Second Truth Talk:

The Erosion of Anti-Thesis

First given 23^rd May, 2004

In my last talk we looked at how the devil is able to draw people into his alternative system by getting people to believe his false definitions of reality. This afternoon’s talk builds on that. I will be considering one of the things that happens to people when they have been taken over by an alternative reality.

In the last talk we saw that there are two competing systems of reality that run alongside each other in this world. One is reality and the other is anti-reality. Today we need to consider what happens as a consequence of a person’s thinking being infected with the poison of the devil’s alternative-reality. The result is often that the antithesis between the two systems becomes blurred. Although it may be that a person in the alternative reality sees two competing systems and believes that they are in the correct system, more often than not the person inside the alternative-reality will deny or fail to see the antithesis between the two systems. In a variety of ways they will struggle to synthesize mutually excluding patterns of thought, minimizing the polarization between the two systems. Black and white become grey, and distinctions of division become fuzzy. In short, antithesis becomes eroded.

Imagine two neighbouring Kingdoms separated by a fence. One is Jerusalem – the Kingdom of light ruled by God; the other is Babylon – the Kingdom of darkness ruled by Satan. The fence separating these two kingdoms represents the utter division between these rival empires. The word antithesis aptly describes the condition pertaining to these empires since everything about the one empire is the utter antithesis of everything about the other empire. These empires are in a state of war. The war has been being fought ever since the garden of Eden and will continue to be fought until the Kingdoms of this world become the Kingdoms of our God and Christ.

Return to the notion of a fence separating these two empires. Imagine that occasionally this fence gets into a state of disrepair. Those in the Kingdom of light will want to repair the fence in order that its citizens will not inadvertently wander into the Kingdom of darkness and become harmed. However, the king of darkness delights whenever the border between the two empires becomes obscured, because then people will wander into his regions by mistake and he can entice them deeper and deeper into his dominions. Therefore, the goal of the dark king is wherever possible to destroy this fence of antithesis. He is even clever enough, after destroying the fence, to model the landscape of his country after the pattern of the other kingdom, in order to purposely attract the people of light. He can make the borders of his country so resemble the kingdom of light that the people of light may come and build communities and live comfortably in the domains of darkness, thinking all the time that they are still in the kingdom of light. Lest they look around and perceive that this is not the kingdom they think it is, he sends a fog to obscure the landscape.

In this regard the devil has become much more cunning than he was in the 1^st century of the church. Then he merely tried to eliminate the Christians by killing them physically. It didn’t take Satan long to realize that it wasn’t possible to kill Christianity just by killing the Christians. Two thousand years has taught Satan to be more subtle in his tactics. Though Christians are still terribly persecuted in various parts of the world, in the West Satan no longer seeks to extinguish the truth through fire and sword; instead he seeks to water it down. He does this by redefining the antithesis between truth and falsehood so that both are absorbed into a grey synthesis where the polarity between the two ceases to function. He doesn’t stand at the edge of the fence and shoot arrows across to kill Christians, he removes the fence to let the Christians wander freely into his domains where their Christianity, now corrupted, loses its power and witness. Having removed the fence between the empires, he sends a fog in order that Christians may lose their direction and cease to make the necessary discriminations between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. He sends twilight and confusion in order that those who have inadvertently wandered into his domain may fail to perceive that the surrounding landscape is not the kingdom they think it is.

One very effective way the devil undermines antithesis is to make people luke-warm. Luke-warmness sits on the fence in between the fields of good and evil. This erodes antithesis since the person refuses to recognize the imperative to be in one field or another. In a luke-warm person both lifestyles or ways of thinking become conjoined in a grey synthesis that, according to God’s assessment, is actually worse than if the person were out and out evil. Hence, the famous words to the Laodicean church:

“I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are luke-warm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.” (Rev. 3:15-16)

In the story about Elijah and the prophets of Baal we see Elijah trying to provoke the people out of a state of luke-warmness. Here was a situation where antithesis had been eroded. Whereas Elijah presented the people between a solid black and white antithesis between God vs. Baal (“If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” 1 Kings 18:21), in the people’s minds this distinction had become blurred, for we are told that they “{faltered} between two opinions.” (1 Kings 18:21) The eradication of antithesis is seen further by the fact that “the people answered him not a word.” The only solution was for judgement, and hence the event of Elijah calling down fire from heaven.

In the third chapter of Jeremiah we read God’s assessment of backsliding Israel vs. treacherous Judah. Both nations had turned utterly from God, yet the Lord says in Jeremiah 3:11 that backsliding Israel was the better of the two because Judah turned to the Lord in a state of pretence rather than with a whole heart. Israel’s rebellion was more overt, while the people of Judah had made a show of reformation in Josiah's time, while continuing to practice abominations and neglect the commands of God (see Jeremiah 7:5-11).

The evil people of Israel were actually called ‘more righteous’ than Judah, because they committed abominations openly rather than in hypocrisy (which literally indicates a ‘play actor’ in the Greek from which the word is derived). It would seem, therefore, that the Lord prefers for people to live a lifestyle of complete sin than to serve Him in hypocrisy. That is why Jesus said that in the judgement the city of Sodom would stand better than those cities in which the people believed themselves to be righteous and yet rejected the Son of God.

The hypocrisy in today’s world is comparable, if not worse, to the hypocrisy of Jeremiah’s day. We find that those who support cruel practices such as abortion are often the ones whom the world considers to be ‘compassionate’ while the Christians, who really are the compassionate ones, are made out to be uncompassionate because they do not support such things as gay marriages. Thus hypocrisy not only blurs the distinction between right and wrong, but twists the very meaning of right and wrong.

While a luke-warm person will sit on the fence in-between the fields of good and evil, a hypocritical person will inhabit the field of evil but say he is in the field of good, or he will fluctuate between the two depending on how it suits his overall purpose of maintaining an image in other people’s eyes. Again the antithesis is blurred as hypocrisy distorts the truth that evil is evil and good is good. The only absolute the hypocrite recognizes is his image in other people’s eyes. This means that a hypocrite will constantly cover his tracks even if it means being one thing in one context and something totally different in another context. This is different from how someone will behave who has merely been deceived, since at the root of hypocrisy is the desire to preserve an image at the expense of truth.

Returning to the God’s assessment of Judah, the Lord spoke the following words through Jeremiah:

For I will stretch out My hand

Against the inhabitants of the

land,” says the Lord.

Because from the least of them

even to the greatest of them,

Everyone is given to

covetousness;

And from the prophet

even to the priest,

Everyone deals falsely.

They have also healed the

hurt of My people slightly,

Saying, ‘Peace, peace!’

When there is no peace. (Jer. 6:12-14)

So we see that in hypocritical Judah there were false prophets and priests. That is what made them so much more worse than backsliding Israel. Now it is interesting to note what the priests and prophets do. “They have healed the hurt of My people slightly…” How can we understand this? Well, think of the situation today. The secular system has many ways of helping people. There are effective ways of helping people over their emotional, psychological and life problems. That is why people achieve genuine success through secular programs like AA, therapy, etc.. Sometimes people can be greatly helped to have a religious or ‘spiritual’ element involved. While these methods are effective, it only helps the people ‘slightly’ because it never goes to the root. Without addressing the problem of sin and the need for regeneration, a person can only be helped ‘slightly’ since they remain like a worn out garment that has merely been patched up. It is only when we allow Jesus to give us a completely new garment that there is any hope.

Because the people of Judah were slightly helped by their false prophets and priests, they thought everything is fine – they thought they were on the right course. So God sent them Jeremiah to speak against their false prophecies, but they ignored him. The only thing left for God to do was to bring disaster upon them.

Let’s read verse 14 again: “They have also healed the hurt of My people slightly, Saying, ‘Peace, peace!’ when there is no peace.” It is through a philosophy of peace that the people’s problems are addressed ‘slightly’ but not sufficiently. It is through saying ‘Peace, peace’ when there is none, that the deeper problems are masked over and the people are helped ‘slightly.’ Often this can be through making peace with ourselves. Whereas the Bible teaches that within each one of us there is a war between the flesh and the spirit, many people in today’s world encourage us to learn to live at peace with ourselves, to accept that we have innate goodness rather than a nature that is totally depraved and in need of redemption.

One of the main ways in which the devil undermines the importance of antithesis is to cause people to lose sight of the fact of this a raging war between Jerusalem and Babylon. Among those who do acknowledge such a war, the devil may try to get them to not see the war present in situations where it is strongest. Alternatively, he may use the concept of peace in order to vilify those who persist in fighting this war and creating the division which comes as a corollary of this war. This is a very subtle device since peace is a good thing. As we know, evil only works by taking what is good and twisting it. Peace is good, but only if it is achieved on God’s terms. The devil wants peace just as much as God, but whereas God knows that true peace can only be achieved when every person is submitted to Him, the devil desires to introduce a state of peace prior to such a condition. Essentially, he says, let’s tear down the fence separating our empires, for he knows that then all the lands would fall under his dominion.

So Satan introduces the idea that division is intrinsically bad. He makes sure that Christians are looked down upon when they take a firm stand and say, “this is wrong,” when they speak out against sin in someone’s life, when they say, like the Lord in Isaiah, “there is no peace for the wicked.” (Is. 48:22 & 57:21) Everybody is supposed to live in harmony according to the devil’s agenda – there is never supposed to be any confrontation. It is easy for Christians to be taken in by this agenda of everyone-living-in-harmony since it is also God’s ultimate intention. But how different is God’s idea of harmony from Satan’s! Satan wants everyone to live in harmony because all standards and antithesis have been removed; God wants everyone to live in harmony because God’s standards are obeyed by everyone. Because of this, when we see people living in peace with one another, when we see relationships working harmoniously, we need to always ask, ‘has this condition arisen because God’s standards are being acknowledged or because God’s standards are being ignored?’

Along this line, it is interesting that though Jesus is called the “Prince of Peace” (Is. 9:6), yet He says,

Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man’s enemies will be those of his own household. (Mt. 10:34)

Jesus is the Prince of Peace, but the peace He brings is a peace which can only exist on the other side of war. It is a war not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, a war that, as Kreeft puts it, we fight not with guns but with goodness. As long as this war lasts, to assume a condition of peace prior to ultimate victory is to directly surrender to the devil. That is why the Lord had to prophesy through Ezekiel against the false prophets of Israel, who “have not gone up into the gaps to build a wall for the house of Israel to stand in battle on the day of the Lord.” (Ez. 13:5)

It is an appealing temptation to burry our heads in the sand and forget that the most important war ever is being fought is currently raging in our world, in our country, in our town, in our workplace, in our home…in our own life. Finding that he rarely has success in directly conquering Christians, the devil does his best to render us ineffective in the battle. To be sure, we would be on our guard if the devil began to tempt us with séances or immorality; but do we give sufficient attention to the more effective way he tries to render us ineffective: by getting us to simply do nothing? I am reminded of the oft-quoted words that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil in the world is that a few good men do nothing.

But how can the devil succeed in getting Christians to do nothing? By unleashing the most effective weapons in his armoury, things which at first seem harmless enough: the comforts of this life, the temptation of premature peace, the appeal of harmonious relations with those who are actually on the other side of the fence, the desire not to be ‘divisive’ or appear a ‘fanatic.’ Peter Kreeft describes the current situation like this:

Yesterday, he inflamed fear and cruelty; today, he tempts to sloth and comfort-mongering and “peace, peace when there is no peace”…. The danger today is the bland leading the bland. We face not fire but fog. (Ecumenical Jihad, pp. 57-58)

Good and evil rendered meaningless

Another way of eroding the antithesis between good and evil is, while acknowledge that the division does exist, to maintain that it does not matter. How often have you heard people say, either in person or in films, something to the effect that “it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, it only matters what you believe. So long as you are being genuine in your beliefs, that is the main thing that counts.” This way of thinking de-emphasizes the objective state of affairs by magnifying the importance of subjective conditions.

To do justice to this particular question, we really require an entire meeting. I shall devote a future meeting to this question, but for the moment I can mention it only in passing how the division between truth and falsehood is rendered meaningless when people say that “being true to what you believe” is more important than being correct. Of course, it is important to be genuine and to be true to what you believe even if you are wrong, and in the next meeting we will consider the appropriate Biblical approach to this question.

Another way in which the division between good and evil is rendered meaningless – and, again, this is an entire issue in itself - is through denying that good and evil actually exist in an objective sense. This is the problem of postmodernism and relativism, as well as Eastern religions, all of which do away with moral absolutes. Charles Malik, former President of Lebanon and of the United Nations General Assembly, must have had this heresy in mind when he spoke as follows – words which will provide a fitting conclusion to this afternoon’s talk:

There is truth, and there is falsehood. There is good, and there is evil. There is happiness, and there is misery. There is that which ennobles, and there is that which demeans. There is that which puts you in harmony with yourself, with others, with the universe, and with God, and there is that which alienates you from yourself, from the world, and from God. These things are different and separate and totally distinguishable from one another. Truth is not the same as falsehood, happiness is not the same as misery.

The greatest error in modern times is the confusion between these orders. Nothing is anything firm in itself - this is the great heresy of the modern world. But there is no power on earth or in heaven that can make falsehood truth, evil good, misery happiness, slavery freedom. And yet what do philosophers tell you in the great centres of learning? They insist that everything depends on what you mean. The mind becomes so blurred and blunted in its judgment that it fails to see the real, given distinction between things.

How do we become true and good, happy and genuine, joyful and free? Only by getting in touch with good, true, happy, genuine human beings. Read the Psalms and the Gospels reverently and prayerfully every day, and I guarantee you two things: first, that you will experience in your own life and being a taste of what is beautiful and strong and certain and free; and second, you will then develop a sharpness of vision to differentiate between the true and the phony, between the beautiful and the hideous, between the noble and the mean. (Cited by Kreeft in C. S. Lewis for the Third Millennium, p. 66.)

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