God is doing a great work in our time. The Sun of Righteousness is burning away the fog of delusion that has clouded our churches for decades. This is the fog that has allowed us to claim biblical inerrancy and confessional fidelity on the one hand and yet accommodate the values of the Enlightenment and modernism on the other. And now that fog is clearing and the places where one can (whether naively or deceptively) insist on compatibility between light and darkness are fast disappearing.
With the evaporation of this fog, the evangelical and reformed churches are finally being forced, tangibly and concretely, to choose between Christ and Mammon, Molech, Leviathan, Demos, or whatever names you wish to give to the false god of this age. This god has a sharpened Trident, aimed at the heart of Christ’s churches, a new liberalism with three deadly barbs: racial Marxism, feminism, and sexual degeneracy.
Many false sons in her pale have long ago chosen the latter and have been trying to drag the institutions they have been members of along with them. They have taken up the Woke Trident and wield it against the churches in which they dwell. They will not rest until they have either converted or purged everyone. Others have long ago understood the stakes and chosen to stand on the Lord's side and reject the lies of the age. They in turn are rousing still others, and we are now finding and removing the compromises from our own hearts, families, and as able, churches. Eventually every Christian must stand with one faction or the other.
But for now there are those still in the middle, trying to preserve the old status quo and continue running the legacy denominations and institutions as if nothing is happening. They want both Christ and modernity. Or they want Christ but fear to go against the Trident. They will retreat to wherever they must go to remain in the fog. They insist on peace, peace- unless it is yesterday's battles being fought. Those battles no longer cost them much to fight. And if they can be mustered to fight over something besides those, it is usually a fight to shut up anyone that is forcing them to confront the present.
These include many of those insiders and big names about whom we have been scratching our heads of late. What are they up to? One day they offer some 'concerns' about critical theory or some other aberration. Are they coming around to reality, coming to join us? But then so often the next day they want to sideline anyone on their right flank that goes after the same target. So maybe they aren't coming to join us.
I think some are in the process of resolving the contradiction one way or the other. They may yet stand with us. I think others are just trying to make both sides stop reminding them of their mutually exclusive commitments. But they seem more irate with the ones on their right. Why? I suspect because they know the ones on their right are right. And they have less power to push back when rebuked. And they know they should be standing with them, and they are being put to shame by them. It's not easy living in the fog.
The committed fog-dwellers don't particularly like the Trident-wielders or their views, you see, but facing them head on will require them to step out of the fog and to commit not only for Christ, but against His enemies. They will have to get negative on things about which the culture feels very positively. They will have to look mean, intolerant, misogynist, nationalistic, and a host of other scary sounding things. And their lives will get much harder. They will not only have angry critics within their churches; they may even face the forces of culture, HR, and state. And so it is easier now to tone police the faithful that are taking a stand and pray the Trident only leaves a flesh wound. Maybe if they keep the peace hard enough, maybe if they discipline the unruly watchmen severely enough, maybe if they engage thoughtfully with the woke enough, the Trident will eventually just leave them alone in the fog.
But the Trident advances inexorably. It does not stop and it only moves in one direction- inward. It is barbed, it does not come out until its target is dead. Or until its target resolves to face the pain of removing it and tears it out.
Eventually there will be no fog left to hide in. Things are, as Dr. Dimble noted, "always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point." Foglings too, if they do not quit the church entirely, will take up their tridents and be obedient little wokelings, or else they will finally own the blood-red banner that streams afar, climb the steep ascent of heaven through peril, toil, and pain, and follow in His train.
Legacy denominations and institutions will likely be lost when it is all said and done. But there will remain a people, refined and strong, forged into new congregations, federations, schools, and communities, ready to face a very different world.
In short, we are all of us either getting woke or getting based. Now is the chaotic, messy sorting.