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Jihad
The Vision
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By R.C. Sproul Jr. War, they tell us, is hell. And they are right in one sense, though wrong in another. Though I have never been in combat, I know that whatever horror is there, though it may be unlike any other earthly horror, it is not hell. Every soldier ever caught in the barrage on Omaha Beach, every survivor of the Bataan Death March, every casualty of Pickett's charge-if they were not covered in the blood of Christ when they died, they would sorely love to be back in the midst of that carnage if it meant an escape from what they are going through now. But war is hell in another way. The true war, the real war of which all other wars are but a shadow, is the war between heaven and hell. As with all wars, this war began with a revolt against lawful authority. Satan was displeased with his standing and led a band of angels in a revolution. He, along with a third of all the company of heaven, was banished. Soon the serpent took up residence in the garden and went looking for recruits. There he succeeded-at least for a time. He added to his battalions the whole of the human race. God, however, is not a recruiter. His army is staffed strictly with draftees. In His declaration of war He made that promise, that He would draft His soldiers. Only One was a volunteer. God spoke to the serpent, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed: He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise His heel" (Genesis 3:15). This is God's solemn declaration of war, and it is the context of all of our lives. The devil understands this. Central to his strategy is to make us forget that we are at war, or to confuse the nature of the warfare and the division of the combatants. His weapons too are not merely carnal. He is, after all, more crafty than any of the other beasts. As I write, the United States government is engaged in a righteous-albeit undeclared-war. It is as far as I can tell rightly wielding the sword to bring to justice those who have waged war against these United States. I'm pleased at the early reports that American soldiers have thus far been kept safe, that Afghan civilians have been spared by and large, and that great damage is being done to the assets of the Taliban regime. Such is exactly as it should be. I rejoice to see the execution of justice. Over there, things are going well; over here, however, I have concerns. First, the devil has fashioned a great victory in confusing us. Most professing believers have fallen more deeply into that grave syncretistic heresy of confusing the kingdom of God with these United States. The kingdom is indeed here, but no more than it is everywhere else, including Afghanistan. We have politicians seeming to call out to God for deliverance while Christians call out to the state for deliverance. There is a blurring of who "we" are. Are we the children of God, citizens of heaven, or are we Americans? These are not the same thing. Are we offended because bin Laden assaulted Christians, or because he assaulted consumerist American culture? For which are we seeking vengeance? Second, our syncretism has sunk to new depths. My prayer is that never again will some fool say, "All religions are basically the same." My fear is that in trying to separate Islam from terrorism, so as to allow for continuing religious pluralism, we will affirm with the so-called minister of the gospel who prayed in the National Cathedral to "the God of Moses, Jesus and Mohammed" that all religions that behave nicely are the same. In like manner I fear that what will be condemned is not Islam but any religion that makes a claim of exclusive truth; after they finish off the Islamic fundamentalists, what fundamentalists do you think they will come for next? What we are witnessing is two armies which share a common denial of the Lordship of Christ making war with each other. Islamic fundamentalism is warring with American relativism-and we, the soldiers of the king, are spectators. Of course we must be compassionate spectators, offering the comfort of Christ to our suffering neighbors. Of course we must be "active" spectators if in our service to the King we serve also as a soldier of the state. Of course we must honor and encourage the courage of those who are fighting this war, whether they be firemen in New York, or bomber pilots over Kabul. Of course we should pray for the peace of the Babylon in which we are making our pilgrimage. But we must remember where we have our citizenship. We must not let ourselves get distracted from the true war. Like Islam we are a people bent on world conquest. We, like they, will not rest until our God is affirmed by all men everywhere. We will not break into that final celebration until every knee bows, and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord. We, like they, want to see our Holy book honored and revered not just here, not just in the west, but in northern Africa, in the Arabian peninsula, in western China and in the near east. We, like they, celebrate our martyrs, those who died fighting faithfully in this war, whether in the Sudan, in Iran, or in East Timor. In short, we must not confuse the war of President Bush with our own war. We need not distinguish between the nice Muslims and the deadly ones, for we understand that both are our enemies. We want to see them both destroyed. And we know it will come to pass. The battle between Allah and Yahweh is the same battle that precedes the garden, for Allah is not just a different name for God, but a different name for the devil. We and they do not worship the same God; for we affirm, to the death, that there is indeed one God, but that Mohammed is not His prophet. At the same time, however, we are at war with Israel. These are not our cousins, whether they be the socialist and atheistic variety, or the so-called orthodox variety. All who have rejected the Son, no matter how much they protest their love of the Father, are servants of the serpent. Their father is the father of lies. And so we are likewise at war with the unbelieving American culture. Whether it be the overt syncretists such as the wolves who presided over the services at the National Cathedral, or the tamer variety, those believers in a civil religion who know nothing about even their own lame god except that he's a big fan of the USA-that is not us. They too are our enemies and must be destroyed. The devil likewise rejoices when we get confused over our weapons. President Bush's war cannot be our war because he rightly wields a sword. His weapons are carnal, for that is his calling. Our calling, however, is to use the tools that God has given us. We fight the real war, the one in which not mere bodies are at stake but bodies and souls, by the proclamation of the gospel. The gospel we proclaim is the gospel of the kingdom, that Christ rules over all things. The devil, even when he does not silence us, confuses this still more. We cannot win the lost with the gospel when the gospel denies God's sovereignty. If we proclaim a god who wrings his hands over the events of September 11, we have defected. If we proclaim a god who is devoid of wrath and judgment, we make those who believe twice the children of hell that we are. Instead of drafting new soldiers, we merely strengthen the enemy. The gospel we proclaim, if we want to fight as faithful soldiers, must be a faithful gospel. It must affirm the awful wrath of God that rests upon us, and the promise that if we believe, that it rested upon our King. The gospel we proclaim must affirm that all other gospels are invitations to the wrath of God, gateways to hell. The gospel we proclaim must also affirm that all those who proclaim the same gospel are our brothers, our fellow soldiers, whether they once were Muslims, or Jews, or American yuppies. We are not united under the stars and stripes, but under the scars and stripes. We are one, and no war will divide us. The true war unites us. And so we are one body, the body of Christ, the conqueror, who has already overcome the world. We live in confusing and dangerous times. But greater than the danger of falling planes, or anthrax is the danger of the wrath of God. And so in these times, as in all times, we must think and speak clearly the gospel of the kingdom. When the sky seems to be falling, when everyone seems to have lost their head, when a nation is plunged into uncertainty and doubt, then is the time for faithful proclamation. When our focus is on the one true war, the confusion crumbles all around us. We are a simple people with a simple message, that we all must repent and believe the gospel. We are the people of the Book, our simple answer to all great questions. We are the people of the simple faith that affirms, in all circumstances, that we rest in the very hand of God. We do not wring our hands and cry, "How could this happen?" Instead we affirm, just as we do in times of peace and plenty, "It is of the Lord." We are the simple people who will neither spin the truth, nor spin God Himself, because our simple calling is to tell the truth, simply. When our focus is on the one true war, we are not sucked into the great war frenzy of the nation around us. We adopt neither the confusion of those around us, nor their confused certainty. We neither continue in the folly of relativism-"Who are we to judge the terrorists?"-nor in the folly of jingoism-"Kill them all and let God sort them out." We are a separate people. What separates us is our convictions, and our lives, that in the very living of them become yet another proclamation of the gospel that has redeemed us. What separates us is not that we are aloof and uncaring, but that we care from a position of peace, and we give of ourselves from that infinite source which is our King. We honor those in authority over us. We thank God for the blessings of comparative liberty that we enjoy. We revere our forefathers who first won and then defended that liberty. But we are not citizens of this nation. We are set apart, and serve a different sovereign. Our loyalty is both unassailable and directed away from the state. We own no king but Christ. He is ours, as we are His. In short, we are deliberate. We are immune, or at least ought to be, from the herd mentality, whether that herd is worshipping some phony civic god or is working itself into a frenzy. We, being people of the Word, are people of thought. Our response is not knee-jerk, but thoughtful. We do not rush out and wallpaper our homes in red, white and blue. We do not look at the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center and ask, "Why", but rather look at the whole of the city, our own towns, even our own homes, and ask, "Why not?" And then, again we proclaim the answer, because of the mercy of God. We will not be diverted. We will not be disrupted. We will not be dissuaded. We will, by the grace of God, continue to be about our calling of building the kingdom of God. And we will do it all for the glory of God alone.
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The
Real War