Subject: On Losing Heart
Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2006 06:20:36 -0600
My dear friends and compatriots.
This is worth reading. Franklin Sanders originally wrote
this several years ago and included it once again in his latest
edition of The Moneychanger newsletter. www.the-moneychanger.com
Have a blessed day.
Michael
"Son of man, what
is that proverb that ye have in the land of Israel, saying, The
days are prolonged, & every vision faileth?"
"Tell them
therefore, Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will make this proverb to
cease, & they shall no more use it as a proverb in Israel; but
say unto them, The days are at hand, & the effect of every
vision." –Ezekiel 12:22, 23
"In spite of
failures which I lament, of errors which I now see and
acknowledge, or of the present aspect of affairs, do I despair the
future? The truth is this, the march of Providence is so slow, our
desires so impatient, the work of progress is so immense, and our
means of aiding it so feeble, the life of humanity is so long,
that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of
the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that
teaches us to hope." – Robert E. Lee
While it may seem Southern
overreaching to set quotations from Ezekiel and Robert E. Lee side
by side, it’s really not. They deal with the same problem: how
do we keep up our courage when God moves so slowly and
mysteriously to do justice, to punish the wicked, and to build his
kingdom?
Living in a degenerate age is not
easy. On one hand we have to fight the temptation, both overt and
covert, to be conformed to the spirit of the age. On the other
hand, we have to resist the depression born of fighting what appears
to be a rear guard action.
THE END IS NOT IN DOUBT . . .
Here let me make myself very
clear. None of us has any reason to doubt Christ’s eventual and
total victory. Little by little, wave by wave, the whole earth,
every creature, and surely every man will bow to his rule,
"for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the
glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea." That is not
the sort of doubt I mean.
Rather, I mean the doubt and
depression which must attend the "ebbing of the advancing
wave." For reasons mysterious and hidden in the will of God,
he advances his works unevenly. After great progress, he sometimes
allows society to fall into widespread degeneracy. At times he
appears to have abandoned the field altogether, and the progress
of mankind’s redemption seems to have ceased.
. . . JUST THE MIDDLE
Viewing the whole sweep of
history our faith, reason, and calm deliberation deny even the
possibility of his failure, but we don’t live in the whole sweep
of history. We live day by day, and we know only our little
workbench. And while I believe that the Spirit of God and his
Church are even today accomplishing all his holy will, my
eyes and ears witness only evil everywhere. Worse yet, the most
grotesque evils shamelessly preen themselves as righteousness.
Murdering newborns and unborns is
a "right", while sodomy and every unnatural vice
smugly demand equality with honest marriage.
For the few remaining
heterosexuals (there must be about eight of us left), all of the
cultural apparat – movie, TV, literature, radio,
newspaper, education, science, and government – portray the
whole goal and end of being as an indulgence of lust energetic
enough to wear down a sexually maniacal housefly in heat.
If you apprehend this view as a
bizarre perversion of God’s gifts, then you automatically
place yourself outside the Mainstream of Western Thought.
The ordained social order is
overturned, natural hierarchy and patriarchy contemned, and
every ignorant and insignificant worm asserts his autonomy and
equality with the noblest and wisest.
The last Western statesmen died
about a century ago, while our public men today are noteworthy
solely for their unembarrassed corruption. The chief magistrates
of leading nations, particularly our own, are, morally, not just
vile but puking vile. Intellectually and philosophically,
not one of them aspires to anything as lofty as mediocrity.
Western society accepts as
man’s highest goal a materialism so crass it can only be
called institutionalised greed and sensuality.
Western high culture has
decayed from Bach to Rap. Literature and the visual arts portray
an incomprehensible absurdity (amusing as they may be to us
Philistines) or wallow in whining self-pity, offering the two
best contemporary arguments for euthanasia.
The religious sense of Western
civilisation has been relentlessly stripped of Christianity, for
which has been substituted superstitious, spiritualist, and
pantheistic blather. In their official acts, Western governments
like nothing better than thumbing their noses at heaven.
Much of Christ’s church has
fallen into a pitiful and pointless apostasy, blasphemous and
baffled in unbelief. Theology and worship have been replaced by
spiritual break dancing, exalted and unashamed
self-centeredness, and drool-flecked mumbling about the equality
of all "religious traditions."
This is the wide world in which we
live.
MEANWHILE AT HOME
At my own workbench things are
not any better (substitute here, dear reader, yours for mine). You
could hardly imagine anyone more out of step with the times, or
more unsuccessful.
For nearly 30 years I have fought
for hard money – legal and constitutional gold and silver
currency. I oppose usury and the debt-slave economy that produces
our "prosperity." It would be hard to name any position,
economic or philosophic, more hopelessly irreconcilable to our
present government, society, and economy. We simply cannot have
both hard money and our present financial system simultaneously;
that is impossible. On top of that, the financial system I find
fault with has made millions [believe they are] wealthy
while blowing up the biggest financial bubble in the history of
mankind.
For 25 years I fought the
Internal Revenue Service, and even beat them in court (by the
grace of God). But that victory freed no one but the other
defendants, my family, and me. The brazenly illegal income tax
still stands.
For 15 years I have warned about
the erosion of privacy, but still we have gotten the national
Surveillance State, complete with helicopter flyovers, random
roadblocks & military-style police who demand, "Papers,
please!" from peaceful & unoffending citizens.
For 15 years I have warned about
the concentration of power in the federal government, but instead
of devolution we got first Bush & then Clinton, & now we
are about to get Bushed or Gored again.
In short, you could hardly name a
reformation issue that I have not from time to time worked for
over the past two or three decades. As far as outward
success is concerned, the fight is hotter today than ever. About
the only "victory" I can claim is that the battle, at
least, still rages on, & has not yet been lost.
Oh, yes, there’s one more
victory. I’m still here. I’m still alive. I haven’t changed,
& neither has the truth.
ASPIRIN, PLEASE!
Now in the face of all that, as a
spiritual anodyne you can’t offer any thoughtful person some
sweetsy-cutesy, Sunday School kiss-off – "Well, this, too,
shall pass away." Look, the Mongols have just ridden
up into the front yard, and they are not brandishing Nerf-swords.
Those are real swords and real torches, and today your
religion must prove itself "where the rubber meets the
road."
But this meditation doesn’t
concern just me. For every Christian in every age,
life is warfare. In our age, fighting the fight you must fight,
depression is an ever-present temptation. You fight, & you
lose. You pick yourself up, dust yourself off, pick up your broken
weapons, mend them, & throw yourself into the battle again.
You lose again. They whip the fool out of you, & probably with
underhanded trickery. You dust yourself off, & go back into
the fight.
This happens ten, twenty, fifty,
a hundred times. You keep on losing. Finally, you begin to ask
yourself, "Why am I doing this? What good does it do? Nobody
in the world believes the way I believe. All my efforts haven’t
changed a thing. Maybe times have changed. Maybe I’m
wrong, and the other side is right."
All of that is a lie.
Eternal things are eternal
still. The truth never changes.
The liars & murderers &
usurers & frauds presently running this country want you to
believe that they can’t be beaten. They want you to think that
they are the wave of the future & you are a relic of the past.
But eternal things are eternal
still. The truth never changes, & the truth always
makes you choose sides.
You’re not the first one to be
downcast. But you are confusing God’s mercy & patience with
his tolerance of wickedness. You are mistakenly assuming that
because God forbears to do justice for a time that he will neglect
justice altogether. Nothing could be further from the truth. God
may delay, but he will do justice.
GOING ON THE OFFENSIVE:
CHURCH & FAMILY
The scriptures tell us that the
gates of hell shall not prevail against Christ’s church. Gates
are defensive, built to keep somebody out. Obviously, the
church in this picture is operating on the offensive, not
defensive. The Christian life – Christian warfare –
demands of us an offensive strategy and tactics. Today that
Christian offense must be waged by, for, and through two
institutions: the church and the family.
The church, because to it
has been committed the only means of changing the world, the
good news of the Gospel. It is the community of the faithful,
outside which there is no salvation. By the Gospel, and only the
Gospel, can the hearts and minds of men be changed. All other
efforts at permanent change are doomed experiments in legalism
that misapprehend the nature of man and his need. At Lent in 1497
Savonarola convinced the Florentines to burn all their sorcery
books, charms, personal ornaments, lewd pictures, cards and gaming
tables in the Bonfire of the Vanities. A year later they just as
enthusiastically consigned him to the flames.
The family, because God
created it as the first institution of government. For nearly all
of us, it is the institution closest to us and most subject to our
labour and influence. The family, because within its
nurturing arms are raised the next generation of Christian
soldiers.
But you’ve left out
the civil government, Moneychanger, that third great institution
God ordained for ruling mankind.
Yes, but not because I deny its
importance, or even the legitimacy and necessity of Christians
labouring in politics. Rather, I measure its relative importance
by logic and my own experience. If the family is lost, my own
family, then I have failed at that duty nearest to me. On busy
Central Avenue in Memphis for years & years there was a small
sign on the side of a building just west of Cooper Avenue. That
sign read, "No other success can compensate for failure in
the home." What does it profit a man if he gain the whole
world but lose his soul?
I have expended a vast wealth of
energy fighting with the state, and accomplished almost nothing.
That is not a battle for lone guerrilla warriors. As yet, there is
no constituency to make such resistance successful. (The only
political party with any integrity is the Constitution [formerly
Taxpayers’] party.)
And why is the constituency
lacking? Because the people have no heart for righteousness. Oh,
they may applaud "moral reform" out of the "Book of
Virtues" and cutting off all the lazy welfare bums, but after
the same fashion that Dr. Kellogg recommended you eat more bran
– anything that uncomfortable must be good for you. That
constitutes the uttermost limit of the American public’s desire
for reformation.
Without the
heart-and-will-changing Gospel, such reforms are doomed to short,
shallow, and fruitless lives. I hired on for eternity, not for
next month. Once Americans have a heart Gospel-trained for
righteousness, then they will inevitably establish righteousness
in their civil government.
Besides, civil government does
not act, but reacts, punishing evil deeds and rewarding
righteousness. It contributes the necessary but not sufficient
condition. Before that comes the church which acts to
establish righteousness in the hearts of men.
ONE WAY, TWO GOALS
What gospel did Jesus preach? The
gospel of the kingdom (Matt. 3:2; 4:17; 4:23; Mark 1:14;
Luke 16:16; 17:20-21; John 3:5). Not the kingdom in the sweet by
and by, but the kingdom that is "at hand." Here. Now.
Within you. The kingdom like leaven and mustard seed, that grows
and grows until it fills everything, forever. The kingdom has already
come. The kingdom is here and now. It is the one way we must
live.
But besides our personal
obedience, how do we apply that in society? In two ways: alternative
institutions and changing worldview.
After the 1905 revolution failed
in Russia, Lenin published an essay, "What Must Be
Done?" Since direct, violent revolution had failed, how
should the revolutionaries carry forward? By creating
alternative institutions to replace existing state institutions.
As state institutions, indeed, the state itself, lost credibility
before the people, the alternative revolutionary institutions
would present themselves as replacements.
In 1920 the Italian Communist
Antonio Gramsci (GRAM-shee) went to visit Lenin’s
Revolutionary Russia, and he didn’t like what he saw. Radical
communism clashed too hard against the Russian soul. Rather than
violent revolution, Gramsci recommended the "long march
through the institutions." If socialists could change
individuals’ worldview (especially the machinery of culture, the
media and education which form the thinking of others) so that
they thought like socialists, then eventually the revolution would
triumph.
Both Lenin and Gramsci were
successful, but not because of their originality. Both
prescriptions for conquering society had already been taught by
Christ, practised by the church, and transformed Western
civilisation.
IN THE POST-CHRISTIAN PRESENT
Today we live in a post-Christian
world. I don’t believe those most existing institutions –
civil government, finance, and education, for example – can be
redeemed. Their sickness has rotted them clean to the bone, so
that nothing is left to heal. The quicker we remove our sanction,
the better. We have to create alternatives in culture, arts,
education, government, medicine, every institution that forms and
certifies -- new institutions ready to serve society when the old
collapse. I certainly don’t mean a fanatical Christian ideology
that is merely the mirror image of socialist/fascist/totalitarian
ideology. We have to live out, practice, and elaborate a Christian
worldview so winsome that pagan minds and hearts recognise its
superiority and long to share it.
TEMPTED TO DESPAIR, TAUGHT TO
HOPE
Like Ezekiel and Robert E.
Lee before us, we are tempted to lose hope if we keep our eyes too
close to the ground. We are the children of eternity, not time.
Centuries must form our horizon, not years. On that horizon our
God goes before us in victory.
Let all things now
living
a song of thanksgiving
to God the Creator triumphantly raise.
Who fashioned and made us,
Protected and stayed us,
Who guided us onto the end of our days.
His banners are o’er us,
His light goes before us,
A pillar of fire shining forth through the
night
Till shadows have vanished
And darkness is banished,
As forward we travel from light unto
light.
-- F. Sanders
