Wednesday, May 3, 2017

A Battlefield of the Mind: Battling Lies with the Truth of the Christian Worldview

cc 2.0
We raise our weapons and rally against the night.  It's coming you know.  It's here.  And we face it at every turn.  Battle after battle, clash after clash.  We seem so weak at times, we seem so vulnerable.  While the enemy marches on us with ten thousand veteran troops, we seem to rally with a handful of tattered, broken young boys and old men, armed with rusty weapons and meager defenses.  Too often it seems like the battle of helms deep, too many orcs, not enough defenders at the castle, and terrified leaders.  But then again, sieges can always be turned. 

The institutions of the west have been conquered, twisted, and re-oriented to attack the founding principles.  Academia, Hollywood, late night talk shows, news media, public education, universities, government bureaucracies, newspapers, big business entities, and internet have all embraced counter-american values and now actively seek to brainwash the young, subvert traditional values, fundamentally transform america, and embrace secular ethics.  Don't get me wrong, there are many institutions, businesses, news sources, and internet outlets that fight against this agenda.  But for the most part, the vast majority of the entrenched institutions are controlled by a secular progressive elite.  But what become clear several months ago is that the american people, the everyday average joes across the nation do not agree with or support this agenda.  In fact there is a growing rage against it.

So there is great reason to be hopeful.  My primary concern is to carry the gospel to lost people.  But my secondary concern is to help uphold culture, politics, and society.  That's why I discuss both together.  We as Christians, as the church on Earth are called to both carry the gospel and uphold society.  Yes, politics is messy.  Culture is messy.  Most Christians just throw up their arms and try to stay out of it.  I can't do that, because I know I'm called to interact in both the spiritual realm and the physical realm.  All these things are intertwined.  Simply saying that "politics, religion, and ideology" are all bad is just stupid.  All of these things are interrelated, and all of them affect each other.  So I simply attempt to carry the gospel to the lost of this world, and uphold society by sharing biblical values based around liberty and choice in politics, philosophy, and government.  

We exist on a perpetual battlefield. This is a war.  And we are soldiers.  We don't fight with weapons.  Instead, we fight with ideas.  We demolish false pretensions, lies, and stacked up ideologies that attempt to circumvent the truth.  

Has that concept been lost?  Maybe it has to a certain extent.  Though I see great reason for hope.  There are so many things happening that never make the news.  So many Christian ministries serving day and night, yet they never make the news.  There are so many activists out there sharing Christianity, sharing Jesus, and taking a stand for religious freedom.  It's a blossoming time for evangelical Christianity, and biblical values in modern culture.  Things are really changing, for the better, I hope.  


The struggle remains day and night.  It continues in our lives.  We all have are regions and sectors of the world, the areas where we're called to serve.  We serve in small towns, medium sized cities, regions, like the midwest, the east, the south, and so on and so forth.  It's an honor, really it is.  To have been selected for this mission by God, before the foundations of the Earth, to do this, to be loved by Him, is an honor beyond measure.  I hope you carry it with you, within you, as love that holds you in times of difficulty.

It makes sense doesn't it?  Yes indeed it does.  God is good.  He calls us to much action, and much boldness.  We are called to dangerous faith, faith that acts in desperate situations.  But the world is always coming to the brink.  This isn't a new phenomenon.  It has happened time and again throughout human history.  The narrative of man improving himself and the woes and failures of the past being gone, giving way to a bright altruistic modernism is simply false.  The 20th century was the worst yet as far as violence, war, genocide, and famine are concerned.  Humanity hasn't changed.  We haven't "evolved" beyond petty rivalries and power struggles.  There are just craftier ways of taking power and wealth today than in the past.  So be it.  Society comes to the brink, God rallies a few heroes to restore order.  It has happened and will happen again.  There is nothing new under the sun.

Be a channel for the Lord's work to be done.  Don your spiritual armor and stand against the mobs of hysterical secular revolutionaries.  Prepare the way for the Lord.  Plant the seeds of salvation through the witness of His power in your life and affairs.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not comprehended it.  Be the light in this world.  Be the noble man of honor and dignity. Be the serene woman of dignity and strength. That is so lacking in our world today.  It's easy to be a selfish slob, it's harder to be a dedicated man of honor.  It's easy to become darkness and spit in the face of good.  It's harder to do good and be good in a corrupt world.  

The battlefield of the mind is where we wage our battles.  This is a battlefield that we can't necessarily see with our eyes. But we can perceive it with our minds.  It's a system that's all around us, and it's all encompassing.  It's harder to notice for most because we've been raised up in it.  Often times there are rare people who can see it despite the fact that they have been raised in it.  But for the most part, people don't realize that it even exists.  They think their ideas are their own, when they are actually repeating ideas that have been programmed into them by the surrounding system.  So many live under the system, chasing after what it tells them to chase after, and living the way the system tells them to live.  

The solution is to take several steps outside the system, and try to see it for what it is.  We have a guidebook to help us do that, it's called the Bible.  The Bible gives us a road map to detect and subvert the current system.  We do this by considering the worldview around us, and fighting against it with the truth of God's word.  

Why are you so full of lust?  Why does your mind race so often with endless images of half clad women?  Or why does your mind race with images of the perfect female body, and why does your mind attack you and shame you into thinking that you aren't good enough and that you constantly have to look prettier, and that you have to eat less and that no matter what you aren't enough and you aren't wonderful and aren't lovely and aren't perfect enough?  Why aren't you the one who is good enough?  Well, the struggle is real.  The truth is, our minds have been absolutely bombarded by lies, false realities, false philosophies, false ideologies, and backwards ideas intended to shame us, use us, manipulate us, and send the money flying from our wallets and purses into the hands of those who propagate these false ideas.  

The word of God says that you've been made perfect in Christ.  The word of God says that you are of great value to God.  The word of God says to not worry about anything!

And the ideas of the world say that you are nothing but evolved space dust.  The world says that you are of no value unless your sexually appealing, have a perfect body, or are filthy rich.  The world says to worry about everything and try to force everything to go your way.  

The world says that your in charge.  Take life and make it what you want it to be!  The word of God says, obey God's will and not your own.  The word of God says to die to self, and live to Christ.  

The world constantly tells us to indulge our senses, indulge our stomachs, indulge our sexuality and buy everything we want.  The word of God says that you don't have to covet what others have.  You can be totally content with what you have right now.  You don't have to constantly feed your desires, you can shut them off, and stop them from throbbing endlessly, demanding to be titillated.  

Do you see how the ideas of the world have us under their control?  Yes, for many of us they certainly do, to varying degrees.  Yet God is so good, when Christ enters our lives he begins to set us free, breaking chain after chain, usually over a process of many years, he uproots the lies from our minds and implants the truths from His word.  Praise be to God for this sanctifying process. It's such a joy to be free from the lies of the world, those old nasty lies that run us ragged, fill us with stress, and drive us absolutely nutty. 

Challenge the lies of the world with God's truth.  The truth is in his word.  Learn to study.  Cultivate disciplines and practices of daily study.  It's not so hard.  If you struggle with integrating God's word into your daily routine, ask God in prayer to help you.  He certainly will.  I struggled with that so much, I was so set in my routines, so resistant to changing them.  But I asked God to change that, and he did, he opened up my routine, like a rush of air, it was changed.  Thanks be to God. 

We rush in a frenzy, trying to gather the forces of justice and light to rally against the insurrection rising up amongst us.  Western civilization seems determined to commit cultural and political suicide.  Secularism moves out in all directions.  We fight, but it seems like we fight against a tidal wave.  

We gather our men and women together into columns.  We rally at the great city in the wilderness. The clouds of the sky break to bright mid day son as we march upon the great evils of our time.  We can do this.  We can do this together.  Unite my brothers and sisters.  The times are desperate, the evils multiply like overlapping dark storms upon storms. 

When great evil rises, and all seems nearly lost, a desperate few who dare to believe can change everything.  A few, so few that still believe that God will rise up against their enemies will win the day.  When all seems impossible, when the land of the enemy is filled with giants, a good report brings victory and hope to the people.  We will be victorious.  Believe, and never stop fighting.  Day in, day out, month by month, year by year, in it for the long haul, never stop fighting on the battlefield of ideas, propagate the truth, spread it across the world, once found the truth is greater than a million lies.  



Additional Articles:
  1. The Return of Jesus Christ & the New Jerusalem
  2. What will the New Universe be like?
  3. Origin, Meaning, Morality, & Destiny: An atheist and a Christian on discuss Worldview
  4. Seven Objections to the Bible and Seven Reasonable Responses
  5. Quick Fact Sheet: Four Points to Consider
  6. 10 Answers to Common Questions Raised by Skeptics
  7. Believing in the Miraculous: The Work of Jesus Christ on the Cross
  8. Can you see through the illusion?
  9. Philosophy, Science, Logic, and History: Presentations on the Truth of Christianity from Multiple Disciplines
  10. No Evidence for God?