Plundered by the Egyptians
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

You're walking down the city street, perhaps a bit nervous as the hour is late. Out from the alley steps a man, facing you, immobile. Who would you rather have it be? It could be a man who is well know for, among other things, his vocal hatred of Christianity, his sympathy for communism, his penchant for over-drinking and chasing loose women, and his deep pockets. Or it could be instead someone next to no one knows. He has day-glo green hair has been teased into angry spikes. Safety pins pierce his cheeks, razor blades dangle from his multi-pierced ears. Under his leather jacket he sports a t-shirt that says, "Nothing is."

One of these options is a punk; the other is Ted Turner. The punk is actually the more consistent of the two. He lives his life under the sun. He has seen the vanity, and scoffed at the happy humanism of the Ted Turner's of this world. He has embraced the nothing. Which is precisely why he is the greater threat in this encounter on the street.

Ted Turner, for all that earned him the moniker Captain Outrageous, isn't likely to cut your throat for your wallet, or for the sheer fun of it. In terms of your walk home, you are probably not in any great danger. Why not? Ted Turner denies in all that he does that there is a transcendent source of morality that he is obligated to measure up to. He spends his fortune trying to persuade more and more people that there is no objective right and wrong. He has no reason for existence. He has passed through all the allurements that Solomon tried in living under the sun. There is nothing in his worldview that should restrain him from slitting your throat. Nevertheless, you are probably pretty safe.

You are safe because Ted Turner has already mugged you. He has taken from you, and from me, and from all of God's people, what doesn't rightly belong to him. Ted Turner isn't apt to plunder us because he has already plundered us. And it's a good thing. Solomon understood what you are left with when you will not have God in your thinking, nothing. And nothing's just another word for anarchy. With no God there is no lawgiver. And as such there can be no law. With no God there can be no knower. And as such there can be no knowledge. With no God there can be no beauty. And as such, we can enjoy no beauty.

When we plunder Mozart, we do so because he has already plundered us. When we plunder Einstein we do so because he has already plundered us. When we plunder Socrates, we do so because he has already plundered us. They have nothing, for they have expelled from their thinking the source of all things. So if there is something in their wallet, it's because they stole it from us. Our response, however, should be gratitude. We live in a world in which bridges tend to hold us up. We live in a world in which it is an odd thing for a pill in a bottle to be laced with cyanide. We live in a world in which not only do most people not adopt the rage and cynicism of the punk, but that includes men who, while they are still outside the grace of God, signed up to be officers of the law, who are ready to die to protect you from the angry young man with the green hair.

When we celebrate the heroism of those men and women who died trying to rescue people in the World Trade Center, we aren't saying that all these people made it into heaven because only Christians can be heroic. We should affirm, however, that without a God who teaches us to do unto others, without a Christ who modeled that love, without a standard of right and wrong, that heroism is utterly meaningless.

Why would God allow them to plunder us? For our sake. We need to understand as we look at the culture around us, that, while we are deemed to be insignificant, out of the mainstream, isolated and backwards, we are nevertheless the true center. We are the center second because all that holds the center of the culture is ours. Nothing can be "cultivated" without truths that only come from our worldview. But it is true first because the very purpose of that culture, and all those who are in it, and are outside the faith, it is all for the well-being of the bride of Christ.

All of history is the story of Christ's conquest, and of His purifying of His bride. Those who plunder us, therefore, whether it be those elements of our woridview that they feel might be useful to them, or whether it is actually taking our wallets, do so for His purposes, for our well-being. Rather than pulling our hair out because the world is full of fools who say at the same time, "There is no right and wrong, and it is wrong to murder people walking in the street", we should rejoice that we live amidst fools that at least, through no wisdom of their own, don't think murder is a good thing.

Such doesn't mean that we shouldn't point out the inconsistencies of the pagans in stealing our moral capitol, but it does mean we should not weep over it. After all, it's not like there's only so much to go around. We don't hate murder less when they begin to hate it more. Woridviews are not a zero-sum game. What we don't want to do, however, is leave worldview dollar bills laying about on the ground for them to pick up. We don't want the pagans to be able to live too comfortably without having to confront our King. But we need to thank our King for the comfort we enjoy, precisely because He has ordained that the Egyptians should plunder us.