Rambos for Jesus

I recently read C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, where he likens the church to an underground resistance. (Remember, that book came out of BBC radio talks given while Britain was under siege and France was occupied by Nazi forces.) I’ve always felt that way about the church—we are being trained as an elite corps fighting behind enemy lines.

With that in mind, I’ve been writing a collection of Bible study lessons that I’ve dubbed Rambos for Jesus because the lessons are mean to equip spiritual Rambos (or “Holy Ghost Rambos” as my pastor calls them; he coined the term). The idea is that we should be Rambos who wreak havoc against Satan’s forces—things blowing up, lots of smoke and fire, disarray and chaos among the enemy. Of course, I mean all of this in a spiritual sense, for the Bible says that our warfare is not against flesh and blood. Instead, we are fighting a righteous battle on behalf of an oppressed population. Namely, the billions of souls who are bound by sin—both physically and spiritually.

To use another popular culture analogy, think of the movie The Matrix. In that film, Neo is the savior who comes to set people free from their computer overlords. In the same way, Christianity says that our lives here on earth are transitory, and that we are all by nature damned to eternal separation from God. But God has a plan of salvation for mankind, which of course involves Jesus paying the full debt of sin on the cross, but also involves a crucial second element—those who are saved going out to “show and tell” others about the salvation God made available. We show by signs and wonders performed through His Holy Spirit and demonstrating God’s love through good deeds, and we tell by preaching the good news and sharing our own story of God’s goodness.

I’ve never enjoyed the thought of the church reigning supremely over society. Sure, I appreciate the need to communicate in relevant terms and even to excel in areas of education, business, science, media and entertainment, and so forth. But the way I understand Jesus’ message is that it is about radical revolution that ends with Him returning, not be electing Sarah Palin in 2012. It’s sort of like when Constantine sanctioned Christianity as a state religion; in my view, the church got co-opted into the system it was supposed to be fighting against when that happened. Anyways, my point here is that we need to stay focused on the spiritual battle, and that means framing the battle properly. We are an underground movement at the moment, fighting against a spiritual enemy, in enemy territory, for the salvation of our fellow men’s souls. And that shouldn’t ever change until Jesus comes back.