Which Uniform?

My blogging ministry began as merely a sounding board. I was not seeking approval. I expected objections, but it was the kind of objections that I was testing. In order to elicit a useful response from others, I had to clearly describe what drives me. So, the other half of that is merely the matter of giving verbal shape to what was burning in my soul. The discipline of writing helps my brain to catch up to my heart. Thus, I have a clearer idea of what my convictions demand, and some mapping of the barriers I face.

There was a time when the wider society was a part of what I needed to sense about things. That time has passed. It’s not that I have nothing to say to the world at large, but that the wider human responses have become so predictable, if only in the sense that it’s a moving target with an easily discerned track into Hell. We can readily see where everyone else is going. With all the cultural divergence, the various factions in our society share one thing: a rejection of the gospel. The unifying principle is, “Anything but that.”

A part of me still feels very much like a soldier in uniform. However, this feeling bears very little resemblance to the actual US military. The US Army in particular was subject to constant reinvention of itself, and always in ways that were worse than before. It’s what we could call a secular trend — always heading downward. When chasing the last impossible dream failed, someone else shoved a new and more impossible dream in its place. When I was in the military, I was hardly alone in this constant sense of dread that TPTB would drop on us another fresh load of nonsense requirements that could only serve to hinder the military mission.

The military mission is to break things and kill people, and to do so in an organized fashion. All of that reinvention nonsense focused on the organization part, and frankly got in the way of the destruction and killing part. That’s part of how I feel about faith and religion. There’s been such a horrifying abuse of the troops with all the obsessive struggle over organizing. The people have no clue about the fundamental mission of defeating our demons and tearing down their structures in our souls.

Just as I could never return to the US military service, I could also never return to the mainstream church structure. Both are utterly hopeless, controlled by a foreign power. And that foreign power is hostile, even Satanic. It’s all outside the covenant covering of Scripture.

Now, allow me to shift the paradigm just a bit. If we can understand the dire necessity of standing under the covenant covering for everything we do, then we should be able to see more clearly the nature of what goes on outside that covering. Once you make a commitment to something that demons do not own, it becomes far easier to see how demons operate where they do rule.

A primary element of Satan’s domain is keeping people at each other’s throats. While they all see themselves as chasing something different, the conflict is artificial in the sense that nothing they pursue matters. Everything they want, everything for which they seem willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, is ephemeral. Whatever it is they hope to gain isn’t worth having. We can be sure some part of them senses that, because there’s an element of desperation that simply isn’t a part of pursuing eternal matters.

Whatever it is they all want, it’s man made. It’s all false gods, idolatry, striving after the wind. And they seem to know it on some level, but it’s all they have. So the battle is all the more rabid and senseless.

Make no mistake: the US is at war with itself. All sides proclaim that their ideals are eternal, but they are mere idols of man’s invention. As we stand back, we can see that one side has long been mobilized to seize everything, and it has been consciously fighting a guerrilla war to get it. They hold the system now, and are relying on the lies they have constructed to trap the other side into fighting the wrong battles. So far, it has worked quite well. But at some point, that strategy must fail, because it is a lie of the Devil.

But when the losing side finally wakes up to the strategic deception, they will explode in violent rage against the system that has betrayed them. At some point, they will recognize that their idol is no god at all. But they will switch to fighting for yet another false idol, one that looks an awfully lot like the previous one. They’ll win their battles, but lose the war, because it’s a war over nothing, an ephemeral mist.

America is gone. It never was, but it stood long as a false idol. It never had any substance; it was always powerless. This won’t stop Americans from fighting to restore that false god. It’s one of Satan’s most successful traps. At some point far, far too late, they’ll realize it’s gone forever. Only then they will mobilize under some other lying banner.

Brothers and Sisters, don’t be sucked in by the lies about what matters. There are no good guys in this war. Everybody is fighting each other, but nobody is fighting the Devil. They all have goals, both imaginary and concrete, and refuse to understand that this business of goals is the primary flaw. In opposing Satan, there is no goal. He owns all goals. All we have is the ongoing battle against the allies he owns within us — the fleshly nature. Yes, it is possible to build up victories to the point where you don’t have to repeat earlier battles, but there is no final objective in this life, except leaving this life.

The only sense in which there could be an objective is in the moment; it’s the fleeting target of the context. As long as we understand that it is only one moment, the better we’ll understand what this spiritual warfare is all about. It is essentially a defensive war for us; we respond to the attacks. We constantly remove the booby traps and reclaim that which has been taken from us. That’s the whole war for us. As long as we are in a fleshly, mortal existence, the whole matter is driving our Enemy out.

It is this battle minute-by-minute that the world should see of us. This is our witness; it is the one thing we can do to bless them. The rising shalom we display as the reclamation and reoccupation is what speaks to them. The confidence that comes from having won some turf back is our greatest weapon. We exercise divine dominion over our feudal domains. We can afford to sacrifice the things of this world because we are secure in our peace with God. Letting them see that is the one and only good thing we can do for them. Nothing else matters.

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who gave Himself up for me. (Galatians 2:20)