Know Your Enemy Pt.1

Know Your Enemy Pt.1

Let's try an “opposite sketch”. I've been looking at how to save the West; But what would a supernatural opponent of this try to do?

Imagine for a moment that you are some malevolent spirit and you want to destroy the West. I'll be more specific. Imagine you are the sort of spirit that wants to turn happiness into misery, health into sickness, peace into war, prosperity into poverty, freedom into slavery … and so on. What would be your strategy?

For the sake of somewhere to start, let's zoom in just after the close of World War II.

You have suffered a tremendous defeat. Your servants – Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito have been defeated. (OK Stalin is still in play!). War has given way to peace. The men and women of the Allied armies have fought against evil with courage and self sacrifice and have prevailed. They return to their homelands now seeking to enjoy the rewards of peace, prosperity in return for hard work, family and community. Moreover churches are full. Faith in Jesus and obedience to his commands are at a high. With the Billy Graham crusades true religion expands further and your opportunity for destruction seems to diminish.

Is your situation irretrievable? ...  No. As it happens plans laid a generation earlier come in to play. You cunningly beguiled theologians in the late 1800's. However clever, they were only human. They could be tempted in the area of their pride and prestige. Most fell. Thus was born so called “liberal theology” - the dogma of doubting and often dismissing all the great timeless truths of the Christian faith. Now, a generation later this scourge had filtered down to the level of the theological colleges training priests and pastors.

So even as Christian faith looked to be gaining strength, the seeds of corruption had already been sown in the field!

The new crop on ministers – however genuine they had been on entering their calling – had come out of the training colleges spiritually crippled. Worse, they came out infected with an intellectual disease fatal to faith. They preached human ideas instead of the truths of God. Then, bereft of the real Gospel, they looked for fulfilment outside of bringing men and women to faith and maturity in Christ. They became political activists and second rate social workers forsaking the high calling to which Christ had called them. If they had left the churches they would have only ruined their own faith. But no, like warships flying false colours, they stayed – they went on in churches – often rising to the top – all the while betraying their true Master. So whole congregations and denominations were subverted.

Meanwhile, from let us say the 60's on another string is set to your bow. It starts with Vietnam.

Was it virtuous of the US and allies to try to protect the South from Communist Viet Cong in their midst and straight our invasion by the North? Once I was of the “no” camp. Mature reflection leads me to believe emphatically “YES”. But ... Did the US do it wisely or well? … Sadly…. NO. Of course there were good men – watch the film “Once We Were Soldiers” for one heart-rending example. But you, the malevolent spirit was able to befuddle, mislead and tempt enough minds to bring about bad strategies and bad ideas – like sending drug-addled unwilling and unprepared teenagers against an unbelievably ruthless , cruel and merciless enemy where often one could not tell friend from foe – and in the spotlight of a hostile but ubiquitous media coverage. No … Not ubiquitous …. the widespread and ghastly crimes of the Viet Cong went largely unreported. But US atrocities got worldwide coverage.

So you (the malevolent spirit) bred, so cleverly the rebel generation. The anti-war marches (I'm now ashamed of it, but I was in those) were a start. The things that flourished in that milieux: Woodstock, drugs, sex, throwing away the wisdom, morals and the religion of the wartime generation. That was a good days work – This mixture of behaviours definitely led to an increase of misery and diminution of true joy.

Now so far I have been merely laying out what is plain from history – though from an American and Australian perspective because that is what I know about. For those in other countries you can modify this in the light of your history over this period.

This brings us up to say the early 1970's. Your homework for next week is this: Take again the unpleasant mental role of the malevolent spirit. What would you try to do from the 70's on to plot, with great patience, the destruction of virtue and happiness in the West?