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Sometimes We Must Fight

World-views are a dime a dozen. The internet, books, television, and podcasts all have people with a different worldview. But let me tell you a secret that perhaps you haven’t thought about. You also have a world-view! A world-view is the lens by which you see things. There are millions of people that have a naturalistic world-view. Others have a humanistic world-view. In the last 40 plus years the world-view of post-modernism has become a popular flavor among the lost and deconstructing Christians. We see world-views operating right before our very eyes in government and in the culture. An example of this has been played out in the past few weeks and months each day. How so? Look at what is happening at colleges and universities around America. UCLA, Columbia, every Ivy League school, and even schools in more conservative parts of the country are having protests which in reality aren’t protests, they are riots. NBC news stated on their website on April 26th, that over 40 major universities are experiencing protests in favor of Hamas. With their faces covered, they seek to deter Jewish students and teachers from their freedom to speak and walk to their destinations without being harmed. The presidents and officials of these institutions are feckless cowards. Destruction of property and the beatings of innocent people have become common everyday events. What is the underlying reason? A world-view that is all things evil. It is Marxist at the core and divides people into two classes of people, the oppressors and the oppressed. Every conflict in their minds can be boiled down to only these two groups. These useful idiots, aka college students, are protesting predominately two countries, the United States and Israel. In their mind, these are two greatest evils and need to be destroyed without realizing these two countries are the main ones giving them their right to protest. If they tried this in a Muslim country they would be executed. The U.S. and Israel are the colonialists, and for their entire existence have kept the oppressed under their boot. October 7th, 2023 and the killing of 1200 Jewish people was justified in the minds of the Hamas supporters because Israel simply exists. The slogan “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free” is a slogan calling for the extermination of the state of Israel. You may not know this but that goal is precisely what is stated in the Palestinian Liberation Organizations Charter. World-views matter. The world-view of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot in the twentieth century murdered over 100 million people under communism and these evil men thought nothing of it. It was for the greater good in their mind. A simple observation from history and our own antidotal experience, if honesty and truth are valued, would show that the biblical worldview, Judeo-Christianity, has produced the greatest standard of living, the greatest acts of charity, the greatest advancements medically, and the greatest philosophy (worldview) to raise people from squalor, poverty, and despotism in the whole history of the world. World-views matter.

At the beginning of this blog, I made the statement “you have a world-view.” What is yours? I can tell you mine and I pray it is yours also, if you name yourself as a Christian. It is a biblical world-view. In terms of right versus wrong, good versus evil, morality versus immorality, the deciding factor is what does the Bible say about it. A biblical world-view should be something you are willing to go to war over. All beliefs are not equal. The reason I am willing to fight this battle is because of immediate and eternal ramifications. If a biblical worldview is rejected in society, evils increase, affecting the children of the next generation. We have seen the transexual movement explode in the last 5 years. Why? This demonic world-view is celebrated in education and medical professions. Greed and perversion are in this mix. In the past five years there has been a 5000% increase in cases. That is a number I heard two weeks ago on a podcast. T.S. Eliot used a phrase when referring to a biblical world-view. He said it was “to think in Christian categories. To have the mind of Christ.” I’m not willing to stay silent and watch a worldview that has killed millions, such as communism, and now a worldview that mutilates healthy bodies of children and young teens because their parents wish to be cool. The Bible speaks about war and going to war. Sometimes the battle is a spiritual battle (Ephesians 6), and sometimes the battle is in the physical realm. Secondly, the ramifications of a horrible worldview for eternity are also evident from the Bible. Eternal separation from God, Hell, is where a non-biblical world-view lands people.

Numbers 1 has a fascinating pattern that is easily seen. The organization of the nation of Israel is being put in place. The tribes have a location, with the Tabernacle being the center of the camp. The very first thing that happens in the book has to do with war preparation when that time comes, as it always does. Moses knew that battles would come because the enemy hates the ways of God. Every man that was twenty years old and upward that could fight was conscripted into the army. The men of the Israelite tribes, except Levi, were conscripted to fight. The phrase “all that are able to go to war” is used multiple times in one chapter. This is the list of verses: 3, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 40, 42, & 45. When you and I are confronted with evil, we stand. We speak the truth, biblical truth, in the face of a culture that is run amok. The platform I have isn’t a large one, and perhaps you think the same way about your platform. That’s alright. It isn’t about the largeness; it is about the faithfulness when called upon to be salt and light. We may not win the fight against the culture, but ultimately, we are on the winning side. As long as I have strength, God being my helper, I’ll fight for the children of our church and community. I’ll warn the teens and young parents to be wary and alert because the devil, along with his minions helping him with his work, are like a roaring lion seeking to devour. Erroneous worldviews can be devastating, and the Christian underpinnings can be ripped up, leaving the society to flounder and fail, leaving nothing but destruction in its wake.

What do we do? We pray. We witness and speak truth. If hearts aren’t changed, there will be no change, only evil continually. We read, study, learn the Word of God. We listen to good men of God that preach truth. We seek to grow spiritually and develop our minds to think all things Christian. Romans 12:2 instructs us to “renew our minds.” We can only renew our minds as we know the Bible and the worldview it presents. World-views matter!