40 Years Later, Why Emulate Grenada?
As one commentator concluded recently, “While Marxism has failed spectacularly in politics, it has succeeded spectacularly in culture.” The senseless arrogance expressed by Bishop’s regime forty years ago is replicated today by the Pentagon’s CRT-DEI-touting leadership. Apparently, U.S. defense leaders believe no crushing of military members’ civil liberties can be committed in the name of liberating the so-called oppressed. Mandated diversity trainings, preferred pronouns and discouraged terms, and experimental drugs (formerly “vaccines”) are but three examples – lowering morale/cohesion and combat readiness and reducing the ranks in a military assessed by the respected Heritage Foundation as “weak.”
In 1974, the British granted independence within the Commonwealth to the tiny eastern Caribbean Island of Grenada, known as the Isle of Spice (especially for its nutmeg). Under Prime Minister Eric Gairy, an increasingly repressive police force and an extralegal private militia checked Grenadians’ civil unrest in the lush tropical “paradise” that it was for the tourists who provided revenues to Gairy’s coffers. To most islanders, however, Gairy ran “a hateful little dictatorship.”
In 1979, a small group of intellectuals pulled off a nearly bloodless coup, toppling a regime described as “a populist/black power revolutionary movement gone wrong.” Anthony P. Maingot wrote in Caribbean Review that the New Jewel (Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education, and Liberation) Movement, “schooled in various revolutionary tracts and rhetoric, quickly shed their vague romantic . . . program of a people’s democracy and turned to an attitude of: we love the people and know what is best for them and so must guide their affairs” [emphasis added].
It was precisely the arrogant, self-congratulatory attitude of the “Anointed” described by brilliant and prodigious Professor Thomas Sowell – who once considered himself a Marxist.
Opinions varied on the nature and intentions of the People’s Revolutionary Government, whose leader, Maurice Bishop, became the new prime minister. One writer called Bishop’s brand of socialism, “documentary radicalism.” With good reason, others viewed the movement – self-described as Leninist and using the term “Politburo” – as more than rhetorical in nature. (Maurice named his son Vladimir Lenin Bishop; tragically, he died as a teenager in a Toronto nightclub.) In any case, the Bishop regime caught the attention of both the Carter (1977-1981) and Reagan administrations. The Cold War’s East-West rivalry guaranteed Washington’s concern, especially in view of Fidel Castro’s socialist Cuba and the similar threat to regional stability coming from Nicaragua.
Under Bishop’s regime, British military officer and historian Mark Adkin wrote, “Any sign of ‘imperialist’ characteristics in a person weighed heavily against him.” In some cases, the result was what Grenadians called “heavy manners,” a term that included imprisonment, torture, or even death. While, admittedly, Bishop managed to improve health care, housing, and literacy for many Grenadians, during the doctrinaire regime’s four-and-a-half-year rule roughly 1 percent of the populace was detained for political transgressions.
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The Christian Life is a Team Effort
This is just one reason why the church is so precious. As the word of the gospel goes out and gathers believers to Jesus (John 10:16), these new believers form gatherings called churches. In the book Word-Centered Church, Jonathan Leeman says, “A Christian’s new DNA, which he’s received from the Word and Spirit, knows that it now belongs to something larger . . . his new being longs to be gathered to other believers now—on earth” (87). Jesus sets your story in a local church because faith flourishes in fellowship. It would be tragic for us to write ourselves out of the story, watching the flame of our faith slowly fade because we distanced ourselves from fellowship.
Two passages in Hebrews show four reasons fellowship helps us run the race of the Christian life.
Protection Against Hardened Hearts
Soldiers stand guard not only for themselves, but also for their fellow soldiers. Fellow believers likewise guard each other through a word of exhortation. “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end” (Heb. 3:13–14).
The Saturday night before in-person Sunday services were shut down for us, our youth group was away for our annual retreat. I asked our students to gather in small circles around each youth leader and pray for them. We may assume teenagers today are indifferent towards God and so self-absorbed they don’t think about others. However, these teenagers went without hesitation and covered their leaders in prayer. Seeing a fifteen-year-old put their hand on the shoulder of their fifty-year-old leader, with tears in their eyes, and pray for them is a moment Zoom cannot re-create. I missed moments like this.
Like an army locking shields to protect everyone from enemy arrows, we surround each other with shields of exhortation and prayer. We guard our hearts for Christ in the fellowship of believers. -
What Everyone Wants
Despair and Hope
After seventeen years of pastoral ministry, I have observed a common thread in the various desires of men and women. It’s not the accumulation of wealth, the pleasure of passion, or accolades from achievement that ultimately satisfies. It goes much deeper. People need hope in something that is solid and lasting, and they despair when they have no hope.
Despair and False Hope
The great English journalist and satirist Malcolm Muggeridge reflected on human desire, noting certain forms of despair in the twentieth century, particularly among supporters of Stalin in Russia and Western nihilists devoted to materialism. From his analysis, Muggeridge concluded that modern man has a “suicidal impulse”—a type of self-hatred. This impulse has spawned a bewildering number of proposals to cure, or at least curb, man’s despair of himself. Unfortunately, varied and complex as they are, these remedies have a common thread: their ingenuity and power are limited to merely human resources.
One merely human remedy for overcoming despair is an emotive positive outlook excavated from the depths of one’s soul. This thinking is reflected in well-known phrase “hoping against hope.” It often comes in the midst of calamity and disappointment. In spite of misfortune, we “hope” things will go well. The actor Josh Hartnett captured this notion when he said: “Hope is the most exciting thing in life, and if you honestly believe that love is out there, it will come. And even if it doesn’t come straightaway, there is still that chance all through your life that it will.”
Well-meaning as this attempt is, it is a long distance from the biblical vision of hope. It is not a matter of delivering ourselves or “hoping for the best.” Nor is it wishful thinking or blind optimism. Biblical hope, rather, is a divine gift that God offers to the world through His Son, Jesus. This, however, raises the question of how one recognizes and receives such a gift. -
Church is More Than a Sunday Morning Sermon
Come to Church with these three mindsets. Body Mindset you aren’t there to just listen to a Sunday morning sermon, you are there to interact with a dynamic body of Saints. Warfare Mindset you go to Church to get equipped by the Word of God to go out and live for His glory throughout the week. Eschatological Mindset your Church, no matter how small, is a part of God’s cosmic plan of redemption. As you cultivate these perspectives, you will find how you think about Church will change from something static and dull to something glorious and exciting.
When you hear the word “Church” what image pops into your head? A sanctuary full of pews? Pews filled with people? People with their Bible’s open listening to God’s Word? “Church” is most commonly used to describe the Sunday morning sermon and accompanying service. You go to Church in order to hear a sermon.
But the Church is so much more than a Sunday morning sermon. In fact, if you equate Church to a worship service between the hours of 10-12 am, then you are going to miss out on a lot of the joy and excitement that the Church is. In this post, I give you a three “mindsets” to develop. Each will help expand what you think about when you hear the word “Church”.
1. The Body Mindset
The Church is a dynamic gathering of Saints
You might have heard the phrase “the Church is not the building, it is the people.” Someone could also say “Church is not the Sunday morning sermon, it is the people.” Men, women, and children who are redeemed by Christ, united by the Holy Spirit, and who have covenanted together in a local assembly. When you drive to Church on Sunday, you are driving to gather with that “body” of people.
Having this “body mindset” keeps you from what I will call “movie theater mindset.” When you go to see a movie, you come in and sit together with a bunch of total strangers. This random group made up of different families and individuals watches the movie together but then leaves to return to separate homes without ever interacting or acknowledging each others’ existence. “Movie theater mindset” is coming to Church to listen to the Pastor preach alongside a bunch of strangers who you do not know and who you do not interact with after service is over.
In contrast, the Church as laid out in Acts is a completely different type of gathering:
44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
Acts 2:44-47 ESV, emphasis added
You don’t “go to Church”; if you are a Christian you are a part of the Church, this dynamic body of believers. This means you gather together with fellow Saints past 10-12 am on Sunday morning. It means you see yourself as a part of their lives and realize each Church member is an important part of your life. You have to fight “movie theater mindset” and seek to know those in the pews next to you.
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