Principalities & Powers

The Eternal Good vs. Evil Battle Waged Beneath Politics & Culture

The moral evil of human action divides people and breeds discord. However, it comes in many guises that may easily deceive us; and for those whose hearts are empty, nothing is easier than pretending to be good. Outward piety and renunciation may well mask the worst kind of cruelty.

In some eras, there is ample cause for optimism. For example, around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. At other times, there is reason to be pessimistic. Today, there are many signs that good is giving way to evil. In the West, we seem to be setting ourselves up for a strange future. Mounting events both within and without our borders relegate us to a secondary role in the constant world drama. For millennia, we in the West have stood for a particular outlook on life. Longing for freedom, honouring the Word (in oratory and logical proof) and Godly at the same time, we have integrated structural elements from Grecian philosophy, Roman law, and Jewish worship. These pillars of Western civilization—as we know it—are now trembling. Our own world is breaking up under the combined forces of tyrannical imperialism, Islamic supremacism, and revolutionary Marxism.

We are clearly expected by terrorist fronts like the WEF, the UN, and the WHO to prepare for a new world order. It appears that the inheritors of Western Christianity and the Enlightenment, the people of the free world, are about to lose our inalienable rights. As things stand, our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness may ultimately depend upon the benevolence of our self-ordained globalist foreign masters.

As their numbers daily increase, Muslims of the diaspora are consolidating their power. In the style of pre-revolutionary Bolsheviks, Islamists are scheming to take over and impose their rules—inspired by the expansionism of the Rashidun Caliphate. So far, they are in control of public spaces in European cities and are making similar inroads in Canada and the U.S. In a time of transition marked by secular value confusion, moral decay, and senseless calls for ‘diversity’, we are already in the process of renouncing our own traditions; of denying ourselves as virtuous beings; and of submitting to the ‘inevitable’. We are witnessing the insidious, supposedly inexorable conquest of the West.

The Muslim invaders of the past, who were Moors and Ottomans, never dealt with issues of good and evil in a compassionate, morally-humane way at all comprehensible to us. They were not prone to critical reflection. With military strategists and civil servants at the helm, they expanded their dominions and maintained their undisputed dominance of civil society. In short, they were conquerors.

Fleeing poverty and cruelty, the non-military invaders of today settle in the West because we readily open the gates and permit them entry. Supposed to be civilized and generous to the point of self-destruction, we find it impossible to reject them. They know this quite well and so we offer them food, shelter, and health care. Of course, our societies have largely renounced Christian faith, but hypocrisy still thrives.

Initially, with the sentimental appeal of ‘victims’, adventurous young men disembark from overcrowded boats, band together, and learn by heart the lenient rules of their Christian hosts. Next, they send for their relatives and intended wives. They do not migrate in deference to Western ways of life, nor do they strive for assimilation and integration. From an historical perspective, they are invaders and colonizers.

The invaders themselves and people sharing their outlook on life multiply and eventually dominate central areas of public life (schools, hospitals, retail trade, criminal courts, and prisons). This nurtures triumphant visions of a future in which their faith is above the laws of post-Christian society. Much to the chagrin of the progressive elite, which celebrates ‘diversity’ and warns against ‘bigotry’, a change in attitude is palpable. The invaders become estranged and cloister themselves as their dependence upon our benevolence decreases.

It is as if orthodoxy and a supremacist contempt for people and other faiths conspire to prevent individual assimilation and cultural integration. The invaders spy on each other, hold each other accountable for breaking domestic rules—namely their own customs—and forbid each other to apostatize the faith of their forefathers. What is more, a positively hostile attitude towards everything Western is reinforced within Islamist circles.

So long as they are relatively few in number and depend upon us for support, the invaders pretend to think and feel as we do. Naturally, we love this; we are confirmed in our benevolence and encouraged to continue down the same path. However, once the invaders fall under the influence of religious leaders from among their own ranks, the opportunistic willingness to adapt socially by pretence evaporates. They then demand the right to live by their own rules (consider Halal mortgages), which in itself requires special consideration from the rest of us, but also obliges us to honour them. In short, they claim a special status for their myths and symbols. Latent is the ultimate demand for submission. That is where Western civilization, the basis for our experience of community and social adaptation in life— morality, rule of law, and social cohesion—collapses. With nobody willing to stand up and defend it, our cultural traditions become extinct.

Our wise ancestors must have known this instinctively, being brought up with tales of the Crusades, the large-scale enslavement of Westerners by Corsairs, and the Balkan wars of liberation waged against the Ottoman Empire. Having embraced secularism, we presumed to be so much wiser in our time that we could win the hearts of the entire world through unprejudiced hospitality and tolerance. Instead, our enemies have predictably consumed us; we no longer believe in God or in a bright future for our ourselves, have children, or defend ourselves against those who openly challenge and humiliate us in our homelands.

In the West, we are negligent of the evil threatening us from without. Against our better judgement, we even doubt the existence of evil in the world and ludicrously assume people to be intrinsically good. Many years of peace have obviously dulled our senses and made us mellow. In addition, we have lost some of the courage to speak out against injustice and defend ourselves. Thus, we hesitate to respond appropriately when the enemy blatantly lies to us and tests our resolve.

The examples of moral retreat in the West are as numerous as they are shameful. However, some are more conspicuous than others. On the one hand, we sympathize with feminist demands for equality at home and in the workplace; on the other, we dare not dispute that women from foreign cultures are enslaved in the “multicultural” ghetto.

We once feared being labelled “racists”. As society evolved, emergence of parallel societies and anti-Western riots in the streets and the omnipresent risk of violent reprisals have silenced even the most outspoken among us. Today, large parts of Western Europe are effectively enclaves under Sharia law—including bans on women walking in public.

Evil exists as well as good. In order to exalt the latter, we must be brave and fight the other. This struggle is eternal; and if we think that we can ever rest and take the good for granted, then we are wildly wrong and wager everything we now cherish. We must vigilantly maintain order and human dignity around us. Ignorance, indolence, and fear invite tragic revisitation of dark days in human history.

The West is not the birthplace of evil; however, it is the only place in the world where we enjoy personal freedom within a tradition reflecting independently and publicly upon our own morality. This is no longer the norm in Western nations. In fact, the most startling quality of world leaders today is that they do not believe in much beyond their own needs and wants. Many will feign a belief in God for the sake of appearances, but true believers are increasingly hard to find. In the West, where Christianity has shaped society for two millennia, it is more common to find governments punishing Christians for their faith than it is to see Biblical truths defended.

Finnish MP Paivi Rasanen, a rare Christian politician in these secular times, has spent the past several years fending off criminal ‘hate speech’ allegations for publicly quoting the Bible. Prosecutors claim that her religious convictions concerning marriage and morality are ‘insulting’, ‘degrading’, and violate ‘sexual rights.’ Her accusers insist that the state “can limit freedom of expression in the outward expression of religion.” Bill C-367 and Bill C-63 will soon be of similar impact in Canada.

Such despotic statements amount to nothing less than full-throated attacks against religious freedom. The Faithful are not Christian for merely an hour or two at church each Sunday.
We do not slip in and out of our Christianity like a suit of clothes. Believers are called to walk in Christ’s footsteps in all that we do each day. For Finnish authorities to demand that Rasanen hide her faith is to demand that she forsake Christianity. This is the same awful dilemma which faced Alberta pastors James Coates and Timothy Stephens, who both chose to remain imprisoned rather than agree to bail conditions prohibiting them from leading church services. Only governments believing in nothing beyond their own power could command a citizen to obey the state by defying God.

Finland is far from being the only Western nation ignoring the Biblical warning to “tempt not the Lord thy God.” During the Covid reign of terror, the entire Anglo-sphere and most of Europe waged a perverse kind of spiritual war against churches, pastors, and their congregants. Church leaders were threatened with criminal charges for opening their doors to a suffering public, and government agents tracked mobile phones and recorded license plate numbers of those faithful who dared to exercise their religious freedom by attending services.

Amid an horrendous global effort to prevent us from praying together, PM Justin Trudeau has distinguished himself as a globalist, anti-Christian tyrant. Over 100 churches have been razed since 2021 in Canada. Trudeau green lighted this onslaught, remarking how arson was an “understandable” reaction to the complaints of indigenous peoples about historical abuses committed against them by Christian churches, especially Catholics and Anglicans. No arrests have been made in relation to any of these terrorist acts, which are clearly hate crimes against Canadian Christians.

Abusing Christians has also become an obsession for American leftists. Pretend Catholics Joe Biden and his Attorney General, Merrick Garland, have spent the past three years targeting pro-life Americans who pray near abortion clinics. Heavily armed FBI agents execute pre- dawn raids against Christians with no criminal records, merely because they challenge the state’s pro-abortion agenda. While federal authorities do nothing to investigate attacks on churches and pro-life organizations, they cast grandparents in prison to serve lengthy sentences for the ‘crime’ of peacefully protesting outside of notorious abortion factories. The only openly Christian Presidential candidate is Donald Trump. In unprecedented fashion, the Biden Administration has “trumped” up hundreds of criminal charges in an overt effort to imprison him before the November election. Trump was recently convicted in New York on 34 counts of essentially paying his lawyer.

Similar prosecutions regularly occur in the U.K. too, where police officers have been filmed arresting citizens for silently praying on public sidewalks. That is right: praying outside is now forbidden in England! The UK government has been shamefully clear that God is permitted only in certain designated areas where He can be best hidden from the public eye. He is unwelcome everywhere else.

Sadly, this is also the case in France, Germany, and much of Europe, where Christians are regularly demonized as “fascist” or “far right”. The continent that is home to the Vatican and birthplace to the Reformation has become hostile to Biblical teachings and discriminates against Christians. As Douglas Murray points out in his The Strange Death of Europe, European nations seem determined to destroy their shared civilization. In abandoning God and vilifying Christians, they will surely succeed. Hungary is an outlier here, celebrating Christianity and refusing to accept money from the EU that would require them to accept migrants and provide special legal protections to the LGBTQ mob.

Nowhere are leftists more committed to burying Christianity than in the United States and Canada.

But why?

For the same reason that the CCP tortures, enslaves, and murders Chinese Christians: we understand that God is sovereign above the state. China must therefore prevent Christianity from growing within its borders. A population faithfully obedient to God cannot long remain mindlessly compliant with communist tyranny. Likewise, Canadian and American Marxists must dismantle our spiritual faith before they can hope to cultivate widespread dependence upon and deification of the administrative state.

Canada and the U.S. were founded upon the principles that citizens possess God-given rights and that legitimate government exists only so long as faithful citizens provide their continuing consent. Under such a system, which we call a Constitution, no PM, President, lawmaker, or judge can dismiss our natural rights without violating their sworn duty. Faithfully protecting our natural liberties must take precedence over any public official’s needs or desires. Their law making must conform to principles of natural law, which Thomas Aquinas famously described in his Summa Theologica:

Our leaders are therefore called upon to place God’s will above their own. Marxist saboteurs inside government have known for over a century that the only way to deprive us of our natural rights is to first separate them from God. Without actively seeking God’s guidance, we cannot hope to enjoy God’s blessings. It is a tried and true, diabolical path toward tyranny.

In pursuit of this wicked agenda, Marxists have used litigation and cultural revolution to attack Christians and banish us from the public square. They have adopted an apocryphal approach to establishment of a state religion. Utilizing this false imperative to separate church from state as a battering ram to demolish religious conviction, Marxists steadily undermine our relationship with God. They purged religious teachings and moral education from public schools. They sued towns and local officials for making any gesture recognizing the Truth of our living God. They ostracized true believers and made it nearly impossible for us to serve as elected leaders while adhering to the tenets of our faith.

The consequences have been as monstrous as they were predictable. As Marxists mocked virtue and glorified sin, they promoted widespread loneliness and moral decadence. They replaced strong and supportive families with a grab bag of welfare handouts from the state. They enfeebled young adults to such a degree that most are aimless and psychologically divorced from reality. They pushed ‘transgender’ madness and sexual promiscuity at such a tender age that adolescents now struggle to understand themselves or how to form healthy relationships.

Marxist globalism is an evil religion justifying theft, violence, and exaltation of the state over God and family. Such narcissistic nihilism yields only misery and death and must be abolished.

But how?

Are there emerging signs that the denial of Christian Truth is becoming more difficult to maintain, so that the balance of this ongoing spiritual battle may have actually begun to tilt? Perhaps, but we first need to dispense with our shared denial of what is right and true.

Of all psychological defence mechanisms, denial is the easiest, the most pleasant, the most convenient. We can repress unwanted feelings, project them onto some unlucky soul, or rationalize them into oblivion, just to name a few. Denial, however, usually wins out. It certainly is my favourite, especially in Canada. I must live in a constant state of denial that the federal government is trying to destroy the country and to kill us in the process.

Denial is usually a matter of individual choice, and the consequences are suffered mostly by the denier; but over the last century, denial has become a way of life in the West—a worldview. We have nearly perfected it. We believe the silliest of things: that men can be women, that illicit drugs need not be illegal, or that we can print money ad infinitum with impunity. We even think that we can do way with 100 million babies but suffer no consequences.

We can go through life denying the obvious since we have already succeeded in the grandest denial of them all—the very existence of God. Our schools, in an effort to be inclusive and tolerant, have systematically taught an atheist perspective by not mentioning God. Even while teaching mathematics, history, science, and literature—all immersed in evidence of His existence. Many of our churches have shied away from teaching the most basic Christian doctrines. They may still pay lip service to God, but have rendered Him an ineffectual cruise director. God is even absent in our leisure and entertainments like art and music, which are routinely blasphemous.

I sometimes engage with evolutionary atheists over social media. Most shocking is the vehemence with which such people react whenever their own beliefs are challenged. I often wonder why atheists care so much that I believe in the Divine Creator of the Universe. What is it to them, anyway? I suspect that they simply cannot have anyone messing with their own delusion, which is precious to them because to deny God is to remove all expectations, responsibility, and unworthiness. I think of Dostoyevsky’s famous line that “without God all things are permissible.” Then again, that in itself is a delusion, a denial. God is still functioning exactly as He was thousands of years ago, whether we accede to His existence, or not. It states in Malachi 3:6 “for I am the Lord; I change not”. Or in Hebrews:

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Hebrews 13:8

To deny the existence of God is to deny reality, and down that path lies insanity; and what if a large part of a society accepts that delusion? We see the results in two different kinds of nations. We find it in societies that worship other gods—the sort imagined by mortals—just as mercurial and vengeful as any neurotic person. We also discover it communist nations— ones that traded in God for government. Both types of societies are deeply dysfunctional, impoverished, and worst of all—hopeless. It is the citizens of these countries who fuel mass migrations to the West. These maladjusted nations can add very little to the human experience; those poor folks can barely sustain their own existence, and so demand that we do it for them.

So what then, you ask?

Well, I recently listened to a Dr. Jordan Peterson speech in which he stated his prescription for saving the West. He said that “We need to tilt back toward God.”

Yes! Precisely. We need to give up our Godless experiment, face up to the fact that as people we are incapable of maintaining our societies alone. But for God, His statutes, His laws, His guidelines, His Joy, His salvation, it simply cannot be done.

So why did we fall into this Godless lifestyle in the first place? One reason is that we grew rich enough to nearly convince ourselves that we could get by without Him. We no longer had to work from dawn to dusk just to eek out an existence. We had way more food, comfort, and entertainment than even wise old King Solomon. We had important people in white lab coats, the new secular clergy, to tell us that there was no creation—that God is a myth. We watched movies in which God was either absent or represented by evil priests and pastors. God was never mentioned in our schools or universities, let alone by facile political leaders.

Besides all of that, God frightens us. He is a tough task master. Pleasure in the short term is possible without God, but we must go through Him to experience true joy. That is not only a challenge—it is bloody dangerous! Witness the recent brutal murder of Davy and Natalie Lloyd, missionaries to Haiti. Witness the anti-abortion political prisoners, and mass killing of Christians in Nigeria—over 52k in the past year alone. Even if we are not physically threatened, and we often are, living in gratitude and obedience of God is restrictive.

Life without such restrictions, without expectations, without responsibilities, is superficially attractive. However, judging from the rampant use of addictive dangerous drugs, the rising suicide rate, the prevalent rage consuming our youth, that kind of hedonistic life must also be meaningless and unfulfilling. Evidently, free love and Marxism are no recipe for happiness.

By the same token, tough love can be. Bill Milliken’s 1968 book entitled Tough Love was written in response to the first taste of hippie/drug/flower child mindset by youth culture in the West. Around the same time, Chuck Smith’s Jesus Movement took hold and pulled thousands of disillusioned youth back toward sanity and a personal relationship with the Almighty. People began to see that true love entails self-discipline, sacrifice, and purpose. This akin to Dr. Peterson’s message—tilt back to God. Pick up your cross and climb that hill in front of you. The world is much bigger, much more important, than our petty human desires.

We are now beginning to see the fruits of the tree that God has planted in spite of our folly. Christian youth revivals across North America draw tens of thousands of new Christians. They gather on beaches, in forests, and on college campuses. As humans, we are created in the image of God and destined to have a relationship with Him. Our societies were planted with God at the centre, and we can simply go no further without Him. We cannot continue in this Godless denial and yet maintain Western civilization, the Alpha and Omega of which is bound up in the person and teachings of Jesus Christ.

We must take a deep breath and take the Big Tilt back to Him and to His Word, which was made flesh and dwelt among us. It is only through Him that we can hope to do battle with the Principalities and Powers bent upon destroying us and all that we seek to preserve for future generations of Christian believers.