The Battle of Evermore

Morning Everyone,

The reading onslaught continues in my life. At this point, it is a history of philosophy starting with the Greeks. So far, I’ve made it up to Immanuel Kant and there are a couple hundred pages of volume one to go. I’ve learned a lot, my perspectives keep changing as I see things and understand things that, to be honest, I never wanted to know before. I think there are a lot of people out there who don’t want their eyes opened; they want to live in fantasy land their whole life. Disney trumps Jesus every time in our day and age.

I will admit that I have this whole mythology of the way the past was that I don’t want to give up. I’m finding out that many of the foundations that I hold are rooted, not in Christianity, but in humanism couched in the words of religion. In other words, I am very well acquainted with idolatry but not nearly as familiar with Christianity as I thought I was.

Certainly there have been times when people have walked in obedience more than they do now but I don’t believe there has ever been a time since the fall when anyone (except for Christ) has walked in a faith that is pure; surely the Old Testament saints can vouch for that. But of course we want to glorify the past and look for the good old days when our idolatry was not as easy to see because humanism tried to mimic the faith. Enter Rousseau.

You see if we went back to the good old days of the founding of this country and started over today; 250 years into the future our nation would be in the same mess it is in today because, as good as the foundation was, it was still a foundation of synthesis; it was a mixture of faiths. Now it may be true that the mixture ratio was 90 percent Christian and 10 percent Humanism (I’m being overly generous here) but 10 percent is enough to destroy a nation. How much idolatry will it take in our own hearts for God to say, I don’t know you. Isn’t the Christian faith all or nothing?
The more I read and understand; the more I see the synthesis of faiths and the heavier my heart gets because synthesis is death to the Christian faith. The result of my improved vision is that the call to Christ alone becomes more important. The church seems weaker. The gospel becomes more vital. What is the gospel but a call to leave our idols behind? And yet the history of the world both in and out of the church is the history of trying to make our idols mesh with our faith.

I am feeling the effects of my past idolatries as I read these days. You see, I was raised in a Christianity that was more Neo-Platonist than Christian. The material world was bad and that included history. You didn’t need to know anything about the natural history of the world. You didn’t need to study philosophy because it would just taint you. Of course we didn’t know that the words we were speaking and ways we were thinking were already tainted. We were living in a mixture of faiths while trying to be pure and holy. I’ve been doing it my whole life.

At the same time that I’m concerned about the condition of the church and its hybrid faith, I am greatly encouraged for the future. Why? Because humanism, the idolatry of self, has already reached its pinnacle. It has no foundation to build on. As long as it was mixed with Christianity it could pretend to look to the future with hope but that time is long gone. The tide is turning. Humanism is dying. Of course it has been dying for 6000 years but it is working out its core beliefs like never before and it is finding there is no place it can turn for meaning because from its foundation there can be no meaning.

One thing I can be grateful for in american culture is that we have led the way in making sure that humanism has infiltrated every inch of the world we live in and that means that Islam and all the other religions that are already idolistic in nature will also succumb to the decay of the exaltation of man as God and eventually come tumbling down just like we have.

That is a glorious opportunity for a remnant to rise to the occasion because Christianity is the only faith that can provide meaning beyond a superficial level in this world. It is in the death of a cultures and the collapsing of foundations that God provides the best opportunity for his kingdom to advance by building a strong foundation.

We have the opportunity before us in the next 25 to 50 years to lay a solid foundation for a new culture if we are willing to lay aside our idols and purge our minds of synthesis. Now is the time for the bride to stop playing around on her husband and be faithful. It’s time to stop looking back at the lie of the good old days. The reformation may have been a wonderful thing in the life of the church but it was also a wonderful thing in the life of Humanism and two hundred years after the revolution began humanism had for all intents and purposes already won that battle. The long slow collapse we are in is evidence of that.

The time is fast approaching for a new battle. The question is will humanism be fighting a hybrid Christianity built on a foundation of sand or Christianity build solely on the rock of Christ Jesus? If it is the former then nothing will change. If it is the latter then the gates of hell will not, cannot prevail. The question is will we advance the kingdom of God or the kingdom of man? There aren’t any other options.

I’m reminded of Led Zepplin’s Battle of Evermore:

The Queen of Light took her bow and then she turned to go. The Prince of Peace embraced the gloom and walked the night alone. Oh, dance in the dark of night Sing to the morning light.
The dark Lord rides in force tonight and time will tell us all Oh, throw down your plow and hoe Rest not to lock your homes
Side by side we wait the night of the darkest of them all. I hear the horses' thunder down in the valley below
I'm waiting for the angels of Avalon waiting for the eastern glow.

It may be that the angels are waiting for us to quit being a mixture of clay and iron before they begin to fight. How long will we relish being married to two husbands? How long until we pick one and love him with all our heart, soul and might? Only then will we see the eastern glow break through this dark night.

Grace and Peace,
Brad