Sean C. Capparuccia

written sometime in 2016….

“Do you hear the people sing, singing the song of angry men,

it is the music of a people who will not be slaves again.

When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums

there is a life about to start when tomorrow comes.

Will you join in our crusade?  Who will be strong and stand with me?

Beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?

Then join in the fight that will give you the right to be free.“

~From the musical Les Misérables

Ah, Revolution!  The very word conjures up synonyms like “upheaval,” “uprising,” “mutiny,” “insurrection.”    But as the very word suggests, revolution signifies the bringing back of something to its original or supposed original state.  To revolve; to come around.  Revolutionaries don’t always start off with the purpose of completely destroying the civil societies in which they live.  Rather, some seek to reverse the corruption which they perceive in the hopes of restoring their society to a former glory or time of peace for the masses.  Thus there is a revolt against what is at least perceived as an abuse even if revolutions themselves tend to be abusive.  The ends justify the means.  As the song above states, there, at times, must be a fight to gain freedom. 

But do all ends justify the means?  What are the ends exactly?  The question is one of worldview, or life-view, as famed philosopher Abraham Kuyper terms it.  From what worldview are the revolutionaries coming?  Undoubtedly we are at war in America as at least four revolutionary factions are squaring off. 

In the political realm there is group who sympathizes with or adheres to Socialist principles.  The end they have in view is to bring America under a Socialist or Marxist regime.  According to Socialism, which is always followed by Communism, all enterprises should be in the hands of the State: the economy, means of production, education, the family unit.  Everything looks to, and is sustained by, the State and religion has no place.

In the politico-religious realm, Islam is making its way through the government and higher education sectors.  While Islam is presented as a religion, it is better understood as a political system wherein all conquered peoples pay obeisance to the Islamic leaders.  Islam is not Socialist but is a dictatorship disguised as a theocracy.

The social realm is being dominated by the sexual activists and revolutionaries who seek to throw off the shackles of recognized morality with the goal of living in debauchery according to their own pleasures and gratifications.  For anyone who believes that it is only about two people loving one another think again.  The prophets of 20 or more years ago were right and polygamists and pedophiles are already lined up at the courthouse doors to get their satisfactions met.  And homosexual marriage was not the beginning of this issue.  The sexual revolution received its biggest windfall when abortion was legalized.  Now, as a matter of course, children as young as 11 are being given birth-control medications and vaccines against STD’s. 

On the religious side, evangelical Christians are seeking to restore the national ideals to its founding principles which are rooted in Judeo-Christian values and ethics.  Unfortunately, they are having a hard time being united enough to make much impact.  I believe that one of the most crippling factors for evangelicals is that everyone wants to be a leader and have his or her name in lights.  It’s like trying to muster an army where all the men want to be generals.  This is why when the annual Right to Life “protest” comes to our city, only 20 people in a county of 180,000 show up.  That’s 1/10 of 1/10 of 1%.  It is very disheartening.  It would be as if your brother won a million dollar jackpot and gave you $100.  Now, I don’t know your brother, but I would like to think that mine would be willing to share at least $10,000 of his million with me.  At least. I had to put up with him for all those years.  That’s 1%.  Now imagine 1,800 Christians lined up to say, “Stop killing your children.”  That would speak volumes!

We see then that each of these revolutionary entities is more or less defined by one thing: its relation to God.  Socialism must kill God; Islam must appease God; Sexualism must either pervert God or disregard God; and Evangelicalism must obey God.  Our relation to God is where our worldview begins.         

Speaking of these four systems in this way may sound fatalistic to the Christian because it would be easy to simply say “they believe what they believe and that’s all there is to it.”  But that’s not it at all for the Christian knows – not just believes – something else: all things are subject to God through Jesus Christ (Psalm 8:6; Colossians 1:15-20.)  And the Christian places his entire self on the altar of His God.  John Calvin’s central theme was the holistic presence of God in the life of the believer.  Kuyper, in writing about Calvin wrote,

“…in times of high religious tension the inworking of the Holy Spirit upon the heart is irresistible and this mighty inworking of God was the experience of our Calvinists, Puritans and Pilgrim fathers.  …they were the men and women of every class of society and nationality who by God himself were admitted into communion with the majesty of his eternal Being.  Thanks to this work of God in the heart, the persuasion that the whole of a man’s life is to be lived as in the divine Presence has become the fundamental thought of Calvinism.”

                   The believer then has a sense that all people who are not in conformity with God, what C. S. Lewis called “bent,” may be seeking that which is God.  In other words, though they scream at God and cry for His demise, it is the sign of an empty heart acting as a vacuum seeking to be filled by something else.  This is the springboard upon which our Missional mandate is set.  And “the fields are white unto harvest.”

  “Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ‘Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?’  They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

Meanwhile his disciples urged him, ‘Rabbi, eat something.’

But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you know nothing about.’

Then his disciples said to each other, ‘Could someone have brought him food?’

‘My food,’ said Jesus, ‘is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.  Do you not say, “Four months more and then the harvest”? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe [“white” –RSV]  for harvest.  Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.  Thus the saying “One sows and another reaps” is true.  I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor’” (John 4:28-38, NIV.)

It is time for the Church to take a keen look at the responsibility that accompanies the freedom.  Every week seems to bring a report about an ecclesiastical leader who confesses to an extra-marital affair or to siphoning funds from the church or some such.  It is high time for Christians to stop this absurdity. 

I recall, some time ago, when I heard on Christian radio that Tullian Tchividjian (cha-vih-jin), the pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (the late Rev. Dr. James Kennedy’s church) and grandson of Billy Graham, confessed to having been involved in an affair.  The commentator remarked that Tchividjian was repentant and that we as the body of Christ should be forgiving of the matter as God is forgiving.  This could have gone without saying; of course we should be forgiving.  But, and I say BUT with a capital B, don’t you think that Tullian could have avoided this travesty?  Obviously, he is no Billy Graham, technically – and genetically, he is only 1/8 the man Billy is – but Billy is famous for not even getting into an elevator alone with a woman because there was no accountability.

In his book, Unfashionable, Tchividjian writes,

…because today’s world is in a constantly accelerating state of flux – always changing, never staying the same – people crave constancy and depth.  Such painful impermanence makes people open to, and desirous for, things truthful and historical, ancient and proven… People in today’s world are desperately reaching, not just upward, but backward.  They yearn for a day gone by when things seemed more constant and less shallow.  They want to tap into the treasures of the past as they search for a staying power that seems unattainable in the present.”[1]

I imagine that when these words were penned, Tullian was not having an affair, was not planning on having an affair, and would have been repulsed at the thought.  I hope.  But, as he says, “today’s world is in a constantly accelerating state of flux.”

And as Christ’s holy church is always reforming, that is, drawing closer in union with the Trinity, we see change in our spiritual lives.  Even so, our God does not change (Malachi 3:6); and in the Father “is no inconsistency or shifting shadow” (James 1:17); and our Messiah, Jesus Christ, “is the same yesterday and today—and forever!” (Hebrews 13:8). This should mean that the Church, having an anchor such as our Lord Himself, should not be in moral decline. The only change that should be happening among the Redeemed is moral ascent and an increased strength against the prince of this world.

The fields in these last days are “white unto harvest” and until every last one of the elect is brought in to the fold, there is still work to do. Like Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, we set to work with our weapons in one hand and building materials in the other. Revolution of one kind or another is always in the air. The world is in revolt and the Church should be, too. So put on the armor of God (Ephesians 6:10ff) and jump into the fray. Will you join our Crusade? God did not intend His Church to sit idle and rest. Yet.

---

[1] Tullian Tchividjian,  Unfashionable  (Colorado Springs, Colo: Multnomah Books, 2009), 12-13.