Introduction
There is always some crazy story to write about, isn’t there? So over the last few weeks, this happened. A Satanist group arranged to have a Satanist display erected in the Iowa State Capitol building. Iowa. This garnered attention in the first instance for obvious reasons, and also because a state representative, Jon Dunwell (also a pastor) said that this was a grand display of pluralism, and that we should all be good with it. Let each one be fully persuaded in his own mind, as the apostle said.
And then things moved to the next level when Michael Cassidy engaged in a mostly peaceful act of deconstruction. He toppled and beheaded this cartoon Satan, believing that if something needed to be done, then why shouldn’t he be the one to do it? And why not now?
Someone then made the whole thing a little bit more festive, as if that were necessary, by putting one of Canon’s “Christ is Lord” stickers on the forehead of the toppled idol. We can think of no better application, and are quite tempted to let this be the sum and substance of our commentary.
But alas. Some Christians still need to be reminded that Satanic idols in the public square should be considered as a bad thing, and should not be treated as though it were a good testimony to our commitment to pluralism and diversity. The reason this reminder is necessary is that there is another idol, and a much better looking one, that has been erected in the hearts and minds of not a few American Christians. This shinier idol, meaning the myth of a neutral secularism, has not yet gotten the Cassidy-treatment, although it has been begging for that treatment for some years now.
But because it is a hearts and minds idol, it will not be toppled without a great reformation and revival, the kind that only God can give. And while we cannot make that kind of a reformation happen, we can however show that we are totally lost unless it happens.
A Black Belt in Casuistry?
Casuistry is the art and practice of applying timeless biblical principles to new and interesting situations. We are clearly moving into challenging new territory, such that any Christian leader who wants to give advice to average Christians is going to need a black belt in said casuistry. The challenges are not going to be that much harder, but they are going to become increasingly absurd . . . “Pastor, how are we supposed to vote on the upcoming Golden Calf levy? I can’t find anything about that on Heidelblog. And Michael O’Fallon called us a bunch of integralists, and I don’t even know what those things are.”
But for most sensible Christians, the black belt in casuistry is not really needful for giving advice on the Golden Calf vote itself. That much is obvious, at least to those who are still reading their Bibles. Rather, the questions will come because your parishioner has an uncle who is an editor at TGC, and they just published a think piece on how a no vote on the Golden Calf levy is tantamount to the most pernicious forms of idolatry. The parishioner knows what to do about the Golden Calf, but he doesn’t know what to do about his uncle. The family is talking about an intervention, and they are wondering if Thanksgiving would be a good time.
Andrew Walker remarked that Cassidy had skipped a few steps in his civil resistance, in that his toppling of this particular grotesquery was not an action of last resort. Andrew concludes by saying this: “Best that a lesser magistrate just drop the charges and the legislature re-write the law.” I think that approach could work, perhaps. In other words, I think Andrew’s proposal could be arranged and done in such a way as that everybody saw that it was just a wrist slap, and that our hearts were all with Cassidy, and that this would make the bad guys mad, which would be a plus.
So if I were the judge in this case, and if I were of Andrew’s mind, what we could do is something like this. I could give the courtroom a very stern lecture about the importance of the rule of law and how it relates to Protestant resistance theory, find Cassidy guilty, and fine him ten dollars. Then I would have the bailiff pass the hat around the courtroom, and tell Cassidy that he could keep anything that was above the ten dollars. Take your wife out to a nice restaurant or something.
But as I considered this, and after a season of incessant prayer, I have concluded that the wrist slap facade is not the way to go. No, let’s shoot the moon. Let’s just be the extremists that they think we are, and say that Satanic displays in public places are outside the pale. Just say no to the prince of the power of the air. And then let us then take the next step and say that any law or process that permits such a thing is a wicked law or process, and is therefore no law at all.
So let’s do it that way.
The Importance of the Rule of Law
It is as though God has decided to run a real-time reductio ad absurdum on all of our high-falutin’ political theory. Well, right after the Second World War it used to be high falutin’—right now our secularism is like a party balloon from a five-year-old’s birthday last week that has drifted down from the ceiling and is now under the buffet, two-inches above the floor. The glory days are past.
For those just joining us, a reductio occurs when all of your premises are bundled into a car, and then driven into a tree.
What would such premises be? “We don’t need God in order to remain a decent, self-controlled, freedom-loving people!” Ten minutes later: Well, why shouldn’t we be allowed to put up a figure of Baphomet in the state capitol? Who’s to say what’s right or wrong anymore? And perhaps we might even sacrifice a chicken or two?
All legitimate law must be grounded in the will of God, and without that transcendent anchoring it will drift, inexorably, into a display case for the depravity of man. Christians have been snookered by all of this, with the result that they have confounded law and process. Someone who understands the nature of law thinks in terms of righteousness and unrighteousness. He further understands that a wicked law is no law at all.
But someone in the grip of fussy process concerns believes that if Jesus gets to call the Pharisees whited sepulchers then they need to be given equal time to call Him a demon-possessed drunkard. Because they are consumed with process, it does not concern them that what Jesus said was true, and what the Pharisees were saying about Jesus was false. True? False? These are strange words. Tell me more about this religion of yours.
And their process concerns keep expanding. When Jesus cleansed the Temple, He failed to obtain the necessary permits. Not many people know this. And He came from Galilee to Judea to do it, which I suppose can be compared to traveling from Mississippi to Iowa.
Process concerns can rope in anything, and so the process-mongers point out that gay sex porn being made in a famous Senate hearing room has to be weighed in the context of the fact that within this same calendar year, Douglas Wilson, he of nefarious intent, was allowed to share his views, which he also did in a Senate hearing room. “Hmmm? Why is he allowed to spread his hate in those hallowed spaces when those Senate staffers were just spreading their love?”
And the process people take this on board as a real chin stroker. A true stumper. A perplexity indeed. A real rebus.
The Hilarious Part
The Satanist group that sponsored this monstrosity says on its web site that they don’t actually worship Satan, and that they don’t even believe in the existence of Satan. As was pointed out recently on The Wade Show, the only kind of political analysis we really need anymore, what this means is that all of this is pretty much just LARPing.
So this was an instance of fake worshipers honoring a fake deity in such a way as to juke real Christians into declaring their allegiance to an actual idol, the aforementioned neutral secularism, which a bunch of them promptly did. All that they needed to hear was the sound of the sackbut (Dan. 3:5), and they started looking around for what direction they were supposed to bow, muttering as they turn this way and that, “This is the price we need to pay in exchange for our religious liberty . . . liberty for all of us.” Put into plain English, if you want religious liberty, you have to make room for the idols. Can you imagine Patrick Henry saying that? Neither can I. But I can imagine David French saying it.
Scripture says that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of liberty, but we in our great wisdom have thought that the way to preserve our liberty is by grieving Him and causing Him to withdraw from our misbegotten nation. And when that starts to have its effect, that effect being degradation and slavery, someone is sure to suggest that our problem was that we did not pray to the Queen of Heaven enough (Jer. 44:18). We need to add her to our Religious Liberty God Shelf (RLGS), and perhaps add Molech and Chemosh for good measure.
The Real Satan In All This
So this lame idol should have been toppled, and good riddance, but we should not be kidding ourselves. It was a cartoon idol. It was a cosplay Satan. It was the Prince of Darkness taking to LARPing.
So the real prince of the power of the air is not lying on the floor of the Iowa state capitol. He is still out and about, telling his lies, many of them successfully. And the thing to note is that Scripture tells us that as he lies, he comes across as a prince of glory.
When he tempted the Lord Jesus, what was he able to offer?
“Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.”
Matthew 4:8 (KJV)
In other words, he didn’t offer the Lord a macabre little room with black curtains and guttering candles and cryptic symbols scrawled on the floor. He offered Him all the kingdoms of men, and their glory. And remember that this was not a faux-temptation. The Lord Jesus felt the brunt and force of it, such that angels had to come and minister to Him afterwards (Matt. 4:11).
“And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.”
2 Corinthians 11:14 (KJV)
So Satan does not come to us in some kind of Aleister Crowley get-up. And neither does he appear with a pitchfork and a red union suit. The threat is not to be found in some caricature of Satan. That is not the Satan that has dazzled so many of our evangelical leaders. The secular Satan is the one that has them so muddled and confused, and he is an urbane Mephistopheles. He led our evangelical bigwigs back to a room that has a magnificent library, and very plush carpets, and a great fireplace, and there he made his pitch, quoting John Stuart Mill and everything. And the downside is that our men had had no marshwiggle on staff to stomp on the fire.
So the real Satan is seen in the Iowa’s capitol building itself. If all traces of gratitude to the true and living God have been expunged, then that is the Satan we are up against. Not the cartoon Satan lying on the marble floor, but rather the marble floor itself. And there are 49 other glorious structures, very much like it. 50 monuments to apostasy, and then there is the Capitol in D.C., the central Temple of apostasy. Godless domes, godless pillars, godless marble floors. These are the corridors of humanistic power which industrious pagans are cleansing of all references to the source of true law, the God of the Bible, and with some patsy Christians helping out. This true law is the only kind of law that is not arbitrary and capricious. All laws rooted in the nature of man are, of necessity, corrupted like he is, changeable like he is, and evanescent like he is.
And so when they have finished their project, their pulling down of statues, we will still have the glory we once had, but only for a very short time. In that moment, our glory will be like the glory of Herod’s robe on the day when he gave his famous oration (Acts 12: 21-23). Our glory in that day will be nothing more than the glory of a robe that covers up the bowels of a man that the worms are already consuming. And applying the metaphor, we have more than a little evidence that our worms have already started in. Can you feel it?
So the real Satan confronting us is our secular liberalism. One of the features of the Lord’s temptation was the glory of a classical liberalism with a foundation in true law. And understood properly, that classical liberalism has to be a Christian classical liberalism. That is what helped to fashion the robe in the first place, and it really was glorious. But the secularism? The secularism would be the worms—the worms of insolence and ingratitude and theological incompetence. And those Christians who are arguing for the possibility of religious neutrality are little more than worm apologists.
And so, in other words, this toppled caricature of Satan is the kind of imagery that a troubled junior boy boy could get into. He starts listening to too much death metal, he paints his fingernails black, draws pentagrams on his bedroom walls, and worries his parents sick. And as glad as I am that this cartoon Satan was pulled down and beheaded, we need to remind ourselves that this is not the real Satan we are up against.
The work of the true Satan is seen in the responses of ostensible Christians, who argue that continued compromise is the path to victory. Their argument amounts to saying that we will triumph through fecklessness. These Christians said that they were personally disgusted by the cartoon Satan, but that we had to let it stand because of our commitment to pluralism. But all this meant is that they are not personally disgusted by the real Satan. They are honoring and fighting for the real Satan. What we need is for Christian leaders who are personally disgusted by the preening pretense of neutrality. We need leaders who a disgusted by the pluralism. It is not neutral at all, people.
Satan is the father of lies, and we have to remember that he is good at it. And the central Satanic lie in all of this was the lie that would have put this kind of display on the same shelf with the Lord Jesus.
I referred to the god-shelf earlier, and we find that they maintain room up there for the gods to multiply—because they always do. Our sins ripen, and we find the gods of all our lusts also multiply and teem like the frogs of Egypt. There is hardly enough room for all of them on that shelf anymore. We have Mammon, and Mars, and Aphrodite, and Dagon, and Baal, and Chemosh, and Molech. And down on the far right, with scarcely any room, is the Lord Jesus—or some coxcomb’s carved rendition of Him at any rate. And what’s that inscription on the base of His teeny bronze bowling trophy statue? “For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (Exodus 34:14).
Yeah, there used to be Americans who thought like that. And it appears there are still some.