Written by Matthew P.W. Roberts |
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
There is the temptation to trust our own wisdom. Proverbs warns us: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding” (3:5–8). To believe that our own wisdom is sufficient to guide us not only is foolish but is the essence of sin. That belief led the first man and woman to eat the fruit that God had forbidden, for they trusted in their own judgment above the direct command of God.

The poem “Invictus” by the Victorian poet William Ernest Henley ends like this: “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” This well expresses our age’s deep conviction that self-trust is the highest virtue. “Believe in yourself” is taught to children in schools, repeated by celebrities and Insta­gram influencers, and spoken of by sportspeople as the key to their success. Anything, apparently, is possible if you believe in yourself.
But trusting yourself is pretty close to the biblical definitions of foolishness and of sin. It is the opposite of what humans are designed to do, which is to trust in God above all else (Ps. 91:1–2). We are dependent on Him: He brought us into existence, He sustains us moment by moment, and He has written all our days in His book before one of them came to be (see Ps. 139:16; Col. 1:16–17). We cannot keep ourselves alive even for a second, and we ultimately have no power to determine our futures. All comes from God, and so all creatures must look to Him to provide for them (Ps. 145:15–16).
And yet we fall into self-trust all the time. Think of the rich man in Jesus’ parable in Luke 12:13–21: “I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years: relax, eat, drink, be merry.’” He had been duped by his own riches into addressing his soul as if he were his own indulgent uncle, providing infallibly for his own future needs. It’s ridiculous, as the fate of his soul that night demonstrates. He is, as God calls him in the parable, a fool.
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The shield of faith is a bit unique in Paul’s list because he not only mentions the shield; he mentions specifically what to do with it: “In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one (Eph. 6:16).” We can expect that day in and day out we will be pummeled the flaming arrows of the great enemy of God and man, the devil. These flaming arrows might take many forms, but surely at least one of them is in the form of accusation.

For the Christian, every day is a battle. It’s a battle, as the book of Ephesians tells us, “not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:12). Whether we recognize it or not, we are all caught up in the midst of cosmic spiritual warfare.
But fortunately for us, God has not left us unprepared for this battle. If you read the entire chapter of Ephesians 6, you find that God has armed us in very specific ways. Some scholars have imagined that Paul, writing these words from a jail cell, was able to look through the bars and see a fully outfitted Roman soldier, and then liken that armor to what the Lord has given us:

The belt of truth
The breastplate of righteousness
Feet fitted with the gospel of peace
The helmet of salvation
The sword of the Spirit
The shield of faith

These are the tools God has placed at our disposal; they are the elements available to any Christian to help them fight in this battle, and when it’s all done, to remain standing. So the armor is there; it’s ready to be used. The question is how do we actually put it on?
Several ways really – first of all, you become aware of the fight you’re in. After all, there’s no use for armor during peacetime.
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For many, the God of the Bible is dead, as the title page of Time Magazine said way back in 1966: “God is Dead.” Ridgley’s conclusions also challenge the church in its attempt to interact through cultural apologetics. How do we address—with the gospel—a culture that has lost its view of classic morals? We are in the situation of early Christianity, surrounded by pagan Rome, where citizens do not know the God of the Bible. 

Many sociologists now speak about the arrival of the post-Christian era in both America and the West in general. Way back in 1976, Newsweek Magazine spoke of “the year of the evangelical.” But church attendance is down in America. Young people abandon any semblance of their childhood faith as soon as they set foot in a university. This is a great concern in our churches. The Wall Street Journal recently published an analysis of national sentiment over the past 25 years on: 

      Religion: 62% in 1998 vs 39% today.
      Having kids: 59% in 1998 vs 30% today.
      Community involvement: 47% in 1998 vs 27% today.
      Patriotism: 70% in 1998 vs 38% today.[1]
      The number of weddings: 40% lower in 2000 than in 1970

Star Parker, a black Christian intellectual gives similar figures and sees the sign of a “nation committing suicide.”[2]
While 20th century unbelief was atheistic, religiosity is now everywhere, as astrology and occultism flourish in mainstream culture.[3]  Such an abandon of personal biblical faith has some obvious causes. Many universities, for instance, have become centers of Marxist training and/or Critical Race Theory, both of which are based on a godless post-modernism, generally called Wokism. George Floyd’s death affected major institutions—from federal agencies to Fortune 100 companies. Encouraged by the Department of Justice and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, such organizations hastily pledged themselves to the new flag of Wokism. They gave multi-millions to groups like Black Lives Matter and promoted a revised version of morality preached through DEI—“diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Wokism’s leaders insist that America is fundamentally racist and they demand “antiracist discrimination” (a technical term used to discriminate against people identified as racist) to produce “racial equity.” This semi-religious ideology abhors “systemic racism,” “white supremacy,” “white privilege,” and “antiracism.” Racism in America today is, to a very significant degree, a manufactured problem, crafted by woke Leftists in order to overthrow the American way of life. Most major cities, many major companies, the educational system and the government’s policymaking apparatus all bow down together before the god of Wokism. 
Few Christian students seem trained or qualified to know how to answer such powerful ideological opposition. Indeed, as we will note below, students have been deliberately trained into a Wokist viewpoint. The average four-year university now has more DEI officials on its staff than history professors. DEI offices have broadened the meaning of terms like “harassment” and “discrimination” not to promote a welcoming campus environment but to enforce a progressive ideology often proposed as a Marxian counter-revolution, determined by an ideologically driven progressivism.
Those who have lost faith in God need a new moral structure, which Wokism provides by playing on the sensitive conscience of American citizens, especially young Americans. They are told that white supremacy is just like the Marxist description of oppressing owners and oppressed workers. Now it is White oppressors and oppressed minorities—Blacks, women, illegal aliens, gays and trans individuals. Unlike biblical morality, this system does not include forgiveness. Whites remain guilty forever and blacks are doomed to be forever victims. In addition, there is no notion of original sin, no divine justice, and no atoning work of Christ to wash us clean. Alas, this is a false pagan morality in which God is absent. Such thinking has entered many churches under the appeal of moralism—see for instance, Lucas Miles’ Woke Jesus[4] and A.D. Robles’ Social Justice Pharisees.[5] Soon, I hope to treat this more thoroughly, but here I am focusing on the attack against students.
Professor Stanley Ridgley in his book Brutal Minds: Brainwashing in Our Universities,[6] documents that university administrators in particular deliberately intend to undermine a student’s ability to engage in classical academic thinking and to inculcate in them a serious case of “religious” guilt. Ridgley seeks to show “how one of history’s great institutions—the American university—is undergoing an infiltration by an ‘army of mediocrities’ whose goal is to destroy the university as an institution of knowledge-creation and replace it as an authoritarian organ of ideology and propaganda.”[7] Jesse Jackson’s 1987 rallying cry at Stanford University, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western civ has got to go,” springs to mind, since Western Civilization courses have truly disappeared. 
The new ideology, now labeled as Wokism, is summed up in a vigorous and progressive political program, which has spread in recent years throughout the culture—in government administrations, businesses and educational facilities— via the prompting of “diversity officers” of DEI, “diversity, equity and inclusion.” In the wake of George Floyd’s death, companies scrambled to hire “chief diversity officers” who would apply DEI, which quickly imposed the new moral principles required by the progressive state. In 2018, fewer than half the companies in the S&P 500 employed a “chief diversity officer.” By 2022, under pressure from state regulations, three out four companies had created such a position.[8] This is also the case in university administrations.
As an example of how far this goes, consider the following incident. In February 2023, Dennis Prager, a Jewish intellectual who promotes conservative values, was invited, along with Christian leader, Charlie Kirk (founder of Turning Point USA) to speak at Arizona State University (ASU) for a conference organized by Barrett College, the honors college of ASU. The conference was innocently entitled “Health, Wealth and Happiness.”
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