2x2=4 "living in the truth", living as if you are free within a system that is far from free.
Jesus said, “Pay close attention, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” —Matthew 10:16
God doesn’t give us the spiritual gift of wisdom to spare us the bother of thinking and reasoning for ourselves. We are living in perilous times, end of days times really. The prophetic messages Jesus shared about these times speaks signs of wisdom for us to guide us as we live through these times. The one prediction we sort of gloss over as we quickly take in the magnitude of the violence of predicted wars, earthquakes, and famines, is the predicted hatred and culture wars that will be happening. Today we hear in the news a lot about culture wars, and in fact you may count yourself among the culture warrior class, left or right. Maybe you’re a political junkie, or Patriot, maybe a progressive wokenistas, or climate activist. Whatever you do when you’re doing you, it’s a war we’re living in, a propaganda war of the worst kind. Cancel culture today is as devilish as were the Salem witch trials of old. And it’s all as Jesus said it would be.
Matthew 24:8,10-12 (Jesus’ Prophecy)
“These are the beginnings of sorrows…many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another.”
The result of this will be many folks will harden their hearts and many false teachings will result as lawlessness replaces mercy and anger disposes grace. People’s hearts will be filled with disdain, fed by a constant stream of newspeak via the 24/7 news cycles and social media outlets. The propaganda ministers will preach their ideological faith nonstop. Being easily offended will become the unforgivable sin, and Jesus told us this would happen. He told us these betrayals would take place, that children would hate their parents, brother against brother, families divided. And this warring age will be driven along by wave after wave of pundits, propagandists and Party preachers, gaslighting the truth with ingenious lies and half truth fact-checking. And it was for these reasons Jesus warned his followers to be crafty, wise, and kind. He DIDN’T say keep to yourself, don’t speak up, sheepishly remain quiet; he simply warned that many will grow cold and for a lot of people that means they’ll retreat from participating in society.
When the times got a little dangerous, when the crowds became angrier, louder and more unfriendly, did Jesus retreat? Did he hide at home in Nazareth? Did he refuse to face the music stating he wasn’t political?
What did he do?
He headed straight into the dens of wolves, like a sheep among wolves, and he spoke the truth. They tried to cancel culture his ministry and he turned up the gas spending time with sinners, touching the untouchables, forgiving the unforgivable, healing the unclean on all the unapproved days in all sorts of unapproved ways. He knew what to say to silence the stone throwers. He knew what to say and when to say it in order to cleanse the halls of justice of its blatant, unrighteousness, ungodly state approved, lifestyles. And he knew when to retreat to pray and gather to himself the courage and wisdom he would need to go out and do it all over again.
How are we to live in this prophesied culture?
The word of God tells us to speak. To speak kindly and yet with saltiness. Speak truth to power as they say. The power being the truth. We must understand that the “Party” is like a church. The Party teaches that existence shapes consciousness, that circumstances alters the culture. The Party understands how to use the irrational fears of the people to drive them towards their ideological ends. They’ll employ clubs, poetry, art, movies, and ceremonies. All statist church venues for reaching deeper into the stratum of human consciousness in order to drive home the point that public enemy number one is all things Christian. They must be ejected into the margins of society, not because of what they do, but because of who they are and what they believe. And they train up their congregation of statist faithful to believe what’s happening in the society is necessary, even if it is temporarily bad on the surface. It’s for our own good they tell themselves. They’ll light and stoke the fires on which they’ll burn the vulgar and offensive witches, in order to force compliance to the magic of the new world order.
Resistance is not futile. During the Soviet era in post war Poland, the resistance movements operated by Vaclav Havel's ideal of "living in the truth", which was living as if you are free within a system that is far from free. They would post in their shop windows and on banners, “2x2=4”. This simple “slogan” regarding the truth was one way in how they would express to the world that the truth was still true, even if the state approved truth of 2x2=5 is the only acceptable truth for those who want to belong to the acceptable, intelligent, culturally clean class.
Don’t you see Jesus doing likewise? Jesus often exposed those who tried to publicly humiliate the perceived unclean people. Jesus used words like “hypocrites”. He called them whitewashed tombs. He called them broods of vipers. YES! Jesus name called. He offended, with words of truth, the people who practiced offenses to God’s love, grace, and righteousness. These people were the leaders of the law, but they were pretenders. Hypocrite literally comes from the Greek word 'hypokrites', which means "an actor." And who are the chief actors today? The intelligentsia, the politicians, and the state approved media ministers of newspeak.
Now what?
What does it take to live in this world? Simple answer, wisdom. Not with the popular perceived wisdom of go along to get along. Jesus told us to be like serpents. In the Old Testament serpents represented temptation, trickery, sin, and the underworld. Was he telling us to employ these dark-side demonic influences? Of course not. He balanced those crafty influencers with the qualifying agent of being dove-like, being spiritually attuned to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The dove represents the truth, the Spirit of Truth. It represents a guiding force towards the way of truth. In the days of Noah, after 40 days and nights of trouble, the dove found and led them towards safe, dry land . In days of old travelers would carry with them doves with very long strings tied to their feet. When storms came upon their travels and the way forward was clouded with fog and storm, they would release the dove tied to the string and it would fly high above the fog. And after a moment of circling above the storm suddenly the string would pull straight in one direction, the direction they should go.
Jesus tried to help us understand that we can advance the kingdom of God effectively without becoming predators ourselves. He taught we must be both “subtle”, or “crafty”, or “shrewd” (see Genesis 3:1.) while also following the Holy Spirit. We are to understand and be watchful for the ways in which snakes work and follow the ways of the dove. Innocence does not equal gullibility. Act with compassion, strive for justice. “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (1 Peter 2:12).
May God bless you friends, and empower you with the strength of his mighty truth. And may he protect you in your ways.
#Christianity #Spirituality #CultureWars #Truth #Communism #Globalism