Perhaps the most frequent question I have received as a pastor in America over the last year or so is a version of ‘What on earth is going on?’
It is not hard to understand why variations along the lines of that kind of question are being asked by people today. We have clear indications of cultural change all around us, as well as a grievous lack of decorum and even basic civility in cultural battles. We have a multi-polar global scene with nations jostling for influence and power culminating in various wars or regional conflicts. We have terrorism continuing to spread its blight of vicious evil on the unwary. We have political populism that has thrown up global leaders who have caught many people by surprise.
What is going on?
First of all, we need to remind ourselves of the Sovereign Plan. This is not just to say that God is in his heaven and he will do whatever he wants. Nor is it to encourage a naïve sort of disengaged passivity among Christian people. Instead, more specifically and actively, it is to remind ourselves that God does have a sovereign plan and it is being worked out.
So the answer to the question ‘What on earth is going on?’ is that God is building his kingdom, the gospel is making great progress, and there is a deep and abiding spiritual battle which we are called to fight, not with the weapons of this world but with the armour of God. That is what is going on.
What is going on is God’s plan to gather to himself a people from all nations, that we might be his people and he might be our God. That is what is happening.
There are wars and rumours of war, but we need to steel ourselves, as Jesus frequently teaches at the end of the Gospels, not to panic, but to remind ourselves that such things must happen and yet the end is still to come. And in the meantime, while God continues to be patient so that people have an opportunity to repent, our task remains crystal clear: proclaim the gospel.
Second, though, we also need to remind ourselves of the plans of mice and men that, as the Scottish poet famously said: ‘gang aft agley’. I am old enough to remember when Reagan was vilified as the worst President in American history – and now he is sainted to practically appearing on Mount Rushmore.
I remember the panic around the oil price crisis of the 1970s (and even the more recent one when everyone went out to get the cheapest most fuel-economic car available, not for commendable green reasons, but to save money – and now some are worried about how low fuel prices are!). I have also read enough history to remember that the great Queen Victoria, who led the Victorian age of lauded memory in British history, was for a while so hated by so many people that assassination was a very real possibility.
Taking the long view
I also remember that, before Winston Churchill became the iconic figure that, in retrospect, he now is, he was thrown out of office altogether, ignored and then, even after his great victories, cast aside and once again thrown out of power, before returning. So when I read of all the hand-wringing about our current political leadership I take the long view. I also remember all the hand-wringing about the political leadership of just 12 months ago.
In short, I suspect the most important word for evangelicals today on both sides of the Atlantic is – if I may cite a famous, if secular, speech – never, never, never give up. And instead, keep on keeping on.
