Stuck in the Cultural Mud?

A loud group of Christians, especially online but increasingly present elsewhere, are calling Christians to the fight.

An Ancient Tale

An ancient story tells the tale of valiant men fighting for truth, and a squishy prophet calling for surrender. When the most powerful nation in the world besieged their home, the holy city formed an alliance with a former enemy. The move reprieved the city, temporarily. Food still disappeared, and they knew battle would encircle them again, soon.

The prophet squeaked out his warning, “Surrender now, and you’ll be ok. Give up the fight. It’s hopeless. The battle is lost. God told me so.”

The courageous warriors approached the people’s embattled king. “We need to get rid of this guy. He’s calling for us to roll over instead of fighting. He’s weakening the morale of our warriors. We’s going to hurt the people not help them. We need to fight for our faith, for our people, for our God!”

The king was too weak to protest. He secretly admired the prophet and tried some half-measures of conciliation. But he told these formidable warriors to take care of the problem. He couldn’t stand against them. They were his nation’s last, best hope.

These men dispatched the prophet to a dark hole of political prison, and they silenced him.

The time for war had come, and they wouldn’t hear any weak calls for surrender.

An Ancient Tale Retold

This tale seems to map onto some current struggles in our current Christian, evangelical moment. Some are calling for a spiritual “pacifism,” conscientious objection to the culture wars, or even surrender. Many push back, rallying around their refusal to sheath the sword of the Spirit for the chains of insane leftism.

A loud group of Christians, especially online but increasingly present elsewhere, are calling Christians to the fight. “We know what time it is,” they protest against the squishy elites of evangelical life and their sycophants. “It’s time for battle. The old rules no longer apply.”

The ancient story I just narrated would agree with them.

Except, I told the story backwards. In the true ancient tale, the warriors were wrong and the prophet was right. Here’s how it actually went.

In ancient Israel, the prophet Jeremiah foretold the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon, and he counseled the people, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine, and plague, but whoever surrenders to the Chaldeans will live. He will retain his life like the spoils of war and will live.’ This is what the Lord says: ‘This city will most certainly be handed over to the king of Babylon’s army, and he will capture it’” (Jeremiah 38:2-3).

A quartet of self-perceived valiant warriors for Israel hated Jeremiah for this message. They approached the weak and lame-duck king, Zedekiah. “This man ought to die, because he is weakening the morale of the warriors who remain in this city and of all the people by speaking to them in this way. This man is not pursuing the welfare of this people, but their harm” (38:4).

Zedekiah, despite his private counsel from Jeremiah and lukewarm attempts to help Jeremiah, rolled over. “The king can’t do anything against you,” he tells them (38:5).

The men dropped Jeremiah into a cistern, a deep watering hole. “There was no water in the cistern, only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud” (38:6).

The warriors had silenced the squishy voice of surrender, so they could then rally the people of God to fight for the name of God.

Except the warriors rejected God’s word and God’s will. They misunderstood the times, because Israel had lost the battle generations before. God had an unfolding plan that didn’t require their belligerence. In fact, God’s plan rejected their longing for the fight.

A Modern Tale Reimagined

I’m not saying evangelical Christians should just roll over in the face of cultural insanity or pushback. We don’t live in a theocracy with a direct divine Word about our moment. Historical times don’t align like that.

Someone has said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” Instead of a rhyme, I wonder if our moment is more like one of historical assonance with this story from Jeremiah. Assonance is “the repetition of the sound of a vowel or diphthong in nonrhyming stressed syllables near enough to each other for the echo to be discernible (e.g., penitence, reticence).” In other words, while assonant words don’t rhyme, they have a similar sound.

I wonder if Jeremiah’s story with the “valiant” warriors of Israel and Zedekiah might sound a bit like our small (yes, largely online) evangelical moment. Far-right voices (call them Christian nationalists if you want to) are calling us to “know what time it is” and to fight for the culture and the church.

I don’t have a problem with imagery of fighting, because the Bible uses such imagery. Yet, the end of the gospels also finds Jesus telling Peter to put away his sword. Jesus heals Peter’s attempt at a death blow of the high priest’s servant, Malchus (Peter wasn’t aiming for the ear, after all). Maybe Jesus wants to heal our attempts to “kill” one another, too, more than he wants us to “fight for him.”

The warriors of Israel slandered and imprisoned Jeremiah. Many self-perceived courageous warriors for the truth likewise slander and cancel faithful brethren who have a different method and message.

I’m not sure I would apply the message of “surrender” from Jeremiah to our moment and our response. At least, not in surrendering to the empire at the gates of the household of God. Yet without passivity we should surrender to God’s will as he unfolds it our lives and culture. We should be willing to consider that a present defeat may be required for a long-term victory. I have no word from the Lord on this, but it’s worth considering.

Whether personally or corporately, we might sink in the mud for moment, as Jeremiah did. But Jeremiah wasn’t there forever, because a truly valiant man, a Cushite (a modern-day Ethiopian) called “Ebed-melech” (“servant of the king”) pulled him from the mud with forty friends.

No matter God’s will for our present and near future, won’t sink in the mud forever. We do stake our faith and forever on a message of crucifixion before resurrection, after all.