Reign of Terror

No.119: August 4, 2022

Welcome to The Square Inch, a Friday newsletter on Christianity, culture, and all of the many-varied “square inches” of God’s domain. This publication is free for now, but please consider clicking on the link at the bottom to become a paid subscriber to enjoy all my offerings!

Ignatius of Antiochie, attributed to Cesare Fracanzano (1605-1651), Galleria Borghese, Rome

Dear Friends,

Last week I argued that those insisting that Christians need to completely reinvent their methods of cultural engagement are suffering from a fairly acute case of historical near-sightedness, or myopia. They are not looking at cultural shifts through a wide-angle lens, but through a straw. This leads to overestimating the uniqueness of our times, as though the shift is somehow unprecedented and something for which Christians are inexperienced and/or unprepared. It also obscures from view the reality of culture shifts the other direction. They can and do happen.

While historical myopia is driving a lot of this desire to either A) abandon the very idea of the classically liberal public square and instead seek to gain political protection and power to beat back our spiritual and intellectual and political enemies by law and coercion, or B) to abandon basic Christian virtues like “gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3) and to “punch back twice as hard,” “fight fire with fire,” etc., I believe there is another animating factor:

Fear.

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Almost a decade ago I spoke at a conference in Portland, Oregon. I recently came across my prepared remarks, which honestly I’d completely forgotten. I’m going to borrow from it liberally for this newsletter, since the conference is long-forgotten and my remarks were never published. Consider that I said the following in 2013:

We live in a very challenging cultural environment. Have things ever seemed as polarized as they are right now? Right vs. Left, Gay vs. Straight, Tolerance vs. Bigotry, and we could go on all night rehearsing the divisions! During the 90s I remember pundits and social observers confidently declaring that the so-called “culture wars” were over. It would be an age of peace and economic prosperity, with no more conflict over thorny moral questions like abortion, euthanasia, or homosexuality. If only! I trust I do not need to tell people living in Portland, Oregon, that these sorts of cultural conflicts are alive and well.

Heh. What did I know? Have things ever seemed as polarized? We hadn’t seen anything at all yet, had we? That was all pre-Woke Mobs, pre-Trump, and pre-Portland-being-a-graffiti-painted-post-apocalyptic wasteland. I went on to describe our shifting culture and predicted that the LGBTQ agenda—actually I don’t think there was a Q on it back then—would be a major catalyst for increasing hostility toward Christians.

I continued on with this illustration, which I think holds up very well:

Being on the West Coast, I understand that Oregon occasionally gets earthquakes. I’ve personally never experienced one. But what is the first instinct when the ground literally starts to move under your feet? I imagine you reach out and grab for something stable, usually frantically and in a panic. We need to be steadied and balanced. And cultural earthquakes are no different. When things shift and change, when definitions change, cultural mores radically shift, when the old things cannot be taken for granted anymore, we can feel extremely vulnerable. We can feel afraid, alone, helpless, and without resources. Usually the shift feels completely new, something we’ve never experienced before. And we then automatically think that nobody else has ever experienced it before.

And when we think nobody else has experienced it before, nobody else has had to face the hostility we now face, then next step seems clear enough: our forefathers and foremothers are of no help to us. Our “old’ way of engaging culture must be the culprit, not the solution, for the hostility we face. Hence, the current claims that old ways of doing things are “unsuited for the times.”

There is a humorous Sci-Fi cult classic book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by British writer Douglas Adams. In the story, the Hitchhiker’s Guide itself is, in fact, a galactic encyclopedia designed to give vital information to the lonely galactic traveler. And on the cover of that vast resource is a warm, smiley face accompanied by the words: “Don’t Panic!”

It seems to me that as we Christians make our way through an unpredictable, sometimes crazy, sometimes hostile world, we have the ultimate guide: God himself. God speaks. And you know what the number one message of the Bible is for people living in the midst of cultural hostility? Don’t panic. You live in precedented times and you are not alone.

It is the most frequent command in the Bible: “Do not be afraid.”

“Fear not.” Over and over again. God knows that we are prone to fear. And God exhorts us again and again to not fear. This isn’t because God is naïve. He knows that sometimes there is legitimate reason to fear. This is a fallen world. Bad things happen. Tragedies befall us. Persecutions can flare. Conflict can rip apart marriages, families, and entire societies. But he wants his people to know that they are not alone. “Lo, I will be with you always, even to the end of the age” were Jesus’ last words before his ascension into heaven. The first thing to know in a hostile culture is something vertical. You are not alone because God in heaven is with you.

Remember that time when the hope of the entire world rested on the fruitless, aged bodies of a single Ancient Near Eastern couple, Abraham and Sarah? 

Remember that time when the Israelites had their backs to the Red Sea and Pharoah’s furious hordes in their faces? 

Remember when there were giants in the land? 

Remember when Sennacherib and the cruel Assyrian armies had Jerusalem completely surrounded? 

Remember that time when it seemed all was surely lost, and the Savior of the world hung dead on a bloody, Roman cross? 

God is rather in the business of displaying his power and glory in seemingly impossible circumstances. And being afraid is what happens when we walk by sight instead of by faith.

But surely our situation is different! Surely the hostility is worse than ever, isn’t it? Surely all the exhortations to “love your enemies” and “do good to those who persecute you” and “blessed are the peacemakers” and to conduct ourselves with “gentleness and respect” aren’t suited to our times! Well, let’s reflect on that.

Take this promise from Matthew 5: “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God.” Man … peacemakers? That’s an unpopular thing to be these days. Peacemakers are the weak, effeminate, “winsome” types who try to find nuance and common ground and who don’t see or grasp the gravity of our situation! We need fighters! “Real” men! When you’re facing a Reign of Terror, the last thing we need are “peacemakers.” Whose side are you on!?

Here’s the very next thing Jesus says: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

And let’s read the verse right after that: “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.”

Right there, in the very speech where Jesus tells us to be peacemakers, he describes our very own hostile cultural context.

How about Romans 12, where Paul exhorts us to bless those who persecute us? He writes, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” The very next verse:

Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord. On the contrary: ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.

There is more. The Apostle Peter’s first letter is filled with exhortations on how Christians are to live at peace with others, believers with unbelievers, citizens with kings, slaves with masters, husbands and wives, and so on. And yet Peter is fully aware that “you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials” (1:6). He knows that people will accuse Christians of “doing wrong” (2:12), that believers will endure “unjust suffering” at the hands of “harsh” people (2:18-19). Drawing on the example of Christ himself, Peter knows that people will “insult you” just as they did our Lord (2:23). And right after telling them to “live in harmony with one another” he writes, “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing” (3:9). In giving answer to those who ask the reason for our hope, we are to “do this with gentleness and respect” (3:15) even though he immediately anticipates that people will “speak maliciously” and “slander” us (3:16).

Do you find it accidental or coincidental that immediately after Jesus, Paul, and Peter all instruct us to be the kinds of people who refuse to “fight fire with fire” or “punch back twice as hard” their very next words are about persecution and suffering? This is not an accident. Far from being “unsuited” for our times, the cultural world into which God gave all of these commands was far worse, far more hostile, and far more polarized than our own. There was no asterisk on these commands, no “do this unless you live in a hostile world.” The hostile world was already baked in. And you know what? This was not a recipe for being dominated by the world. It was a recipe for overcoming the world. Christianity conquered the Roman Empire with this ethic.

We are not being thrown to lions or covered in pitch and lit on fire to light a garden party. We aren’t under the Reign of Terror, having our heads chopped off on a guillotine in the town square. Those are the kinds of circumstances Jesus, Paul, and Peter had precisely in mind when they commanded these things.

So now a question: how should we describe a person who insists that those ethics are no good, useless, and unsuited for our times, while facing a situation far short of all that?

See, I think that’s the weak and squishy one.