Mutual Assured Destruction

 Because some folks read one blog but not the other, I'm posting this on both blogs today. I've wrestled with this for months and months.

Robert L. Withers, August 28, 2020

 

For the past few years, as I’ve been observing the polarization and fragmentation of our society, and the societies of the world, I’ve grappled with words and images to describe what I’m seeing. One of my favorite words since around 2005 has been “tsunami”, for this word conveys sudden and chaotic destruction. Undersea earthquakes hundreds of miles away can visit destruction and death and disorientation on the unsuspecting.

 

There is another phenomenon which I’ve been observing, for which I have no one word but rather a term borrowed from the Cold War, “mutual assured destruction.” This was the Cold War doctrine that if the superpowers each had enough nuclear weapons to destroy our planet many times over that they would not dare initiate nuclear war. What did not happen in the Cold War is happening within our society, and I frankly think the church (a term I use loosely) is an enabler of this insanity.

 

What do I mean?

 

Let me begin with the political climate in the United States. Politics has always been hardball and ugly, a serious student of history knows that for every bright and shining moment in government and politics that there might be ten moments that make one ethically and morally sick. Today we have a situation in Washington, D.C. in which it appears that the avowed goal of both political parties is to destroy the opposition. Not only that, but within each political party there are factions whose agendas seem to be the elimination of their ideological opponents within their own parties.

 

The notion of compromise, of reasoned discussion, of give-and-take, has itself become a target of elimination by both parties.

 

The excesses of the party in power, whether in the White House, the Senate, or the House of Representatives, are surpassed when the party out of power gains the supremacy – then it is payback time. Thus, I find the term “mutual assured destruction” an apt description of the escalation of what payback time looks like. This abdication of moral leadership on the part of both parties, and of the church (which I’ll address below), is propelling us into an abyss from which it is doubtful we will recover. We will likely have the moral equivalent of a nuclear winter.  I am reminded of the title of a book written some years ago by Dr. Richard Swenson, Hurtling Ourselves Into Oblivion – this is what we are culturally doing, politics being the particular rocket that I am focused on in this reflection.

 

Political and social “mutual assured destruction” is not without precedent, it reaches at least as far back at the Roman Republic. In his book, The Storm Before the Storm – The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic, Mike Duncan makes the following observation and quotes Gaius Sallustius Crispus (86 – 35 B.C.) on the political dynamics that led to the Roman Republic’s demise and the rise of the dictatorial Caesars:

 

“But though there were not formal parties, it is true that there were now two broadly opposing worldviews floating in the political ether waiting to be tapped as needed. As the crisis over the Lex Agraria [land reform legislation] revealed, it was no longer a specific issue that mattered so much as the urgent necessity to triumph over rivals. Reflecting on the recurring civil wars of the late Republic, Sallust said, ‘It is this spirit which has commonly ruined great nations, when one party desires to triumph over another by any and every means and to avenge itself on the vanquished with excessive cruelty.’ Accepting defeat was no longer an option.” [Italics mine].

 

Duncan observes that in the late Roman Republic “it was no longer a specific issue that mattered so much as the urgent necessity to triumph over rivals.” This is what we have come to in the United States. We have abandoned long-term thinking for short-term victories. We have hardened ourselves across the political spectrum against the suffering and needs of others as we look to vanquish our opponents. The term “culture war” is an apt term indeed, but we ought to expand it to, “a culture war of mutual assured destruction.” Many of those leading this war have their economic bomb shelters which they think make them invulnerable, impervious to the spiritual and moral nuclear winter descending on humanity – they are the wolves licking the knife bathed in blood, their insatiable appetites will consume them.

 

Through all of this, the professing church has been an enabler through its identification with political parties, by identifying with competing worldly worldviews, and by the abdication of its Biblical mandate to be “in the world but not of the world”, to be seeking a City whose builder and maker is God. We are called to be witnesses to Jesus Christ, not advocates for a political party or for a worldly worldview – and when we are seduced into adopting a view of life and of the world that is other than a Biblical view – which all sub-Christian views necessarily are, then we exchange the glory of God for the glory of man, God’s vision for man’s vision.

 

In the United States, our syncretistic civil religion, with its blend of pseudo-patriotism and Christianity, is particularly seductive. While there are professing – Christians who lament political correctness and the thought police, many of those same Christians are quick to condemn the notion that we are a deeply sinful nation with an ingrained sinful past, and that Christians are citizens of heaven (Philippians 3:20) before we are citizens of anywhere else. (I will mention that the concept of dual citizenship is not helpful here, for there can be no parity in our thinking or dual allegiance in our hearts, “no one can serve two masters”).

 

The Church is not called to take sides in culture wars, doing so pulls us down into the toxic morass of the present age. We are called to bear witness to Jesus Christ, to be His faithful Bride (not the harlot of an element of the world-system – no matter how attractive it may appear – note what happens to harlots in Revelation 17:16). The Church is called to be separate and distinct from the war of mutual assured destruction swirling around it.

 

The people of the world; our families, friends, neighbors, coworkers; need to hear us speak from heaven, not from earth. The world needs us to wear the white linen of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, not the red and blue garments of political parties.

 

In the war of mutual assured destruction, we are called to be peacemakers (Matthew 5:9), agents of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:20), and medics on the battlefield (Matthew 5:43 – 48).

 

Consider these words from John the Baptist (John 3:29 - 30):

 

“He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made full. He [Jesus] must increase, but I must decrease.”

 

And then of Paul (2 Corinthians 11:2 – 3):

 

“For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy, for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.”

 

Let me be straightforward here; pastors, priests, elders, deacons, evangelists, church leaders, are called to wed the Church to Jesus Christ in a monogamous marriage, a pure marriage, a holy marriage. The “Christian” leader who in any way suggests and encourages God’s People to dye the white linen of Jesus Christ with the colors of this world, including blue or red, is not acting as a friend of the Bridegroom. (There are many other colors we could include here, including green – the color of money - one of the gods of our pantheon).

 

Dear friends, the people of the world need us to bear witness to Jesus Christ, not political or economic or social agendas. They need the Church to demonstrate the Gospel and what it is to love one another as Christ loves us, they need to see us actually living in community across ethnic, racial, socio-economic, political, and educational barriers…yes, even nationalistic barriers.

 

There are two women portrayed throughout the Bible; the harlot, and the Bride of Christ (Proverbs Chapter 9, Revelation Chapter 17; 19:7 – 10; Chapter 21).

 

Which one are we?