Where We Stand 01: Low-trust fragment

Artwork: "Foedora" Artist: Thomas Dubois

The wicked forsake the Law. – Proverbs 28:4a

We have entered an age of low-trust, high stakes fragmentation. It’s like the universe took a hard left at warp speed, and we all noticed, but in exceedingly different ways. No matter who you talk to, the sky is falling. It’s just that few of us can agree on what exactly the sky is.

This is because the systems of information, the symbols and stories, which once unified our past are now being rewritten, disrupted, and inverted. Previous socio-political formulae don’t matter any more. What matters is which daily programming you are plugging into. Whatever words and stories we used to tell ourselves to find hope and keep moving forward, they have been undermined by shocks of systemic proportions, compounded and amplified by the frequencies emanating from the talking iconography of our handheld T.V.’s.

To believe that all of this could happen without the involvement of demonic forces is both dangerous and biblically naïve. This is a new animation of diabolics, an ideology factory of idolatries. Those who do not discipline their hearts and guard their inner lives are going to be swept away in the pulsation of malevolent “we”/”them” narratives designed to keep you paranoid of your neighbors.

Addictive technologies that atrophy the soul are not something to toy with. This unavoidable brave new world does not allow us to take for granted that all things will carry on as they have before. We Christians cannot presume to hold our place, especially if we cannot agree that our place stands set apart from the way of the world.

What is most needful right now is coherence and clarity about those things that are most needful. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of them. Another is acknowledgement that our failure to call out a professionally financed campaign of deception and coercion signals a perilous abandonment of the prophetic task of the Chur

ch.