Paper Kingdoms
by Rick Saenz

Not too long ago I made R.C. laugh when I told him that I had once heard radio preacher Charles Stanley tell his listeners that on arrival in heaven, God wipes each and every painful memory from one's mind. Otherwise, Stanley asked, how could it be that there will be no tears in heaven? R.C. had a surprising—and biblical—reply to that one. When we cross the Jordan, our memories of the dark places will remain, but our eyes will be opened to the glory that was always present in those places. We will bring to mind the Slaughter of the Innocents, the Black Plague, Pickett's charge, the Holocaust, Roe v. Wade, the fall of the Twin Towers—and we will smile, and we will think to ourselves, "Isn't God great?"

Looking for God's glory in dark places is risky. A full and proper appreciation of His work in these places takes a measure of sanctification that we're unlikely to see in our lifetimes. And there are illegitimate pleasures lurking here that we must avoid, a delighting in evil for its own sake that we must leave to the wicked. But His glory is always there to be found, and knowing this can help us keep historical trends from overwhelming us.

Earthly kingdoms come and go. The most vicious and ungodly one so far, modernity, is wrapping up its five hundred year reign, but even as its death throes begin, to the human eye it seems to be thriving, to be more pervasive and powerful than ever. How can one even think that the Enlightenment project is about to implode when all we see is Western culture spreading ever more rapidly, conquering its opponents—even the church itself—with its promise, false as it may be, of universal peace and affluence?

Well, we know that King Jesus is steadily and inexorably establishing His rule, and so we also know that whatever purports to be His competition is no such thing. We know that the kings of this world are fools, and that their kingdoms are gossamer constructs, illusions that disintegrate at the touch of reality. Earthly powers that look fearsome to us are laughable in God's eyes (Psalm 2). And so we should cast a skeptical eye on the claims of modernity, by considering how well the moderns have kept their promises.

The moderns promised us that medical science would free us from our ills. Now we cower in fear before mosquitos and sneezing travelers, we train biological elephant guns on what used to be minor complaints, we won't bear children without first preparing for the most horrible and expensive contingencies, and we bankrupt ourselves and our neighbors in order to extend our lives just a bit further.

The moderns promised that state-supplied education would free us from the clutches of ignorance. Now we know things that the world has never known before—that we are a cosmic accident, indistinguishable in value or purpose from any other object; that our parents are idiots; that history is bunk; that the universe is expanding, or contracting, or maybe both; that salt and oatmeal are good for us, or maybe not, or maybe it doesn't matter; that God is a private matter, or optional, or dead; that it is good to show up on time, sit quietly, stand in lines, and do whatever arbitrary thing a bureaucrat tells us to do.

The moderns promised us that an industrial economy would free us from the need to work. Now we work not for ourselves but for others, not to support our families but to fuel the engines of consumption we call households. Now we live in fear of being just one paycheck from a life on the streets—or we toy with the thought that life on the streets, accompanied by a government handout, is not such a bad option.

The moderns promised us that rethinking the nature of marriage and the family would free us from stifling interpersonal entanglements. Now marriages create no entanglements at all, at least none that can't be severed by simple legal means. Husbands and wives are free to fashion lives as individuals; children are free to raise themselves as they see fit—at least those whose lives were spared. And the state is free to require that a family conduct itself as the state sees fit.

Most recently, our thoroughly modern President and his supporters have promised to deliver us from the presence of evil itself. All they ask from us is to bare our lives to their scrutiny, to contribute a child or two to their military, to avoid certain topics of conversation, to keep our questions to ourselves, and to assume the best when a cranky neighbor disappears. Oh, and to be ready to take off our shoes on request.

The moderns are laughable for their overreaching, for continuing to make such grandiose promises while having delivered on none of them. And we are laughable for our credulity. We accept on faith their ludicrous claim that this is progress, that things are getting better in every way. Or, if we do raise a timid question, we are satisfied with the even more ludicrous retort that problems remain because we haven't tried hard enough, waited long enough, or spent freely enough to eliminate them.

This is not progress, it is judgment. The moderns just finished engineering the most murderous and godless century in history; they did not emerge from it with repentant and contrite spirits, but with a renewed determination to impose their sovereign will on a recalcitrant reality. This cannot be written off as merely deluded thinking, it is suppression of the truth by wickedness. We are in Romans 1 territory here; God has handed us over, and judgment is unfolding.

The moderns will either follow the lead of Nebuchadnezzer, humbling themselves and acknowledging the one true God, or that of his son Belshazzar, wallowing in their pride until God finally strikes them down. In either case, God will be honored and glorified. The kingdom of modernity will collapse, and when the dust subsides and the rubble is cleared away, we will see the specifics of what for now we can only take on faith—that the rise and fall of modernity was also part of the Father's plan, that the foolishness of the world has once again been weighed in the balance and found wanting, and that the rule of King Jesus will have been extended further than ever.