Walking past the elite Dutch military unit we heard the announcement that all public transport to Amsterdam from Belgium was shut down due to a storm. The storm referred to was full of rain, but more than likely the true storm was the threat of class warfare in the streets of major cities in France.

Despite the new reign of terror in neighborhoods from Marseille to outer Paris, the beauty of France outside those pockets were left untouched and uninterested.

You may have seen the images of cars burning, reports of a mayor’s family being injured, a fireman dying in another arson, and gangs of young Muslim children looting the luxury brands of Paris. But for those living with joie de vivre in St Tropez or St-Remy de-Provence, there was no evidence that anything was wrong in the world, except lineups for flavoured ice cream or a two-hour lunch that took closer to three to complete.

The new terrors and the old tastes illustrate a truth that is increasingly clear: there is both a beauty and a darkness to the Europe I have seen. Seeing Europe is like being shocked by graffiti on the walls of Eden.

The Bordered Beauty of Europe

Driving across France (we didn’t get hi speed train tickets in time) revealed the French countryside in all its productive beauty. France looks like a country where anything could grow if you drop it on the ground. Grapes, barley, olives, alfalfa, Charolais beef, wheat, lavender, and flowers of every kind. The productivity from the soil to the table is cherished everywhere in the country. As a result, there is a clear sense of order. Life is to be carried out decently and in order. Every field has a fence. Every orchard is set in rows. For all its variety there are borders. Every driveway, flowerbed and cereal crop has a border.

People don’t normally make the connection between beauty and borders. But God has established order and beauty together. The binaries of male and female possess beauty because they are distinguished. The kinds of animals and plants are beautiful because they are just that, “kinds”.

The beauty of Europe is a bordered beauty and it remains beautiful when distinctions are clear. As mentioned before, there are differences between men and women maintained. There are differences between work and rest. Lunch lasts from noon to 2pm after which no French restaurant is open until 7pm. In the Netherlands, no shop is open before 8:30am and everything is closed by 5pm. The Dutch get a lot down in those hours, but after hours, the country goes relatively silent.

Having learned for centuries how to create order from chaos, both the French and the Dutch make their appearances distinct. The French are much more concerned with fashion. But both countries care enough about themselves that they are a slimmer type of people than North Americans. Certainly, they have not given in to the idea currently in North America that obese people ought to be celebrated for their health and appearances. There is a border between what is healthy looking and what is unhealthy. This was refreshing to see and reflects God’s ordered, bordered world.

France is complex, especially Paris, when it comes to borders. The borders between arrondissements or neighborhoods are clear. But when it comes to driving, the lanes in traffic circles with 6 exits are merely suggestive. To drive in Paris is to accept one of the great automotive endurance challenges: high speed, narrow streets, presumptive pedestrians and aggressive drivers. Nevertheless, the apartment blocks designed by Haussmann for Napoleon III create an ordered, bordered context for all of the vivid sights and smells of Paris.

The Un-bordered Darkness of Europe.

The sinister element that shadows every beautiful arch, flower petal, or chardonnay resides in the godlessness of Europe. France has an embedded Roman Catholicism that is “universal” but nominally “Roman”. So the festivals and idols of Mary (call it “veneration” if you wish, she is clearly worshipped), and intentional distance from being too serious about religion, all contribute to a godlessness even among those with a culturally religious memory.

The other sinister element which is even darker is the calculated secularism of the consortium of upper classes. I spoke with a Christian teacher at a church in Aix-en-Provence who warned of the “elites” who were applying further controls upon life in order to exploit the populace. He called the Brussels base for the European Union as a “temple of idolatry”. He was not a radical man, but one who was informed about the threat that exists when, as Peter Jones describes it, “The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back”. Gnostic features (I know it’s not the same as first century Gnosticism), seem to rule the day. Tight inner circles are created with “inner rings” (CS Lewis’ term), making outsiders desperate to get in, while insiders wield gatekeeping power to filter people onto the ladder or to pull the ladder up after them as they play in the top of the treehouse.

Another layer of darkness is the blindness of Islam. Muslims have migrated to Europe in record numbers. Many Muslims have come to saving faith in Jesus Christ, God, the Son. Yet there are still the majority who remain in the futilities of Islam’s ladder-climbing approach to religion. A religion of futility leads to many expressions of desperation, as witnessed in France with the émeutes or riots. All restraint is thrown off regardless of the stated reasons for doing so. This is part of the argument of non-christian author Douglas Murray, in his 2017 book, The Strange Death of Europe.

The last darkness is the lack of evangelical churches, preachers and schools. Like the rest of the West, France has a hard time finding good preachers who can plant churches. Travelling through France you can see many impressive church buildings. But is there spiritual life within? Compared to the cathedrals of Catholicism, evangelical Protestants have the barest, merely functional buildings. But within their walls resides a spiritual life that differs immensely from the distant ritualism of Rome. Sadly, there are not enough of these new “churches in the desert”. John Calvin Seminary in Aix-en-Provence stands as a hub for reformed theological training but it is small compared to the need for preachers. France awaits more responses from those who will say, “Here am I. Send me”.

Of course the Netherlands appeared different. Multiplied Reformed denominations can give the impression that Christians are in the majority in the land of Kuyper and the Canons of Dordt. But they are not. Christians there are like all Western nations, a marginal group with little political or cultural power.

It is a great irony that the Netherlands has had such an influential Christian thinker as Kuyper, yet the Netherlands would be so thoroughly secularized. Even the plight of the Dutch farmers whose land is threatened to be appropriated, has been met with a lot of equivocation, the “on the one hand, on the other hand” kind of argument. The Netherlands especially exemplifies the technocratic future of bicycles, 15 minute cities, and more public transit. Few Dutch evangelicals appear to speak against the possibility of reduced private ownership.

On the subject of Kuyper, whose memory touches many of the denominations in the Netherlands, he was not universally praised among the Christians I spoke to. Although he was a part of the Afscheiding of 1834, separating from the state church, Kuyper’s theology lead to a collapse in evangelism and the necessity of seeing the need for children in Christian homes to be converted. The second generation liberalism that resulted from Kuyper’s tribe devastated the Afscheiding denominations and is painfully felt today.

Prospects For a New Eden

Though European beauty remains in nature, she is losing her soul. The vineyards, Haussmann apartments, and cuisine will not be able to deliver lost souls. Totalizing governments cannot deliver souls either. All that will be left is cynicism at the gates of Eden.

The message spoken into this desecration reveals a still small voice of hope. It is the voice of God, the true Word, God enfleshed as messiah, God and Man among men. Jesus Christ is heralded in small churches, prayed to with impassioned voices, praised with joie de vivre, and feared with liberated courage. Hope in Christ pierces the darkness in the small, marginalized gospel communities. And it is in those communities that the Spirit of holiness renews his beatific work.

Only a New Eden, with Christ as Lord will wash away the graffiti from the once beautiful walls of the old Garden.

A few thoughts:
A revival is a deepening of personal communion with God according to the Scriptures.
It is not merely a reanimation of the church’s corporate life.

Do we have a correct view of God?

Do we have a correct understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Do we have criteria for evaluating whether we would be in a revival or not?

We want to pursue God further, even if we are mistaken about a revival or a claim to one. We want to seek God with deeper personal communion according to the Scriptures and trust God for the results.

For a helpful reflection, see JI Packer’s talk:

https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/the-glory-of-god-and-the-reviving-of-religion

In Postliberal Order, Patrick Deneen summarizes Eric Voegelin on political gnosticism:

What we today call “woke” is merely a new articulation of the revolutionary dream that was once vested in Communism. The examples are legion: the wholesale transformation and even elimination of the “traditional” – i.e., natural – family. The effort to define sexuality according to human desire, aided by technological interventions. An understanding of crime solely as a function of the social order. The disdain toward those who work in non-gnostic areas of life – the working class. The effort to impose bio-political dominion over all of human life during the suddenly irrelevant “crisis” of the pandemic was but an extension of this deeply Gnostic impulse – the belief that the physical world was abhorrent, that we could through masking, distancing, and enforced medical intervention eliminate risk of disease and death. All the while these various mandates followed the trajectory of a raft of other economic and social policies that had led to the empowerment of a disembodied “laptop class” – or what N.S. Lyons has dubbed “the Virtuals” – at the expense of the working class, or the “Physicals.” The decades following America’s victory in the Cold War was a perfectly scripted expression of Gnostic belief and power – ironically, the pyhrric lap of a “classical and Christian” civilization that was enjoying the fruits of victory over its Gnostic foe.

Russia, America, and the Danger of Political Gnosticism

There is a debate in Christian circles particularly in reformed circles about approaches for thinking through the Christian’s relation to society. This can include the church as an institution and how it relates to the broader society as well as how individual Christians relate to the world in which they live. The two basic schools of thought are the transformationalist view, sometimes associated with Abraham Kuyper. The other school of thought is connected with Lutheran theology and it posits that there are two kingdoms the spiritual kingdom governed by the church and the temporal kingdom governed by the state.

For Baptist believers who recognize that the newness of the new covenant requires only covenant members who were born from above, they are in a difficult position. Since they can only rely on conversions, there is little in the way of Christian transformational work that they can do which has New Covenant value.

However, the transformed life of a redeemed sinner expresses itself in new ways of thinking, rejecting the noetic effects of sin, and offering their work as worship to God. This latter type of transformational ethics leads to Christian ways of thinking and acting.

The two kingdoms approach can seem to lead to quietistic Anabaptism which verges on gnostic dualism. Spiritual is good, physical is bad.

What is strange about the worldview position is that it gets employed by both the right and the left. On the one hand, you can have an aggressive type of right-wing Kuyperianism from Moscow Idaho, while you can also have an elitist, left-wing Kuyperian from the Neocalvinians of Calvin College or the Institute for Christian Studies.

Left-wing evangelicals have extolled the church as an agent of transformation, using Critical Race Theory and policies for social justice, while right-wing evangelicals can call for an end to the liberal democracy in seeking to transform the culture into a hybrid theonomic society.

Is the answer to merely eschew right and left, always being in the middle in our cultural transformation work? This seems to be the position of those who are called “elite evangelicals”, who position themselves as apolitical, all the while tacitly supporting powerful cultural movements because they will not commit to resisting them. Such neutrality might work if it wasn’t for “the world, the flesh and the devil” who assail the Christian in thought word and deed.

So the two kingdoms approach admits the raging tide of the world against the church, but recognizes the sovereignty of God over all, working through even the state powers (eg. Babylon and Rome), so that general order is maintained while the gospel is faithfully proclaimed and promoted, even by suffering witnesses. The constant temptation is for the church to shrink back (the argument of Hebrews), to assimilate to the position of their oppressors. This is where the two kingdoms approach can fail to bolster the antithesis between the church and the world. Two kingdoms may presume to have temporal kingdoms that are deeply flawed, yet still organized around the vestiges of Christian outlook.

What remains for us to discern is not the absolute rightness or wrongness of Philadelphia or Escondido. Rather, we must see in both positions the corrective for the other, not only to improve our understanding but to clarify our interpretation of a post-Christian world faced by those who wield weapons of warfare (2 Cor 10:1-4) that are metaphysically suited for the task.

The apostles are the plenipotentiary witnesses of Christ and the founders of the Church. Therefore the legitimacy and also the unity of the Church lie in its apostolicity. There is the true Church, and there is the true unity of the Church, where the Church is one with the apostles, for there the Church of the Kingdom reveals itself.”

Herman Ridderbos, When the Time Had Fully Come, 24

A Prayer for February 4, 2022

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Psalm 90:12

O Holy Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I praise you this morning that you are the Creator of all things, all of my life and all of my time. My time is in your hands, O Father in heaven. According to your wisdom and care you distribute to me the days that you have for me, as plates passed at a table or an inheritance passed to beloved children. Help me, Father to recognize the time which your incarnate Son Jesus Christ has, an eternal time of humanity glorified mysteriously yet unmixedly joined to the divine nature which is categorically beyond time and thus timeless. Grant me your Spirit, O Father, even the Spirit of your Son, so that I may have the Spirit’s wisdom to know what I ought to do and not do in the brevity of life. Thank you for giving me such heavenly math until my heart is made yours.

The trucker convoys that have arrived at Ottawa and at the US border crossings in Alberta and Manitoba cannot be ignored. They have brought a new level of political engagement not seen for many years.

Lack of Political Leadership

Why have the trucks rolled? Canadians, most of whom are working-class, have supported the truck protest because they see no representative leadership available. Of course, there are MP’s who have been elected. But the fact is that the Opposition does not provide much in the way of real critique towards the government. The government itself has operated in a realm that doesn’t seek parliamentary filtering but acts independently. This is the way that many Western governments have operated, moving away from consensus-building democracy to state-directed democracy.

The trucker convoys have been supported by people of diverse ethnicities and backgrounds, but they do not see representative leadership voicing the concerns that they have. The convoy is not merely a ‘conservative’ movement but is more like a rap on the knuckles to the political class. The convoy calls down the old political curse, “A pox on both your houses”.

The dismay of Canadians is shown to be well-placed when the Prime Minister fails to exemplify the traits which he has always projected, namely, empathy and authenticity. When these traits are only selectively employed, they reveal a deeper and more damning character trait, hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of Prime Minister Trudeau is becoming so large that international attention is being drawn to it, which appears to be the audience he favours the most.

Riding the Tiger of Identity Politics

The trucker convoy has clarified a further problem in the Canadian political scene. The divisive identity politics of the Trudeau circle cannot be branded as “sunny ways,” in the manner of Wilfred Laurier, a slogan which the Liberals embraced after the defeat of Stephen Harper. The convoy, with all of its ethnic and geographic diversity, was not given an inch by Trudeau. Instead, he doubled down on slanderous accusations against the convoy. The evidence for the appearance of a nazi flag and a Confederate flag at the rally has been widely suspected of being planted. One news organization has a cash reward available to discover the identity of either of these flag holders. It has even been suspected that Justin Trudeau’s personal photographer was following the flag bearer around when both quickly disappeared.

Only the opprobrium of white supremacy could give Trudeau the moral authority to dismiss the convoy. Yet as many non-caucasian convoy supporters have attested, they are not white supremacists.

Unlike the Black Lives Matter protests, the trucker convoy is not promoting identity politics, but unifying politics. The Liberal government has been riding the tiger of these identity politics and there is nowhere for them to easily get off.

Even the Twitterati in India thought Trudeau was due for a comeuppance. Pundits thought it was highly ironic that Trudeau was condemning a protest in Canada when he had the presumption to support a protest in India.

Yet his too-quick quarantine looked cowardly, and his positive Covid test communicated the very point that the truckers were trying to make: vaccines might be okay, but mandatory vaccination does not limit the spread of Omicron. However, mandates have crushing consequences on lives and livelihoods.

The Creative Offence

In an internet age, you would expect the protests of working-class Canadians to take place in some kind of online boycott. But the brilliance of the truckers’ convoy lies in their physicality. Like a large winger parked in front of the goalie, a large Kenworth is nearly impossible to move. The convoy has shown a creative offence that politicians would never have dreamed up. But in this new power play, anything can happen as the truckers effectively “crash the net”. Working-class Canadians are taking a shift on the offence. In so doing they are creating a shift in the whole game.

If It Was Me

If it was me, and I was organizing the truck convoy in Ottawa, I would rapidly build out the organization of convoy so that there is a lasting political movement. I’ve heard they have provincial ‘captains’. They ought to work at identifying federal, provincial and municipal allies, media allies, and allies in the corporate world. They have made their voices heard, but the next step is to build some lasting foundations for their movement. Maybe they should institute a series of lawsuits at multiple levels (see Brian Peckford’s lawsuit). They could also hire some well-known new media people (youtube or podcasting) who could begin a direct content drip that can last after the convoy is over. Their greatest challenge is getting their message out to the insulated classes in the major cities. Currently the Rogers/CTV/CBC media consortium has been just as creative as the convoy in finding story angles to undermine the convoy’s legitimacy. However, the fact of government-subsidized media being unable to hide their bias creates further distrust among the populace. All of this costs money to pull off, but they appear to have raised more than the Liberal party did last year.

Those are some thoughts, but what do I know, I’m simply a shepherd.

Harold John Ockenga was the leader of the Neo-Evangelical movement after WWII. He gave a speech where he outlined the challenges for the future. David Wells quoted a section of it in his own message called, The Bleeding of the Evangelical Church.

Ockenga said:

“This nation in its maturity is passing through a crisis which is enmeshing western civilization. Confusion exists on every hand. We are living in a very difficult and bewildering time, but few people realize what tremendous change we are undergoing.”

“The hour has arrived when the people of this nation must think deeply or be damned. We must recognize that we are standing at the crossroads and that there are only two ways that lie open before us. One is the road of the rescue of Western civilization by a re-emphasis on the revival of evangelical Christianity. The other is a return to the dark ages of heathendom, which powerful force is emerging in every phase of our lives today.”

Wells lamented the way that consumer marketing and material success had deluded the church into thinking it was on the right path. But in the rapid changes of the last few years, we see that Ockenga’s fear of “a return to the dark ages of heathendom” has a fearful currency. Heathen views of sex and sexuality and human beings and life itself are permeating society. Governance is giving up rule of law in favour of rule by power over “others”. What Ockenga saw as a crossroads, is for us a path we have taken much further than we may wish to admit.

Still there remains possible “the rescue of Western civilization by a re-emphasis on the revival of evangelical Christianity”. A re-emphasis is needed. A revival is required. Evangelical Christianity is retrievable.

We must move from the easy passions of speaking from our ‘gut’, and move toward the steady discipline of steeled minds who build and sow and stand inexorably against the chaos which promises to consume us, our churches and all that we hold dear.