble or directly attack people by posting derogatory comments on Facebook posts, blogs, under YouTube videos, on forums and other social media, such as Twitter and Instagram.” (Wikipedia) We might add, “seriously socially dysfunctional”. ‘Offence archaeologists' – those who dedicate time and effort to trawling through a target's social-media posts in order to find something offensive. [This how some have been called to account by the woke warriors for things said up to a decade ago when they were much younger, despite having matured and changed their ideas since.]
iv) Adversarial Language: Now let's try some more ‘common' language that is being bantered around. I wonder do we know what these mean:
• ‘bigot' – “a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic towards a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group”. • ‘homophobic' – “having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against gay people”. • ‘sexist' – “characterized by or showing prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex”. • ‘misogynist' – “a person who dislikes, despises, or is strongly prejudiced against women”. • ‘racist' – “prejudiced against or antagonistic towards a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group”. • ‘transphobe' – “fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against transgender people.” If you handled that by overcoming the desire to run away, well done! PS. I'll leave you to look up ‘ cancelling ' (which we will consider elsewhere.)
v) Woke? Another new key word has entered our vocabulary in recent years which we need to face: ‘woke' or ‘wokeism'. Because of its complexity AND importance we make it the sole subject of the next chapter.
And Christ? The Lord knew conflict, whether it came from the religious authorities, or even from his own family. His words and his deeds constantly raised questions among the crowds. Perhaps it is only when we find our own families saying things we don't understand, them moving away from the faith foundations we thought we had established, that the seriousness of what is going on really starts to impact us, so let's try and prepare for how to handle that.
Summary-Recap: Language has taken on a new significance, being used as weapons of ‘culture-warfare'. We need to understand it is a sign of cracks appearing in the world around us, and so assess it and, where appropriate, challenge it . Can we I wonder?
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