Time for a kingdom offensive

We’ve been writing about the intolerance of Islamism and atheism. In this last post in the series we will briefly treat the matter of an offensive engagement in this war.

The war from the East will not be won with bombs and bullets. It will only be won with a better set of ideals and ideas. Two voices from the past will help us remember the importance of this kind of vision. The first comes from John Adams, second President of the United States:

The foundation of every nation is some principle or passion in the minds of the people. The noblest principles and most generous affections in our Christian character, then, have the fairest chance to support the noblest and most generous models of civil covenant.

Adams not only understood the importance of vision, he also knew that Judeo-Christian religion provided the best foundation for a free nation. The history of the United States, up to this present time, has proven Adams right. Unfortunately, today free nations are uprooting themselves to replant in the soil of atheism, a system without the foundation to sustain a free society.

The second voice is the great Russian author and sage, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who points out that the root of a nation’s health is found in its soul, not its material wealth: “The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization.”

To win the war of ideas and ideals, Christians must articulate a vision superior to both jihadists and fundamentalist atheists. But a vision is just a theory until it is made real through our lives, behaviors and institutions. To say this a little differently, incarnating truth will take, not merely an articulation of these ideas, but an enfleshment of these ideas through the lives of those who follow Jesus, the Incarnate One.

The Church needs to promote a kingdom offensive, first by calling people to the cross of Christ, then by reforming culture to reflect the nature and character of God, and finally by rebuilding the laws and institutions of society.

To describe it differently, before he died Christ taught His disciples to pray that His kingdom would come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The church is not to simply wait for God to act, nor to be reactive to events moving around us. Jesus intended the Great Commission to launch a kingdom offensive. Based on His death and resurrection, and His authority as king of heaven and earth (Matt 28:18), He commissioned His followers to disciple nations, to bring the culture of the kingdom–Truth, Beauty and Goodness–into the heart of the nations.

Let us work to emancipate those in bondage to political Islam and the intolerance of the West. Let us promote those virtues that support human flourishing and freedom. Let us manifest by our words and our actions that

• Life is better than death,
• Health is better than disease,
• Liberty is better than slavery,
• Prosperity is better than poverty,
• Education is better than ignorance,
• Justice is better than oppression,
• Wisdom is better than folly,
• Beauty is better than mediocrity.

Darrow Miller

Editor’s note: For a book-length treatment of this very subject, see Darrow’s work, Emancipating the World, available at Amazon.

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