I am reading through Kings and Chronicles right now in my annual trek through the Bible, and the Prophet, Elijah, has been the “star” these last few days. Elijah means “Yahweh is my God” in Hebrew. He is known for his great faith and is one of the most prominent and revered prophets in the Old Testament.
Elijah is known for his fierce faith in the face of difficult circumstances when Ahab, the King of Israel, and his domineering, foreign wife, Jezebel killed off most of the faithful Hebrew prophets and instituted the worship of Baal and Asherah for the nation of Israel.
Elijah stood defiantly against Ahab and Jezebel who sought to kill him for his defiance Elijah is, perhaps, most known for his public challenge to the prophets of Baal and Asherah that culminated in a powerful demonstration of Yahweh’s superiority to those foreign gods.
This story and another story in a similar vein to it are the backdrop for this article. If Elijah is an exemplary man of faith, to what extent should we follow his example today in the expression of our faith in the face of governmental and cultural opposition?
This is part of the vision of John that was written down and preserved for us in the Book of Revelation:
“The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said: ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever.’”
Revelation 11:15 NIV
As believers, we accept that this vision was from God, and it relates to future events (events that would take place after John experience this vision). We don’t know the timing of this particular event, but I think it is safe to say it has not happened yet.
Many people have spent much energy and time trying to discern when Jesus is coming back. Jesus said we won’t know when he is coming, so I figure our time is not well spent trying to figure it out.
All I know is that we haven’t heard this trumpet yet. That means the Kingdom of the world is not yet under the lordship of Christ, and I believe our time is better spent determining what we should be doing about that reality until that trumpet sounds.
The kingdom of this world began when Adam and Eve stepped foot out of the garden, and it continues today. Revelation and other books in the Bible reveal that the kingdom of the world is under the sway of dark powers that rebel and go against God and his purposes. We do not live in a world that is presently in submission to God.
We also don’t live in a world that is controlled by us. We sometimes seem to think and act as if we do control it or that we can control it, and we sometimes act as if God wants us to seize control of it. But does He?
I don’t think so! I believe Jesus blew the lid off of that idea, which is the same belief the Hebrews had in the First Century. They thought that the Messiah would come and set up his throne, then and there. Instead, the Gospels reveal that God became man – the Messiah – and he subjected Himself to the dark forces that control the world by giving up his life to them.
This is the upside down “wisdom” of God. Turn the other cheek; love your enemies; lay down your life for others: this is what Jesus taught us to do, and this is what he did! He taught us to do the same thing when he said:.
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”
Matthew 16:24-25
Jesus doesn’t qualify these things. He doesn’t say that we should live this way, providing that the world is good. He knew precisely how bad it was, and it still is.
He also didn’t tell us to go out into the desert and wall ourselves off from the world. Jesus went right into the heart of the world.
He walked its dusty roads and littered streets. He met people where they were. He stood before its corrupt leaders, religious and civil, and he preached the good news of God’s kingdom – a kingdom that is available to the believer right now, the ultimate establishment on earth of which is yet to come.
Notice that John in his vision refers to the kingdom of the world in the singular. We tend to divide nations into good and bad. We tend to think that some nations are good and and others not so much. We tend to think our own nation is on the good side of the ledger.
I have news for you! There are only two kingdoms: the Kingdom of God, and the kingdom of the world. The kingdom that rules this earth right now is the kingdom of the world.
Furthermore, the kingdom of this world consists of many different iterations. The kingdom of this world includes China, Russian, Iran, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, the United Stated and even Israel. The kingdom of this world includes all the various states, provinces, regions, cities, and governmental and civic organizations that exist.
That fact hits home with me today as I consider the words of John, the Revelator, that the kingdom of the world will become the “Kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah” in the day when that seventh trumpet sounds. That facts hits home especially hard as I think about the fact that the seventh trumpet has not sounded. Yet
I’m listening to the Unbelievable? podcast replay of the discussion with Holly Ordway & Laura Miller: A convert and skeptic in Narnia. As always, I find the conversation on the Unbelievable! podcast intriguing and thought provoking, engaging people on opposite ends of the thought spectrum.
Holly Ordway and Laura Miller had similar experiences in reading the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis. They read them as young children and loved the books purely for the fantasy. When they were older and discovered that the books had Christian themes and symbolism, they felt betrayed.
Laura Miller explained her sense of betrayal. The fantasy world she imagined and loved turned out to be something different than she thought. The discovery left her feeling like she was on the outside looking in.
As I think about it, the allure of the Chronicles of Narnia is exactly the sense of being on the inside, of discovering a world through the back of an ordinary wardrobe that is unknown and unseen by adults. As a child, perhaps nothing is as intriguing as a secret adventure unknown by your parents.
The experience of finding a whole new world quite by accident through an ordinary wardrobe that is unknown to the greater world, is a fantastical and intimate experience for a child. That intimacy, perhaps, is what gave way to Laura Miller’s feeling of betrayal.
The discovery of “hidden” Christian symbolism, allegory, and themes “planted” in the Chronicles of Narnia betrayed her sense of intimacy with the story. The unveiling of the “secret” behind the secret world she loved for its own sake, destroyed the world of her imagination. The secret that lured her in was a facade.
Holly Ordway felt the same betrayal at first. The secret behind the secret turned the story on its head. The secret, the real secret, was initially hidden from them. When the secret was exposed, they found a world they didn’t expect or know they had encountered.
For Miller, the experience was like losing innocence. In a moment, her childlike fantasy world was forever undone. The story wasn’t the same. The magic was lost.
For Holly Ordway the sense of betrayal gave way to curiosity – like the curiosity with which a young child might explore a hidden world found inside a wardrobe. It led her eventually out of atheism and into the world of faith in God. The secret behind the secret opened up a better, larger world to her.
The discussion was a good one. I am reminded of a series of dreams I had as a child. The first night found I could fly as I clutched Silly Putty in my hand. It was the most exhilarating dream I ever had. It seemed real, and the realness of it lingered after I woke.
I had the same dream the next night, but I became but I self-conscious. I didn’t know how it worked. I was afraid I couldn’t repeat the feat. I was still able to fly but not as long. My self-consciousness seemed to dispel the magic, leaving me with a dreaded sense of not knowing how the magic worked.
The next night I had the Silly Putty in my hand, but my wishful thinking didn’t work. Try as I might, to make myself fly. I could not recreate the magic, and I never had another dream of flying.
In the initial dream I had tapped into magic quite by accident, like wandering into a wardrobe that opened into an unknown world. But, I could not reproduce the magic because I didn’t have the knowledge of the magic. In Laura Miller’s case, the discovery of the secret behind the secret, the knowledge of the magic, undid the magic for her.
She says that the world of Narnia was no longer as she imagined it when she first read the Chronicles. That knowledge was the undoing of her own understanding of that world. Faced with the reality of it, it was no longer magic to her. Some adult turned the lights on, and the magic was gone.
I am putting some words into what she said, but I can feel her sense of loss. It was the same sense of loss I felt when I could no longer fly in my dreams and never dreamed of flying again.
While I feel her sense of loss, the similarities in our experiences end there. In my case, a lack knowledge about the magic flying was my undoing, or so I felt. In Laura Miller’s case, the knowledge of the Christianity behind the Chronicles of Narnia was her undoing, or so she felt.
She developed her own image of that fantasy world of Narnia, and discovering Christian themes in the Narnian fabric betrayed her own imagination. I read the Chronicles of Narnia in college as a very new Christian. The way those Christian themes played out for me in the pages of those books was entering the wardrobe inside the wardrobe. It was like black and white giving way to technicolor. The nuance and subtlety in which Lewis wove those themes into a beautiful story was inspiring. Images from those books live in my imagination still today and color my theology.
Laura Miller had a distasteful experience of religion as a child. She didn’t get into much detail, though she says she grew up Catholic. I grew up Catholic also. I don’t want to be unfair to Catholics or Catholicism, but I can relate to her negative feelings. (Holly Ordway, on the other hand, found the wardrobe inside the wardrobe, so to speak, and became a believer, and a Catholic.)
Laura Miller went on to claim that “believers” live in a reality that “operates on another plane that, if I am lucky, I can fall in a hole and be in the reality they live in.” She assumes that Christian faith is just another fantasy world – one that is foreign to her.
She says, “I just don’t experience it that way,” meaning life, I suppose, though I don’t want to put words in her mouth. I encourage you to go back and listen to the conversation yourself. The following statement, however, sets the stage for my thinking today, which is this:
“I don’t think I ever really feel in danger of accidentally believing… or stumbling into it.”
She goes onto to explain her interpretation of Lewis’s past: that “he found himself wanting to believe…. and then he was able to find the pathway… towards the thing that he wanted.” She goes on to say, “I don’t really feel that desire…, and it’s kind of impossible to accidentally, or sort of inadvertently, to come into a state of a desire to believe.” She concluded, “I have emerged from all kinds of literature from all kinds of faith without feeling [such a desire].”
Her comments about “accidentally believing,” and “stumbling into” faith,” and “a desire to believe,” as she puts it, is what inspires me to write today. It begs for comment.
The Gospel records a three year period of time in which Jesus seemingly performed miracles, signs and wonders everywhere he went. Perhaps, the accounts in the Gospels give us an impression that doesn’t correspond to the reality because they recount the many miraculous things he did, but they don’t describe all the times in between.
It seems strange, given all the miracles, signs and wonders that Jesus did that the Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus one day to test him by asking him to show them a sign from heaven. (Matt. 16:1) Perhaps, they wanted him to do it on command, like a science experiment to prove himself.
Perhaps, they had only heard of the things Jesus did, but they hadn’t actually seen him do anything. Perhaps, they didn’t trust the accounts of the common people Jesus seemed to prefer to hang out with. They were more gullible and less discerning.
Attitudes like that haven’t changed much in 2000 years. The Sadducees and Pharisees were more learned. The Sadducees didn’t believe in supernatural occurrences, miracles or demons. The Pharisees did believe in those things, but they were skeptical. The two groups had very different worldviews, but they were aligned in their skepticism.
When these elite religious leaders asked Jesus for a private performance – “a sign from heaven” – he refused. And, he said this:
“An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign[i]; and a sign will not be given it, except the sign of Jonah.”
(Matthew 16:4)
The fact that these two groups, one that believed in the supernatural and one that didn’t, were aligned in their skepticism suggests that their “problem” with Jesus was that he challenged their dogmas. They doubted the fact that he did miracles, signs and wonders because of the content of what he was saying.
And, Jesus seemed to revel in provoking them on those differences!
The Pharisees (who believed in the supernatural) determined that healing on the Sabbath is work and is, therefore, prohibited by the Law of Moses. They demanded that Jesus not heal on the Sabbath, but Jesus did it anyway. (Matt. 12:1-14)
Ironically, this healing that was done right in the Pharisees’ presence occurred four chapters before they came to Jesus and demanded a sign from heaven. They had seen a sign from heaven already and dismissed it out of hand because it went against their beliefs.
Jesus challenged their preconceived ideas and expectations. He challenged their authority to determine what is work in violation of the Sabbath and what isn’t. They watched Jesus heal a man with a shriveled hand, but they dismissed it because of what he taught that was contrary to what they believed.
God showed the Pharisees a sign (the healing of a man with a shriveled hand), but they were too focused on his violation of their understanding of Scripture and religious dogma to notice it for what it was.
This story illustrates the danger of our religious dogmas and preconceived ideas of what God should do and not do. Even when the evidence is staring us in the face, we can be tempted to ignore it, gloss over it, and explain it away in favor of how we interpret and understand Scripture.
Jonathan Haidt wrote this week in the Atlantic, “The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit.” He says,
“Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”
I resonate deeply with this.
Haidt observes that we are “becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the Constitution, economics, and American history.” Many people talk about the tribalism of our times, but Haidt suggests that tribalism isn’t the most accurate description of what is going on. Haidt finds the clearest understanding of the polarization of our times in the story of the Tower of Babel:
“Babel is not a story about tribalism; it’s a story about the fragmentation of everything. It’s about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community. It’s a metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but within the left and within the right, as well as within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families.”
Haidt focuses blame on social media. He identifies 2011 as “the year humanity rebuilt the Tower of Babel” with Google Translate symbolically bridging the confusion of different languages. He says (for “techno-democratic optimists”), “[I]t seemed only the beginning of what humanity could do.”
Around the same time, Zuckerberg proclaimed “the power to share” a catalyst to transform “our core institutions and industries”. He may have been prophetic, but I doubt he envisioned such a corrosive change.
Haidt, something of a social scientist, himself, says, “Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories.” Social media substantially weakens all three of these fundamental building blocks of a cohesive society.
It started harmlessly with the sharing of personal information to stay connected, but it quickly morphed into a kind of personal performance and branding platform. Along the way it developed into powerful weaponry at the fingertips of anyone and everyone at once.
The “Like” and “Share” buttons became commodities of individual enterprise and personal combat. Algorithms exposed (and exploited) the emotional currency of heightened individuality and the power of anger.
“Going viral” fed the hopes of Internet junkies like the possibility of a jackpot snares gambling addicts in its steely fingers, and the stakes were just as high. Haidt says, “The newly tweaked platforms were almost perfectly designed to bring out our most moralistic and least reflective selves. The volume of outrage was shocking….” The rapidity and its ability to spread was more virulent than COVID, or the plague.
Haidt lauds the framers of the Constitution for designing a republic built on “mechanisms to slow things down, cool passions, require compromise, and give leaders some insulation from the mania of the moment….” Haidt recalls Madison’s warning of “the innate human proclivity toward ‘faction’” so “inflamed with ‘mutual animosity’” that people are “more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good.’”
Haidt recalls also that Madison warned of a human tendency toward “factionalism” that can fan “the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions” into passions that ignite our most violent conflicts. Social media has ultimately proven him right.
Thus, Haidt says, “Social media has both magnified and weaponized the frivolous,” chipping away at our trust. The loss of trust makes every decision and election “a life-and-death struggle to save the country from the other side”.
The sagging number of people who have faith in their elected officials hangs at an all time low. In my lifetime, the United Sates of America has gone from a high of 77% trust in the federal government (1964) to a low of 17% in 2019. (See Public Trust in Government: 1958-2021, by PEW Research May 21, 2021)
Social media has corroded trust in government, news media, institutions and people in general. Some claim that social media may be detrimental, maybe even toxic, to democracy, which requires “widely internalized acceptance of the legitimacy of rules, norms, and institutions” for survival. “When people lose trust in institutions”, says Haidt, “They lose trust in the stories told by those institutions.”
Insiders have been warning us of “the power of social media as a universal solvent, breaking down bonds and weakening institutions everywhere”, while offering nothing in return but the chaos of utter freedom and will. Haidt references movements like Occupy Wall Street, fomented primarily online, that “demanded the destruction of existing institutions without offering an alternative vision of the future or an organization that could bring it about”.
We have become a society of “people yelling at each other and living in bubbles of one sort or another”, says former CIA analyst Martin Gurri, in his 2014 book, The Revolt of the Public. The people behind the social media giants may not have intended such a result, but they have “unwittingly dissolved the mortar of trust, belief in institutions, and shared stories that had held a large and diverse secular democracy together”.
Haidt claims he can pinpoint the proverbial fall of the American Tower of Babel to the intersection of “the ‘great awokening’ on the left and the ascendancy of Donald Trump on the right”. Haidt doesn’t blame Trump for the fall; he merely exploited it. Trump proved that outrage is the currency of the post-Babel economy in which “stage performance crushes competence” and Twitter overwhelms newspapers and the nightly news, fracturing and fragmenting the truth before it can spread and take hold.
“After Babel”, Haidt says, “Nothing really means anything anymore––at least not in a way that is durable and on which people widely agree.” Haidt is particularly morose on the prospect of overcoming the rapid dissolution of the American democracy. Unfortunately, I share his pessimism. How did we get here? How do we move forward?
Navigating by Faith 