“We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
On April 22, 1970, cartoonist Walt Kelly used this parody of a famous quote from US Naval officer Oliver Hazard Perry, known as the “Hero of the Battle of Lake Erie,” to promote the first celebration of Earth Day. He did so with a poster wherein his popular character, Pogo the Possum, is facing a forest littered with trash and lamenting the harm human neglect and carelessness had done to the environment.
Regardless of one’s regard for Earth Day or the dominant contemporary messaging on global climate change, it is indisputable that those who are careless or neglectful toward God’s physical creation undermine our own welfare. A similar thing could be said of Christians—especially Christian leaders—who litter the church of Jesus Christ with worldly thinking. The neglect or disregard of God’s revealed will according to the Scriptures erodes the very foundation of truth on which our faith stands. In a very real sense, then, the greatest threat to the church is from within.
We live in a time of upheaval in the church. To call the changes across the landscape of American and global Christianity “seismic” would not in any way misrepresent the situation. In recent years, it has been as if the very ground were shifting and twisting under our feet. Media reports and daily conversations are rife with phrases like deconstructing, “exvangelical”, religiously unaffiliated, and an abundance of buzzwords conveying a great turning away from the church. It has become increasingly common to see church buildings adorned with LGBTQ+ Pride flags and messaging, as they claim to speak on behalf of God but deny the authority of the Word of God. Even among those who would claim to be evangelical (that is, gospel-focused and grounded in the Bible), many are so bent on “reaching the culture” or “contextualizing the gospel” that their focus is more on what the world wants than what the Word commands.
This violent upending, however, did not happen suddenly. Like a storm building over time, accumulating strength as it moves along, or tectonic plates shifting deep underground without notice, the crisis in the church—and its resultant impact on society—has been growing with scant notice for a long time. It has been observable for those willing to look, but most people prefer to ignore the unpleasant as long as possible. Nonetheless, reality eventually becomes impossible to ignore, and the earth breaks open beneath our feet, the storm demolishes our surroundings, and the souls of our loved ones—or even our own souls—are lost for eternity.
The vitality of the church is the vitality of its members, and the vitality of each individual member is intrinsically tied to the health of the church—most specifically, of the local church. Rudyard Kipling captures the idea well (though he is presumably not thinking of the church) in The Jungle Book: “…(T)he strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”
We must understand that the problem is not “out there” in the world. The problem is that we have brought too much of the world in here—into the church and into our own minds. We have too long sought to win the world to Christ by making Christ appealing to the world…a noble intent with a sinfully flawed premise. What we win people with is what we win them to. When we appeal to the flesh, to what the world wants, we are not winning them to Christ, but to a reflection of themselves.
Perhaps worse, we approach the Lord, the faith, and the church the same way for ourselves. A distorted gospel does not simply affect those we wish to add to the church, but those who have already believed. The question is, “What exactly have we believed?” If we have believed a “gospel” based on the flesh, we will live according to the flesh. Our faith must accord with the truth of Scripture to be genuine; therefore, we must engage more than our feelings in order to believe it.
Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. (Isaiah 1:8 ESV)
Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37 NIV)
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2 NIV)
Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:13 ESV)
Throughout the entire Bible, believers are called to think—to engage our reasoning faculties—and to so do according to the Word of God. By its very nature, this approach to thinking is in opposition to the world around us, which rejects God, disregards Biblical wisdom, and rebels against its accompanying moral restraints. It is impossible to live for God while embracing the logic and values of the world that is in rebellion against His authority. Overwhelmingly, the struggles we face in our daily spiritual walk—everything from fears and doubts to besetting strongholds of sin—are tied to thinking according to the world, the flesh, and devil. The more influence the world has on our thinking, the more cracks we will find in the foundation of our faith…and the harder it will be to stand when the storms inevitably hit.
When individual professing Christians embrace the thinking of the world, it usurps the influence of God’s truth in their lives. If this flawed thinking takes hold in a church (a collection of believers), it begins to demolish the guard rails of doctrine and practice that can rescue the wandering from themselves. Without the “undesirable” constraints of sound doctrine and practice, such churches soon veer off the road of truth and careen into vast canyons of falsehood and sin, engulfing those under their influence in an inferno of God’s judgment.
The Christian faith is a reasoning faith. We must fully engage the minds the Lord has given us, and we must do it according to the truth He has revealed to us in His Word. In order to experience the victorious life Christ has already won for us, we must adopt the mind of Christ, living by the Spirit and not the flesh, loving what God loves and hating what God hates. We must not allow ourselves to choose the “easier” path of shallow thinking, avoiding the difficult issues or the mysteries of Scripture. If we love the Lord, we must seek Him earnestly—voraciously—in His Word, the Bible. We must cast off the influence of the godless world to which we no longer belong and choose to think like the Kingdom people we are in Christ.
As we live according to who we are (as children of God by faith in Christ), not according to where we are (in this fallen, sinful world), we will reflect the reality of Christ—the truth of who He is—in a dark and dying world.
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