Convictional Kindness

It has been good to have got back into reading Onward by Russell Moore. I'm finding it quite hard to put down. I find it so helpful how he analyses culture really insightfully and Biblically and shows how and why we should respond. There is so much in the book; I'm going to copy and paste some sections from his chapter, 'Convictional Kindness' in two posts.

Moore:

[There] is a persistent temptation for our public witness, especially on issues of righteousness and justice: to become an ecclesial version of a bumper sticker, identifying who we are and expressing outrage at the culture around us. Nothing signals conviction and passion in this age more than the art of being theatrically offended. And it would be easy to see the vehemence of our outrage as evidence that we are “engaging the culture,” when we would be doing nothing of the sort. If outrage were a sign of godliness, then the devil would be the godliest soul in the cosmos. He, after all, rages and roars “because he knows his time is short” (Rev. 12:12). Contrast that with the Lord Jesus who does not “quarrel or cry aloud” (Matt. 12:19). Why is this so? It’s because the devil has no mission apart from killing and destroying and accusing and slandering. And it’s because the devil is on the losing side of history. The challenge of the next generation is to cultivate a convictional kindness in our witness as we address the outside world. This kindness is not weak or passive. In fact, kindness is an act of warfare.

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This sort of talk [fighting the devil] provokes squeamishness, even in the most conservative and orthodox Christians among us. The first reason is because such talk of the demonic is viewed as strange, indeed insane, in our cultural context. The Scriptures, we know, present a picture of the universe as a war zone, with the present age a satanic empire being invaded by the rival kingdom of Jesus. Talk of such realities rise and fall in the history of the church, oscillating between preoccupation and embarrassment.

If we are too afraid of seeming inordinately Pentecostal to talk about the devil, we will find ourselves declaring war against mere concepts, like “evil” or “sin.” When we don’t oppose demons, we demonize opponents. And without a clear vision of the concrete forces we as the church are supposed to be aligned against, we find it very difficult to differentiate between enemy combatants and their hostages.

The work of the devil isn’t typically a supernatural display of evil. The work of the devil typically is simply to distract us from the supernatural altogether, to keep us walking in the path in which we’re already walking (Eph. 2:1–3), focused on what seems right to us (Prov. 14:12). That’s why the gospel doesn’t simply address the warning of “devilishness” to unbelievers. 

James wrote to the churches, made up of believers, to watch out for a kind of “wisdom” that is “earthly, unspiritual, demonic” that is characterized by “jealousy and selfish ambition” (James 3:15–16), which can look awfully spiritual or at least like good leadership skills, with the right spin-doctoring. After Simon Peter confessed Jesus as Christ, through the power of the Spirit (Matt. 16:16–17), Jesus said to him, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me” (16:23). This does not mean that Peter was a plotting satanist fifth column within the disciples’ ranks. What Peter said to provoke this eruption from Jesus seems perfectly reasonable. Peter was assuring Jesus that he would not face the awful fate Jesus was speaking of: arrest and crucifixion. Wouldn’t any of us expect any of our friends to comfort us if we said, “You know, it’s a nice night but I’m probably going to end up murdered and tossed into an unmarked grave.” Peter here was just, well, normal. And that’s the point. The hindrance Jesus identified was a “mind” set on “the things of man” rather than the “things of God” (16:23). 

The devil is normal. The ways of the devil are not what witch-hunters suppose, some preternatural and recognizably dark power. The devil’s power is to leave us where we are, under the sentence of accusation, hiding behind whatever we can find—ideology, philosophy, religion, morality, pleasure, success, or whatever—to keep us from paying attention to where we are going. The devil’s way is the “course of this world” (Eph. 2:1–2). In this fallen world, the devil is normal; it’s the gospel that’s strange.

The Scriptures command us to be gentle and kind to unbelievers, not because we are not at war, but because we’re not at war with them (2 Tim. 2:26). When we see that we are warring against principalities and powers in the heavenly places, we can see that we’re not wrestling against flesh and blood (Eph. 6:12). The path to peace isn’t through bellicosity or surrender, but through fighting the right war (Rom. 16:20). We rage against the Reptile, not against his prey.