We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

What’s Wrong With The World?
Hartwig HKD via Compfight
The reports coming out of Fort Hood this morning once again highlight that our world is messed up. And it often feels like we are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as we try to find answers to address the problems we face. Here are some reflections by Greg on the real “war” that plagues our situation. When we fail to see this, we fail to enter into the kind of victory that God has to offer.
God’s Kingdom is “not of this world,” and neither is its way of advancing. The Jews’ worldview of Jesus’ day embraced the reality that God confronted spiritual opposition when carrying out his will on earth. The OT depicted this as evil forces in the form of cosmic monsters and hostile waters that threatened the earth. Many Jews came to believe that the earth was under the control of evil forces. Many also believed that in the near future God was going to bring this demonic oppression to an end—an intensified view of war against evil called an apocalyptic worldview.
The New Testament is steeped in this language. It refers to rulers, principalities, powers, authorities, dominions, cosmic powers, thrones, spiritual forces, elemental spirits of the universe, gods, and a number of other spiritual entities. As many scholars have argued, in the first century apocalyptic worldview, these various titles refer to different kinds of powerful cosmic beings or forces that exercise an oppressive and destructive influence over particular aspects of creation, society and human-made institutions.
Trying to understand what’s wrong with our world, with creation, and with human society necessarily falls short unless we recognized a transcendent, demonic power at work. Many have identified the destructive work of Western individualism, consumerism, secularism, technology, nationalism, the media, the military industrial complex, and entertainment, to name a few. These powers operate at a level of systematic oppression, and the kingdom of God stands against these powers. It offers an alternative to them.
It’s not that Jesus or anyone else in the early church placed all the blame for the evils in society and in creation on these powers of evil. The New Testament clearly holds people responsible for their own choices. But in keeping with the apocalyptic worldview, Jesus and the earliest disciples saw the powers as centrally involved in all evil, influencing and empowering the evil that resides in human hearts.
There is a real war going on, whether we see it or not. For “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph 6:12). We are at war, but it’s a war of a different kind. We don’t fight the powers with the weapons that the powers take up. We wage war by revolting against violent patterns and living in love.
Here’s the challenge for us:
A soldier in battle conducts himself very differently from a civilian on vacation. The vacationer naturally wants to indulge his or her interests and desires, while avoiding inconveniences as much as possible. But soldiers understand they are called to sacrifice their interests and desires and suffer major inconveniences, if not their lives, to advance the cause for which they fight. The question every follower of Jesus must honestly ask is this: Do I live my life with the mindset and values of a vacationer or a soldier? (Understanding Spiritual Warfare: Four Views, 151).
Category: General
Tags: Current Events, Evil, Kingdom Living, Living in Love, Soldiers, Spiritual Warfare
Related Reading

Little Pacifism
Richard Beck spoke about something he names Little Pacifism on his Experimental Theology website. It’s so easy, in the name of peacemaking, to become angry and aggressive. I suppose this is just part of what it means to be human. However, if we hope to bring the Kingdom of God closer the earth (and to…

The Bible, Government and Christian Anarchy
This “essay” contains my informal reflections on biblical texts that I believe support what some call “Christian Anarchy.” Consider it a very rough draft of a future project. I’ll argue that Kingdom people are called to pledge their allegiance to God alone, not to any nation, government, political party or ideology. Because Kingdom people are…

Cheap Grace and Consumer Christianity
The “cheap grace” Gospel sells well in America. We live in a culture of consumerism that conditions us to habitually look for “the best deal.” We’re more or less trained from birth to live in the question; “How can we get the most for the least?” We think this way about our houses, cars, clothes,…

Our Insatiable Hunger
The only kind of life animals care about is biological. If their basic physical needs for food and shelter are met, they’re satisfied. Humans also want their basic physical needs met, of course, but that isn’t enough. We hunger for more. Not only do we want to be alive, we want to feel fully alive.…

Racism: Why Whites have Trouble “Getting It”
I’m a member of a special task group on racial reconciliation that consists of a dozen or so pastors from around the Twin Cities. We’ve been meeting periodically for the past year or so in order to strategize how to help the Church of the Twin Cities as a whole move forward in racial reconciliation.…

A Response to Tony Campolo on Fighting the Powers
While I have nothing but admiration for Tony Campolo, I differ with his views on how Christians are to be change agents in the world. He has always been a strong proponent of Christians bringing about change by political means. I, on the other hand, am not in principle opposed to Christians engaging in politics,…