BLOG 4/30/14. ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVE: “DELIVER US FROM THE EVIL ONE.”
In our pursuit of an alternative narrative for the church in the emerging culture, it is unforgivably naïve to assume that we do this in neutral territory. The same Lord’s Prayer that begins with the petition that God’s kingdom will be realized on earth, also ends with a petition (easily dismissed) that God will “deliver us from the evil one.” The reality of Satanic animosity against Christ’s church, and of the virulent animosity of his dominion is ignored to our peril. If Satan can deceive, or neuter, the church’s leadership as to his reality, how clever and strategic is that deception.
In a conversation with the probing mind of one of my young friends a while back, he was pressing me on this whole subject. In the course of our long conversation, I asked him: “Alan, for the sake of our discussion … let me direct a question to you: If there were some such malicious supernatural, clever personality out there, where do you think he would begin? How do you think he would accomplish his goal of immobilizing the church? Like: How would he try to immobilize or incapacitate the present day church?”
Alan chewed on that on in silence for a few minutes, and then typical of his mind, came up with this answer: “That’s simple. I’d go for the nerve center, go for where it is all formed and initiated, where decisions are made, where the images come from, where community formation originates. Go for the strategic source of all that determines the life and character of the church. Go first for the church’s leadership and those who have influence. Get at the nerve center and control that … and everything else follows. For instance, let me toss in a few dimensions of this.
“I think, maybe, if I were some dark lord, some Satan (whoever he/she/it may be), I would tamper with the church’s imagination, with its cognition—maybe even with its metacognition (its capacity to even think about thinking differently about the church). If I could attempt to so capture the imagination of the folk that make up the church community so that they wouldn’t expect anything other than a humanly explainable religious institution, then I would have accomplished my goal.
“It wouldn’t take much … just recalibrate its sense of purpose and mission ever so slightly and imperceptibly off on a tangent, which tangent would ultimately take it out of any contention in the warfare. Like: obfuscate or redefine its self-understanding, then distract it with other really good activities and commendable agendas that have nothing to do with the church’s divinely given mandate. Along the way, let the essentials of the gospel fade into the secondary, into liturgical nostalgia … or be forgotten altogether.
“Then populate the community with non-expectant religious folk who’ve never been discipled into kingdom understanding, or behavior. Recruit members who’ve never renounced the dominion of Satan, nor intentionally entered into God’s radical newness in Christ—and probably don’t really expect anything remotely like a church engaging the darkness in a holy war … but only want to be identified as members in a safe and successful (and prestigious) church institution. Then make it all seem so normal, so ‘spiritual.’ But first go for its leadership and those who have influence. How does that sound?”
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To my readers, I have quoted this conversation out of a whole study and conversation of mine in the book: The Church and the Relentless Darkness (Wipf and Stock Publishers, pp. 9-11) since I think it encapsulates an incredibly essential issue in any of our considerations of the church as it rushes inescapably into whatever the post-Christian culture holds. Feed me back your comments and I would be grateful.
