For This Reason 47

[HKHaugan]

Some of us remember the days of the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog. Every possible material thing you could want was in those pages. That catalog was an event everyone waited for. It was the great wish book. It was loaded with pictures of people, machinery, tools, musical instruments, clothes and all kinds of other things. Everything in it was mail order only and the cost included shipping even for returned goods. Every house had one. Building one's life and kingdom became the acquisition of what the Sears, Roebuck catalog offered.

But there was one other book that was an American heritage inspiration, the Bible. Now my family may have been one of the few that didn't have it on the living room coffee table but it was in every school and on most teacher's desks. It was read from in assembly and quoted in speeches and people prayed to open the day and start class. Even though it wasn't read at home it was a singular expected catalog of social influence. As I look back it was the catalog that teachers, businessmen, housewives and community leaders in general accepted as the guide to thought and behavior. That doesn't mean society, the nation and people were more moral. It was the acceptance of the Bible's themes that undergirded the atmosphere of a nation that was entrepreneurial, hardworking and innovative. People were still sinners but sinners who gave it nudged lip service, knew its demands and inner guilt recognition through its moral calling. Underneath its banner the armed forces were prayed for and covered as they helped deliver the world from the demonic uprising of Hitler and then the communistic scourge that followed in its wake. The importance, uniqueness and freedom of the individual poured out of it into the cultural scene. Believer and non-believer alike benefited from its impress. The atmosphere was such it seemed as though those who had no faith yielded to its principles out of respect for its historical resilience.

It is in our most recent decades that its influence has been challenged, taken out of schools and denigrated in our university systems. There is a new atmosphere, another kind of spiritual wave that has assaulted our country. It's like a wave of fear that forces us to view everything immoral as acceptable regardless of the physical and social consequences. The fear is that having a standard of morality is offensive to individual rights and freedom. What we are experiencing is the subtle tyranny of the minority, the offended individual and those who perceive they are victims of indiscriminate discrimination. The fear that one is perceived as prejudiced, that might cause profits to decrease and that regardless of the truth of the situation even the appearance or suggestion that bias may rise up, motivates withdrawal from honest conversation. This is a serious spiritual condition, resembling a contagious fever, sweeping through the nation. The saddest part of this fever is that the first to be infected by it are the leaders in all our institutions; corporate, church, schools, political and community groups. They cave into fear and their fear cuts at the roots of the institutions they are called to lead. It is the leaders in every walk of life in our major institutions that are betraying those they are called to lead. Leaders retreat into comfortable boardrooms and offices rationalizing their fear while their lackeys take the brunt of criticism. They stay out of touch. That's what compromised leaders do. Remember Peter and the rest of those disciples when they fled after Jesus' arrest? Coupled with this fever comes the spirit of social anarchy and social paranoia. The devil's strategy is quite obvious. Divide, divided, divide until everyone withdraws from everyone else in total fear. Everyone now can be offended by anyone and anything without recourse or truth playing a part. Add to this the breakdown of morality and we are swamped in a flood of divisive proportions. This entire paragraph describes the contemporary work of the devil in the world, his province as prince, prince of fear (Jn.12:31).

Recovery is possible as it has always been in the providence of God. But it takes another kind of wave to counter the effects of the spirit of fear and its subspirits, the power of the Holy Spirit from whom the comes the fruit that can prevail over this erosive condition (Gal.5:22-23). Paul says it beautifully, “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father'(Rom.8:15)!” It is the Holy Spirit that brings us the Word of God, our spiritual catalog. In it we find the ability to know the Lord in His fullness. Through it He gives us the ability to be His witnesses to bring others to Him. As we grow in the gifts of the Spirit it teaches, our ministry and mission become clear. We stand strong in the local contacts in which we move about. We are, as Jesus tells us, the light of the world, a light He has given us of Himself who is THE Light of the world. “We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved (Heb.10:39).”