(NOTE– This, fourth in the ‘Vacuum’ series, is an abridged version of an article the full version of which can be found in Unbounded Church Papers HERE)
‘You ask, what is our policy? I will say; It is to wage war . . . . . with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.’
***
The nature of a Vacuum is that it seeks to be filled with something. The something that is filling the Vacuum in western society created by the decline of Christianity is a Spiritual Virus, ‘That Hideous Strength’ used as the title of a book by C. S Lewis. The term is taken from a poem by the 16th century Scottish poet David Lyndsay, a line of which (in modernised English) reads “The shadow of that Hideous Strength, six miles and more it is of length”, refers to the long shadow cast over society by the Tower of Babel in Genesis Chapter 11:1-9.
The Babel story tells how God will ultimately respond to a society that ignores God, puts its trust in its own abilities and ‘advanced’ technology, and seeks to establish its own security based on these things.
***
The quote at the head of this article is part of a rallying cry issued by the great British wartime leader Winston Churchill in the early stages of the second World War when Britain stood alone against the might of Hitler’s Nazi army that had steam-rolled its way across, and subjugated most of, Europe.
A similar cry with equal passion ought to be heard from the Christian leaders and pulpits of our time, for western Christians in particular are fighting another War, against another enemy, another ‘Monstrous Tyranny’. However, you wouldn’t believe it attending most church services where a benign, comfortable, mission-stifling Christianity reigns supreme. The Church’s ‘Monstrous Tyranny’ is not that of the Nazis of the 20th century but what Lyndsay described as ‘That Hideous Strength’.
***
Many Christians will listen to sermons, or attend Bible studies, on Ephesians 6:12, and hear about ‘the rulers, the authorities, the powers of this dark world, and the spiritual forces of evil’ (The Hideous Strength) that the Apostle Paul warns the Church about, yet remain seemingly unaware of, or choose to ignore, the battle that the Church is in. However, the fact is that this is a real battle, the evidence for which is all around us, and we are losing badly.
The Enemy
The Enemy we face is described by Anglican Minister Melvin Tinker, author of ‘That Hideous Strength-How the West Was Lost’, in these words-
‘This ‘Hideous Strength’ is far more fearsome and all-embracing than Lewis envisaged over 70 years ago. The technology available is far more potent and far reaching in its ability to capture imaginations and minds than at any point in the world’s history. The political will of the opponents of Christianity is strong and unrelenting. The Church by and large appears confused and compromising. The stakes are incredibly high; nothing less than the survival of a civilization and the eternal well-being of countless souls.’
Rod Dreher, (author of the ‘Benedict Option’) emphasises the same point when he writes that –
‘The spiritual crisis which is engulfing the West is the worst since the end of the fifth century.’
Again, you would have little idea of this if you attended almost any Sunday church service.
Know Your Enemy
A famous maxim regarding war states that a primary principle for a successful campaign is to ‘Know your enemy’. Tragically however, not only are most western Christians ignorant of, or indifferent to, the Enemy, but they run their churches and live their lives as if he doesn’t exist. However, Jesus made it very clear that he most certainly does! e.g., Mark 1:13.
What then is the evidence of his activity in our society? How does this Hideous Strength, the Serpent of the Garden of Eden, manifest himself? Among other ways, He does so in the guise of what might be called a form of Cultural Marxism that has very subtly taken over our institutions; the schools and universities that our young people go to and are being indoctrinated in; as well as governments and corporations.
The reason I raise this is the fact that, in contrast to those raised in the 1960s and 70s, current generations are ignorant of or oblivious to the cultural Marxism that now has its hands on the levers controlling our society. The dangerous tragedy is that, given the state of our education system for now several decades, Marxism and the toll of human suffering it has wrought over the last century or so, and will so do again, is something few people under fifty years old or so know much about. For example, the 20 million of his own people killed under the Marxist Soviet Russian regime of Joseph Stalin. This ignorance of the Marxist experience and its mistakes means that they are likely doomed to be repeated. Worse, surveys indicate that in their ignorance many history-challenged younger people think it might be worth a try!
So here is a brief list of some of the main characteristics of Marxism, most of which can be seen, not only in George Orwell’s book, ‘1984’, but also in our own society by those who have eyes to see.
- Marxism is officially Atheistic
That is, it declares that God doesn’t exist, and so the Bible is a fiction. This is the most important characteristic of Marxism that makes it a tool of the Enemy, and poisonous to society.
Marx himself described religion as-
‘The opium of the people’ and also said that ‘The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness’.
Also worth noting is the phrase ‘the abolition of religion’. This essential tenet of Marxism is reflected in our own times as we see God kicked out of schools, parliaments, universities, institutions, corporations and most of the media, as well as being little present in most families.
2. Marxism is Intentionally Divisive.
The fundamental model for God’s plan for human (made in God’s Image) relationships, is the Trinity. That is, one characterised by mutual support and harmony bound together by Love. Contrast this with an essential characteristic of Marxism which is that it intentionally fractures society. It does this by dividing it into those who are oppressed and those who do the oppressing. Originally this was on an economic basis, the division being between the ‘workers’ who produce and the controllers/owners of the means of production ‘the ‘Bosses’, as in the Soviet Union of the last century. Today’s Cultural Marxism is in its essence tribalist, the primary division now being between a lumped-together collection of minority groups (the oppressed) and western (particularly) white people, especially Christians, (the oppressors).
3. Marxism Controls by Censorship of Speech and Thought
Not long ago in England, a man named Harry Miller answered a knock on his front door to be greeted by a policeman with the statement ‘I have come to check your thinking’. This frightening experience was the result of Millar’s retweet of a post about a transgender woman by someone else. His action was considered to have fallen foul of the British police guidelines on ‘Hate’ crimes.
The concept of a ‘non-crime incident’ requiring police attention is truly worthy of George Orwell himself! An example of ‘thought crime’ or ‘wrong think’! That is one of the characteristics of both 20th century Marxism and today’s Cultural Marxism which is the ‘check your thinking’ attempt to control, and police, what can be said and even thought, i.e., mind control. Of particular concern is the fact that this attempted control of speech and thought now extends to the Bible and Christian beliefs.
Another important aspect of today’s ‘speech control’ is what comes under the banner of Political Correctness (PC). That is people are only free to say what is acceptable to the spirit of the age (now increasingly Marxist), not what they really think, indeed increasing numbers of people are afraid to do so.
Then there is what is known as ‘Cancel Culture’, examples of which include the ‘cancelling’ of speakers at universities because they hold the ‘wrong’ views, or Christian groups being banned from using venues for meetings because their views ‘don’t align’ with those of the venue owner.
4. The State is ‘God’
Marxism effectively makes the state an obligatory object of ‘worship’ in that it is the supreme authority overall, as Caesar was in Roman times. That of course is what Christians then, as now, could not accpt. This affects how children are raised and means that parents lose their God-appointed primary role for their children’s upbringing, and the state determines how they are raised. This is one of the twin aims of Marxism, namely the destruction of the family (the other being the destruction of the Church). As Melvin Tinker writes, ‘This circumvents the parents’ traditional role in passing on values to the next generation’.
5. The Manipulation of Truth
It has long been said, and well demonstrated, that ‘Truth is the first casualty of War’, and this is certainly true in the war Christians are fighting against the Marxist world view, which is a tool of the Hideous Strength, that power described by Jesus as the ‘Father of lies’ (John 8:44).
One way we see this manipulation of Truth is in the rewriting of history. The central character in George Orwell’s ‘1984’ is Winston Smith who works in the Ministry of Truth, which should more accurately be called the Ministry of Misinformation, as we saw in the Soviet Union state news outlet ‘Pravda’ (Ironically meaning Truth). Smith’s job was to rewrite history when the current version no longer serves the purpose of ‘Big Brother’ (the ruling group).
We saw examples of this in the 2020-21 Covid outbreak with bureaucratic and cross-media scare campaigns seeking to dragoon people into fear and obedience. Examples are-
a. The totally false and scary warning by public health officials reported in the Sydney Morning Herald (and therefore read by a lot of people), that Covid would kill up to 150,000 Australians, whereas the Truth according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics is that, up to August 31st, 2022, only 11,441 died from or WITH (note) Covid.
b. The constant pressure to get vaccinated against Covid as a community duty because that would prevent us passing on the illness to others. This has been shown to be false, and even the vaccine producers themselves have admitted that they did not even test to see whether their vaccines prevented transmission!
A further piece of distorted ‘Truth’ is the claim that many Pacific Island nations are being drowned by climate-change-induced rising seas, a claim that is used to drive the demand that western countries should give trillions of dollars to such nations to help them overcome the threat.
The Truth is however otherwise, as documented in studies by the University of Auckland and others show that 40% plus of the land areas of these nations have actually grown in size and another 40% plus have remained stable over the last six decades.
As in ‘1984’, in Marxism Truth becomes malleable in order to suit the ideology of the time. Again, this is the antithesis of the Bible where Jesus is THE Truth. Truth is singular, there is only one version, and His name is Jesus who is God.
6. Manipulation of Language
Marxism, and today’s Cultural Marxism, manipulates language to achieve its ideological purposes. An example of this is when it seeks to replace millennia-old and worldwide terms such as ‘Mother and Father’, with terms such as ‘birthing/non-birthing parent’, or ‘breastfeeding’ with ‘chest feeding’. This is in order to weaken the God-designed basic unit of society, i.e., the family. For the same ideological reason, Marxism seeks to blur definitions of terms such as Woman/Man to further a gender-fluidity ideology, and undermine God’s good plan for human society.
7. Removal of Freedoms
A major characteristic of Marxism is the removal of long fought for, and died for, freedoms, whether by the Bishops that forced the English King John to sign the Magna Carta in 1215, the martyrs of the sixteenth century Reformation in Europe, or the millions of men and women who fought Nazi totalitarianism in World War 2. Such freedoms that until ten or so years ago were taken for granted. The removal of them is demonstrated in the attack on free speech as we have already mentioned.
***
This is a very brief outline of some aspects of atheistic Marxism and its equally godless offspring, the Cultural Marxism that is the tool of the Enemy, the Long Dark Shadow that Hideous Strength is casting over society and all of its institutions.
Marxism seeks to destroy the family and the Church. In both cases, in the West it is well on the way to achieving both of its goals, yet Christians and more importantly Christian leaders, with honourable exceptions, continue to act as if none of this is real.
So the question is, how should Christians respond to the Hideous Strength that is filling the spiritual and moral vacuum left by the retreat of the Biblical controlling story (metanarrative) that shaped and directed western society for centuries?We might adopt Churchill’s question and ask “what is our policy”? The answer can only be “to wage war . . . . . with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny”, the tyranny that is destroying western society.
Whatever forms they take, our policies must be ones that-
a. Recognize the reality that committed and active Christians are now reduced to a diminishing ‘Remnant’ in a western society that is now pagan for the first time for 1500 years.
b. Start to educate and equip Christians, and their children, to be able to discern, understand and oppose the Hideous Strength’s subtle takeover of society. Here is where churches are pretty much silent, a silence that is most certainly not golden!
c. In the power of the Spirit, develop strategies that take on ‘That Hideous Strength’ like guerrilla units that are designed and are deployed to take back the Enemy’s now well-established strongholds in schools, universities, politics, parliaments etc.
d. Develop a Trojan Horse strategy that zealously seeks to infiltrate and to impregnate the neo-pagan ‘dough’ of society with the ‘yeast’ of the gospel.
e. Realize that-
‘The political will of the opponents of Christianity is strong and unrelenting. The Church by and large appears confused and compromising. The stakes are incredibly high; nothing less than the survival of a civilization and the eternal well-being of countless souls.’
So, for those of us claiming to be followers of Jesus, and even more importantly for Christian leaders, the question for each fellowship, house church, simple church, Christian organizations etc., is-
‘What is our aim, policy, strategy to take on ‘That Hideous Strength’? Do we even have one?’
As the Long Shadow of that ‘Hideous Strength’ brings darkness over the erstwhile Christian West, do we truly realize that-
‘The stakes are incredibly high; nothing less than the survival of a civilization and the eternal well-being of countless souls.’
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