Dan Holland reflects on a recent visit to a public attraction.
‘MERE ANARCHY IS LOOSED APON THE WORLD’
This line – from the famous W B Yeats poem ‘The Second Coming’ – sprang to my mind with new meaning recently.
On our half-term holiday we visited a beautiful castle, enjoying its viewpoints and reading it’s eventful history. Before departing I made a last minute stop at the gents, noticing something unusual on the wall I’d never seen before. On closer inspection it was a free dispenser of female sanitary products! Straightforward biology, it seems, has been tossed aside as an irrelevant encumbrance to our quest for the brave new world. How would a father explain to an inquisitive young son what these items were for? And if he did, how would he field the inevitable follow up, ‘so why are they here, what can we do with them?’ From the lips of children and infants….but why should such a bizarre discussion be necessary anyway?
Has the western world gone stark staring mad? In our frantic rush to expunge God from every area of society we have lost our tenuous grip on reality. In every sphere of our culture where God has blessed and protected us we are driving Him out with a three-pronged whip. In the gaudy ‘pride’ month of June, who or what will you be celebrating? Only the last vestiges of the Godly scaffolding we have enjoyed as a ‘Christian’ nation for centuries remain, and we seem hell-bent on tearing them apart. Is there anything that can’t be sacrificed, any truth that can’t be inverted in our headlong stampede to the edge of the cliff? Like the servant in Jesus’ parable of the tares, my question is,
‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ (Matt 13v 27b)
Why make such a fuss; it’ll sort itself out won’t it? This is ‘merely’ a symptom of the ‘mere anarchy’ that awaits us if we do not repent as a society. Make no mistake the devil is driving us relentlessly towards another ‘reality’, a false and demonic one.
TRUTH SETS FREE
The devil is hard and fast at work hoping that the people who know better will sit silent and comfortable in their homes. His deceptive ‘reality’ is a hell of darkness and destruction where the face of God cannot be found, nor His mercy reached. It is a bitter wilderness without light, hope or the much vaunted freedom, where true fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, marriages, communities and yes churches are utterly defaced and held to scorn. The image of God cannot be found and the heavens are closed up like brass.
Beware of dispensing with reality. It upholds objective and subjective truth, and the truth is the ONLY thing that sets us free (John 8v 32). If we jettison truth, we are left alone with the father of lies in the black night of anarchy. Truth is a person, Jesus Christ, and He will not be mocked! We will reap what we sow, even if it is not immediate. He is gracious and merciful but His patience has limits. A wise person once said bondage often looks like freedom at first – and freedom like bondage. To be a slave to Christ is the narrow path to freedom (Romans 1v 1).
IS THERE HOPE?
Whichever political party wins in our imminent general election, in terms of morality there is little to pick between them. We cannot securely place our hope there or expect spiritual leadership from whomever is prime minister. No, in the final analysis the Church of Christ Jesus is the hope of the world. This month I want to celebrate the possibility and indeed the prophetic promise of a pure and spotless bride (Eph 5v 27); a Church pulsating with the love and truth of the gospel. A Holy Church loving people with the agape love of Jesus but steadfast and immovable in the truth, however unpopular it may be. A Church which is a house of healing where the captives can be set free, where marriages, families and communities can flourish with life. Truth without love is too harsh, too provoking. ‘Love’ without truth is indulgent, insipid and flaccid. In ‘reality’ here is no separation between truth and love, they are perfectly united in the person of Christ Jesus, and His Spirit filled Church. If it is worth giving one’s life for anything, surely it is this!
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Dan Holland is a UK missionary with Through Faith Missions (‘TFM’). He wrote “Through the Tunnel – Free at Last” published by PUSH Publishing, as his personal testimony.
Recently Dan has produced two short books – “Caring for the New Christian” and “Growing as a New Christian” (for local fellowships, and for the new ‘convert’, respectively). Links here:
https://christian-publications-int.com/CaringForNewChristians.html
https://christian-publications-int.com/GrowingAsANewChristian.html
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