Anointed with the Oil of Gladness

With the loss of the Vietnam War, Watergate, stagflation, the mainstreaming of drug use, and the Jimmy Carter-led American malaise, the 1970s is not a prime candidate for nostalgic memories.

Yet one thing stands out when looking back to that decade; liberals had a sense of humor.

Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury poked fun at everyone–liberals and conservatives alike, and made us laugh. Mike Royko’s columns in the Chicago newspapers left us chuckling at the foibles of the non-partisan human condition. Even David Letterman still had the self-deprecating introspection necessary for seeing humor wherever he looked.

Then to the surprise of moderates and liberals across the country, Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States, and everything changed.

Talking to Sean Hannity the other day, Rush Limbaugh said that liberals “don’t have a sense of humor. To them, life is a war. Every day of their lives is a battle. We are the enemy. Their effort is to eliminate us. Al-Qaeda is not their enemy and ISIS is not their enemy and socialism’s not their enemy, communism. We are.”

This is nothing new, and didn’t begin with Reagan’s election. Liberalism has been at war with the culture since Adam and Eve bit into the apple. What changed, however, is that Reagan’s election made liberals aware that the other side was still fighting.

Until Reagan’s election, the 20th century had been one long string of successes for the advance of liberalism. Yes, there were a few setbacks along the way, such as Calvin Coolidge and Billy Graham, but its progress toward ascendancy went largely unchallenged in the culture. Republicans became the party of Richard Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller. The church had little to say about the cultural declines of the 1960s and the rapid rise of abortions after Roe v. Wade. And with the defenestration of Republicans after Watergate, the victory seemed complete. So why not take time out from the battles for a few laughs?

Few liberals had taken seriously of the conservative resurgence led by William F. Buckley, Jr. Fewer still had noticed the rise of the evangelical church. So when conservatives and evangelicals put Reagan into the presidency and the Bible back into the cultural debate, liberals quickly reverted to battle mode–largely losing their sense of humor in the process–and haven’t let up since.

If only the church and Republicans would join them in the fight.

Prior to his appearance with Hannity, Limbaugh commented on the differences between liberals and conservatives:

Every day is not a battle to us. We’re seeking a life that is not spend in battle. We just want to live the one life we all have. We want to maximize it. We want to enjoy it. We want to use the God blessed tenets of being an American. The right to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. We do not want to spend every damn day mad at everybody else, trying to swash everybody else. But they do!

In one sense, Rush sells himself short. Few cultural commentators over the years have been as engaged in the battle we are in as Rush–Mark Steyn and Douglas Wilson are two others that come to mind.

In another sense, though, Rush identifies the main challenge that many Republicans and Christians share: a lack of awareness that we are in a spiritual battle over the culture and the world.

The beginning of the 19th century was a rough time for the protestant church. Having faithfully defended the authority of Scripture through two centuries of persecution from within, much of the church wilted under decades of assault from the Enlightenment. The first to fall was Genesis 1 and the six days of creation in an attempt to accommodate Darwinism.

Not too long after that was the unity of Scripture. Dispensationalism arose to chop up the Bible into so many pieces that its adherents can’t see that Jesus came to save the world. Instead, they teach–in books like the Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series–that Christians will be saved but the culture is lost and the world will go to hell in a hand basket. This perspective has not only captured much of the evangelical church but also many reformed believers who have adopted the Reformed (or Radical) Two Kingdoms (R2K) approach.

The end result of this today is a radically individualized approach to salvation; the church needs to save people but not the culture. Influencing what Hollywood or government or science does is not part of the “mission” of the church. Its mission, instead, is to make disciples, i.e., save individual sinners and essentially pull them out of the culture. Gone is the Genesis concept of dominion.

This chopped up view of the world separates the salvation of individuals from the salvation of the world. Thus many Christians fail to recognize that political and cultural battles are in fact spiritual battles over souls. This blindness comes in large part because they can’t see that the Bible has much to say about how the government should govern.

Except, of course, when it comes to social justice. In which case, we are told, Christians should support the welfare state, affirmative action, and consumer protection laws that enforce Jesus’ mandate, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39).

So instead of joining the fight against liberalism’s assault on liberty, many Christians have instead chosen to 1) ignore it because the culture can’t be saved or 2) join it because only the government can ensure that we love our neighbors properly. Many Republicans have done the same.

In both cases, there is a blindness to the fact that the fight over the welfare state, etc. is a spiritual battle. And not only a battle against individual souls, but against the reign of Christ as Lord and King. After all, if government does everything for us, why do we need a Lord and Savior? Liberals, though, don’t share that blindness, and thus press the attack.

Neither apathy nor blindness, however, is the path for Christians. Unlike what Rush said, every day is a battle for us. And we must engage God’s enemies. Here are just a few of the passages that call us to join the battle to save the world:

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28);

“In [Abraham] all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3);

“‘Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.’ Then [the Lord] said to [Abraham], ‘So shall your offspring be'” (Genesis 15:5); and

For [Christ] must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet (1 Corinthians 15:25).

Not only are Christians called to battle, but we can engage the enemy with confidence because Christ’s victory over the world will be complete. And while we should be determined, we can also engage the battle with gladness:

Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions (Hebrews 1:8-9).

Yes, Christians are in a war. Yet our confidence in Christ allows us to engage the war with our gladness–and sense of humor–intact.