Category: Politics

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Here’s the Problem:

https://mediamatters.org/embed/206855

This scene from the TV series Homeland was featured on Monday’s MSNBC news, as a commentary on the Paris attacks. Notice around the 1:35 mark, when the solutions are proffered: “200,000 ground troops indefinitely to protect an equal number of doctors and teachers,” OR “bomb Raqqa into a parking lot.”

Those are the only options available to the mind of popular media (which is a mirror of popular thought). I fear that Western leadership suffers from the same tunnel-vision, when the question should be asked, “Why are we so impotent?”

We, the West, are powerless to fight against the ideology of Islam, as the clip correctly shows. But the problem is not one of strategy, but one of moral nerve. This moral nerve cannot be mustered, because the West has committed spiritual suicide, having finally and completely rejected its spiritual foundations in Christendom.

Christendom gets a lot of bad press right now, often without describing what it really was, could be, and really entails. Mention it and you will get one of two comments: “You can’t go back to the days of ‘Leave it to Beaver,'” or, “Yes, but the Crusades were terrible.” The first comment only demonstrates ignorance; the second, fails to understand that the soldiers of the Crusades actually believed that what they were fighting for had eternal consequences.

Today’s soldiers will grow weary fighting for freedom when, upon their return, find that their governments define freedom as confused young men’s rights to shower with their daughters after gym. The growth of government has been a solution to the wrong problem for decades, and when freedom is celebrated in the West, it is done so with the proper permissions, permits, and waivers.

The spiritual underpinnings of Western freedoms and democracies have not simply faded away, they have been banished. This is why in popular culture, the two options of humanistic education and health care (the 21st centuries’ version of salvation) or elimination through bombing are the only two choices available.

The option of national repentance, from leaders to the led, across all segments of society, is not on the table, and this is certainly why the West must fall.

We, the West, have tolerated the destruction of generations of children. We cannot, then, think of ourselves as the moral superiors to Islam in any form, violent or not. Our cultural sins have brought great judgement upon us, and God will give our lands to those who do not kill their children.

Consider God’s words against Nineveh, who a century and a half repented under Jonah’s preaching, but was to fall for their sins. Nahum compares Nineveh to Thebes of Egypt, a nation that Nineveh (Assyria) slaughterd:

Nahum 3:10 (ESV)

10  Yet she became an exile;

she went into captivity;

her infants were dashed in pieces

at the head of every street;

for her honoured men lots were cast,

and all her great men were bound in chains.

Notice the infanticide that Nineveh inflicted upon Thebes, and how that was a cause of judgement. Nineveh was known for its cruelty, yet somehow Western post-Christian nations think that they are not! The thousands that Islam has killed in the past decades is such a small number compared to the mass destruction of the innocent by the West.

In Nahum 3:11-13 we read how easy it will be for Babylon to defeat Nineveh. Keep in mind that Nineveh and Assyria were the regions superpowers at the time, and were thought for years to be invincible. No military strategist could have seen this coming.

11  You also will be drunken;

you will go into hiding;

you will seek a refuge from the enemy.

12  All your fortresses are like fig trees

with first-ripe figs—

if shaken they fall

into the mouth of the eater.

13  Behold, your troops

are women in your midst.

The gates of your land

are wide open to your enemies;

fire has devoured your bars.

Drunkenness, fear, pursuit, an easy target, women soldiers and open gates all describe Nineveh before her enemies. Nineveh, and her neighbhours, did not believe this for a moment, but this is how their end came.

God mocks their preparations, as He mocks our strategies today:

Nahum 3:14–15 (ESV)

14  Draw water for the siege;

strengthen your forts;

go into the clay;

tread the mortar;

take hold of the brick mold!

15  There will the fire devour you;

the sword will cut you off.

It will devour you like the locust.

Multiply yourselves like the locust;

multiply like the grasshopper!

Get ready, and die anyway, is the message of Nahum.

More doctors! More teachers! or, More bombs!

Since we’re not treating our cancer, it must metastasize. God granted Nineveh repentance during the days of Jonah, but did not do so again. We have no certainty that He will grant us repentance, and we should just reflect upon that.

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The Un-Winnable War

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“Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” Acts 2:40b (ESV)

The West, that is, Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States (and allies) are indeed in a war against Islam. Not in a war against ISIS, ISIL, or Al-Qaeda, but the ideology of Islam.

This would be true if Islam were perfectly peaceful. This article is not about violence, terrorism, or the right military response.

This is a war of ideas, and the West is now governed by the notion that its own historically Christian foundations are of little importance, and may be traded away under the guise of multiculturalism. The West is rudderless in a stormy sea.

Philosophical multiculturalism is inherently a weak system, that cannot stand against any other ideology that privileges its own culture. Islam is one such culture. Islam is not founded upon a view of the validity of all cultures, but understands that all values must be based upon its teachings. Even a nominal Christendom was a good defence against Islam; with this removed, only a humanistic centre remains that does not have the moral fibre to defend itself ideologically, let alone militarily.

Islam would not need to be violent in order to win against the West. It only has to remain true to its own ideology, increase its population, and wait. As Mark Steyn pointed out, “The future belongs to those who show up.” The multicultural West has abandoned reproduction and family life in favour of personal happiness, wealth, and fulfilment.

The West has also replaced a cherished multiculturalism for a philosophical multiculturalism. In the former, many aspects of a different culture are appreciated and even adopted, but are not seen as competing as an ultimate value. Philosophical multiculturalism denies that ultimate values exist.

The culture that possesses the idea of an ultimate, immovable value system will always defeat the one that believes that no such ultimate system exists.

Christians, if they be Christian at all (and many do not think consistently as Christians), must reject multiculturalism, as it is a denial of the final truth as revealed in Scripture.

But many Christians live in a society that is philosophically multicultural. Thus, the short Bible verse at the beginning of the post. The only Christian option right now is to trust wholly in the God who does not change, the God who has revealed Himself in His Son, Jesus Christ. Unless the hearts and minds of the people of the West, and therefore their leaders, are captured by the Gospel, Western Christians will live under the dominion of Islam.

The West has projected its multicultural wishes upon an ideology (Islam) that violently rejects it. By definition, philosophical multiculturalism cannot judge other cultures as false, and are left ideologically defenceless against Islam; and when a nation, or group of nations is ideologically bankrupt, the will to fight militarily is diminished below a winnable strength.

God is greater than Islam, and will always save His people, even if through fire and sword. Islam, if it is to be defeated at all, must be defeated by the Gospel.