FSTDT

The Award
After the report of the captains and the wicked counsels of the twelve counselors. I saw Lucifer stand up on a platform and this is what He said, "we have three awards to give to those who have done more to make our kingdom come and our will done on earth as it is in hell. Our top prize goes to the spirit of slumber. This is the spirit that has distracted much of the army of the Holy One and put many of them to sleep. The only reason why we rule over many lives and regions today is because of the work of this Agent and his legions." I watched as the spirit of slumber and distraction walked up towards the platform where Lucifer stood. As he walked, everyone in the whole assembly went to sleep and did not wake up until he collected his award and returned to his seat. They went to sleep with their eyes wide open; they were active and still moving, but asleep. This is the same spirit that works to immobilize the leaders of nations bringing them into a drunken stupor and creating moral incapacitation, especially when critical decisions need to be made. This spirit holds leaders long enough in disorientation to effect changes and to turn the course of a nation to darkness irrevocably. They are also responsible for planting wicked counselors that influence kings towards evil. The award looked like a golden cup laced with shining stones of all colors and shapes. This cup was for divination. Along with increased authority in Satan's kingdom, he was also given a scepter.
Following him was the second prize given to a serpent-like spirit who was awarded for seducing leaders. He came on his belly as a serpent of many bright and beautiful colors to receive this award. When he arrived at the platform he took the shape of a beautiful woman; she was completely spotless, pleasant, beautiful and charming to look at. The whole assembly was hypnotized just by looking at her but the spell she cast was broken when she turned back into a serpent to crawl back to her position. She was given a silver cup laced with precious stones.
The third winner was also in the form of a lady; she is the spirit of mammon. She is the harlot of Babylon who prostitutes herself for the silver and gold of the nations. She wields tremendous authority among the nations of the earth. She uses silver and gold to cause nations, individuals and institutions to bow and worship at the throne of Lucifer. She sets nations up to depend on her by showing extravagant generosity beyond words, especially in their times of distress. Once nations, institutions or individuals come to enjoy the fruits of her "kindness", they then begin to depend on her. After showing all forms of "kindness" to her new guest, she then quietly waits for the honeymoon of their newly-found relationship to be over. Once this time of flatten* has fully-bloomed and she has come to know that her new guest is depending on her. she then brings out the shackles. Very few escape her maximum security cage. She guts life out of her captives and leaves them as zombies in her hard labor prison camps. Kings and Queens of the earth worship her. Many have pledged their very souls to her. She is single-handedly responsible for many who are called to preach the gospel not answering their call. Although she was given the third place award, she has caused the greatest number of people to become and remain loyal servants of Satan; bound to him and his slavish systems. She is the deal-maker for Satan. She buys nations, individuals, institutions and territories in times of their economic hardness and life turbulences. She gives them deals they cannot refuse when they need it most. Not many turn down her deals; those who do. suffer tremendous consequences. She brings to mind the statement of Satan to God in Job 2:4. "Skin for skin! Yes. all that a man has he will give for his life." Coming to collect her award, she was decked out with very expensive jewels and precious stones. She was coming drunk looking very much like a Mardi-Gras character. She was drinking from her trademark gold cup and she was drinking her trade drink; the blood of the saints. The most shocking thing was that the crowd loved her and thought she was funny and very entertaining in her costume. They loved her because she brings results and whatever she does morally or in her private life is no big deal to anyone. "She helps the economically troubled, she feeds the hungry, she intervenes when we have natural disasters, she is very effective in what she does, and she is the most caring and most sympathetic person ever". Satan praised her as the kings of earth agreed loudly. She received another shiny necklace made of gold and decorated with all kinds of precious stones, as well as a brand new gold cup.
At His closing remarks the spirit of prophecy came upon Lucifer, the chief deceiver who deceives the world. He prophesied almost as if he was under the control of another. He lifted up his voice and said.
"Let it be clear to everyone here today and let no one be deceived. Though we make war against the Lord God Almighty and against His Christ and Against His Holy Ones, we will not win. Never mistake the silence of the Almighty to be foolishness or weakness. A great storm is coming. It is not a water storm it is going to be a firestorm. It is going to be like no other. It is the army of the purified ones marching to the Command of the Holy One. God is not a man that He should lie. His Word is true; always. None of our efforts will stop them. They are planted on the eternal rock and the shout of the Lord God Almighty is among them.
The saints are the firestorm and the day of their rising will bring a horrible judgment. It will be a day of darkness and gloom, a day of thick clouds and deep blackness. Suddenly, like dawn spreading across the mountains, this great and might\' army will appear. Nothing like it has been seen before or will ever be seen again. Fire burns in front of them, and flames follow after them. Ahead of them the land lies as beautiful as the Garden of Eden. Behind them is nothing but desolation; not one thing escapes. They look like horses; they charge forward like warhorses. Look at them as they leap along the mountaintops. Listen to the noise they make—like the rumbling of chariots, like the roar of fire sweeping across a field of stubble, or like a mighty army moving into battle. Fear grips all the people; every face grows pale with terror. The attackers march like warriors and scale city walls like soldiers.
They march straight forward never breaking rank. They never jostle each other; each moves in exactly the right position. They break through defenses without missing a step. They swarm over the city and run along its walls. They enter all the houses climbing like thieves through the windows. The earth quakes as they advance, and the heavens tremble. The sun and moon grow dark and the stars no longer shine. The Lord is at the head of the column. He leads them with a shout. This is His mighty army and they follow His orders. The day of the Lord is an awesome, terrible thing. Who can possibly survive?"
Snapping out of his trance Lucifer closed his humiliating speech by shouting "BUT, WE MUST FIGHT NOW THAT IT IS DARK AND A GREATER PART OF THE SAINTS ARE SLEEPING BECAUSE THE LIGHT IS COMING WHEN WE CAN NEITHER FIGHT NOR WORK".
I wondered how these Kings of the earth who have given their kingdoms to Satan and other subjects of Satan can still remain loyal to him after such a clear speech that spells their end. Wisdom replied to me and said. "They only hear and understand what Satan wants them to hear and understand. Besides this, many of them for the lust of power and wealth have sold their souls to Satan and cursed the Lord God Almighty and His Righteous Spirit. They cannot turn back now. Yet many of the kings of the earth can still be redeemed. But the cost of reaching them is very high, because they are constantly guarded. The turning of one can quickly mean the turning of many."

The phrase “culture war” is a little bit like the word “abortion.” Both terms exist to obscure and soften what they really mean. Everyone knows that abortion means the termination of unborn life, yet the term itself is a neutral one, having no special lexical connection to fetal life or even the medical profession. The reality behind the word is muddled by the word itself; thus, voters can feel in the word “abortion” a valuable human right of sexual autonomy that they wouldn’t feel in a term like “fetal suction aspiration.”

“Culture war” is another (though less toxic) species of muddle-word. Most people understand what it means–the aggregated debates and legal contests between conservatives and progressives on issues like abortion, euthanasia, education, and marriage. But look closely at the phrase. It is ambiguous and a little superficial (“culture” can mean anything from philosophy to food to the Kardashians), and more than a little negative and combative. Combine those elements and you get a word that conjures up images of low-stakes shouting matches between factions that probably have no skin in the game beyond the political power they’d love to wield over the lives of strangers.

This connotation is why, I think, it’s so commonplace to hear people disparage the notion of “culture war.” The critique is often predictable: Culture war is causing division and acrimony in American society, with no real benefits other than power and influence to those waging it from above, and therefore we should stop culture warring and learn to love. Nike could summarize it as: Just Don’t.

I think David Brooks is giving too much credit to this erroneous understanding of culture war in his column today at The New York Times. The beginning of Brooks’ piece shows that he understands the greater spiritual and human dimensions to contemporary cultural debates. He surmises, correctly, that traditional Christianity is no longer a merit badge for Americans, and that many Christians now fear being seen as “pariahs” in their own communities. Having lost the battle for the legal definition of marriage last week, Christians and social conservatives, according to Brooks, now have a choice: Do they “fight on,” (to use Brooks’ description of this SCOTUS symposium last week at First Things), or they make a change?

Consider putting aside, in the current climate, the culture war oriented around the sexual revolution.

Put aside a culture war that has alienated large parts of three generations from any consideration of religion or belief. Put aside an effort that has been a communications disaster, reducing a rich, complex and beautiful faith into a public obsession with sex. Put aside a culture war that, at least over the near term, you are destined to lose.

Consider a different culture war, one just as central to your faith and far more powerful in its persuasive witness.

This other culture war that Brooks is describing would be, in his words, the war against social “formlessness and radical flux.” Brooks believes that this culture war is a war against poverty, familial decay, social stagnation, and loess of transcendence. In his words:

The defining face of social conservatism could be this: Those are the people who go into underprivileged areas and form organizations to help nurture stable families. Those are the people who build community institutions in places where they are sparse. Those are the people who can help us think about how economic joblessness and spiritual poverty reinforce each other. Those are the people who converse with us about the transcendent in everyday life.

Yes and amen. This is precisely what conservatives should be doing. The question is: Why must they be doing this OR fighting for marriage, instead of AND fighting for marriage?

It seems to me that Brooks is oscillating between a right and a wrong understanding of culture war. On the one hand, he says that speaking transcendence into a individualistic, fragmented society is a sort of “culture war.” He’s right. Personal autonomy, a doctrine that features prominently in the philosophy of the Sexual Revolution, has wrecked my generation onto an island of loneliness, shattered homes, and relational backwardness. Going against the religion of personal autonomy is culture war.

On the other hand, Brooks seems to think of the culture war over traditional marriage as an expendable sort of culture war. It’s a culture war that we should opt out of if we decide, in Brooks’ words, that “the defining face of social conservatism” is not one that is winning over our neighbors. If talking about marriage and the more explicit features of the Sexual Revolution makes us politically anathema, then, Brooks writes, we should change what we talk about.

But the culture war that Brooks thinks we should be having is connected in a meaningful way to the one he thinks we shouldn’t be having. Warring against society’s brokenness is, especially for Christians, a war against living, spiritual realities. Christian theology has a word for the decrepit state of our world, and the word is sin. Sin is why things are not the way they should be. For Christians who understand the world through the lens of Scripture, the battle for civilization is not ultimately a battle for civilization but a battle for souls, a battle to proclaim the victory over sin, both at the individual and societal level, achieved on the cross by the Son of God.

You can see how the term “culture war” obscures reality. For “culture war” is not, as its cynics might suggest, an intramural spat between aspiring gatekeepers but a spiritual and philosophical struggle for ideas and institutions that genuinely matter. Certainly there are skirmishes of the culture war that deserve far less attention than they receive. But my generation’s confusion about the definition of marriage is not simply a tug-of-war between the remnants of the Religious Right and the emerging “post-Christian” Left; it is a confusion about who we as human beings are, why we exist, and to Whom we belong.

I think David Brooks understands this. What I wish he would have written is that the definition of marriage and the personhood of the unborn are precisely the kind of ‘transcendence” that social conservatives must be speaking into our culture. I wish he would have directed our attention to the legacy of the pro-life movement, a generation of “culture warriors” who have fought in the shadow of Roe v. Wade for 40 years to win not just laws but hearts and imaginations to see the personhood of the unborn. From free health clinics to crisis pregnancy centers to shelters for those fleeing the sex industry, pro-life conservatives have spoken a Gospel word of hope and salvation to a post-Roe society, a word that has borne much fruit and will, I believe, bear much more. Would such fruit have happened if these pro-lifers had determined that the cause of the unborn was no longer a “persuasive witness”?

The Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage last Friday may not be as lethal as its redefinition of personhood in 1973, but the fact remains that marriage is a transcendent, spiritual institution, one whose right ordering is of urgent interest in any society that wishes to flourish. It matters that our laws reflect a proper valuation homes with mothers and fathers. This is a culture war worth carrying on, because culture war isn’t just political theater. It’s a conversation about the shape of our society and where we must go to thrive. That’s a question worth getting right.