The Battle of the Dancing Horseflies
One of my joys in life is to run. The place where I really enjoy running is at a green belt corridor located just north of Denton, TX. It is an eight mile–out and back–trail that is comprised of crushed rock cut windingly through and along the north/south corridor of the Elm Fork of the Trinity River.. For the most part it is bottom land country, which means towering trees, tall grass, and the musty earth smell. In the fall, the frost gathers on the leaves that have delicately fallen along the tree line, the deer galivant across the hay-bail dotted fields, and the squirrels are busy gathering acorns for winter. It’s a sight to see. But there’s also a section of the greenbelt that—when the spring turns to the heat of summer—presents the runner with some buzzing annoyance.
About four miles into the run, the trail enters a winding canopied portion with shade that keeps the corridor a few degrees cooler and a few percentage points more humid.
Upon entering, the runner quickly becomes the target of determined horseflies. If it is not the head being hit, it is the nose, and then the arm. They swoop in without fail making every attempt at accomplishing their mission of driving you crazy. When they are not hitting you upside the head, then they’re swirling around you making their next plan of attack.
It is quite annoying. In fact, when I first hear them coming, I try ridding myself of their presence with vigor. In the process, I have dropped water bottles, thrown sunglasses off my head, and swirled my hat in every direction possible. What ends up happening during these encounters is that at some point, I get fed up with their tenacity and try to kill them. Needless to say, I have yet to kill one. They are too fast, and at that point on my run I am too tired to keep trying.
What is fascinating though is that I have found on my way back through this shaded passageway I don’t care about them as much. While they are still annoying, I have adapted to their presence and just push through. What I think is happening is that I am accustomed to them being there, I start to believe that they’re not going to really hurt if they bite me, and I am just ready to finish my run. However, the consequences of my battles with these horseflies are that I am more tired than normal, and there are 3 more miles to go on this 8-mile run.
The Horseflies of the Ages
When I think about the battles I have had with those horseflies over the years, I am reminded of the battles being waged both in our culture and within our own lives. The horseflies are like our culture and even ourselves. Since the fall of mankind recorded in the third chapter of Genesis, humanity has existed in an environment groaning for its redemption (Romans 8:19-23). The problem is that this environment is destined to destruct (2 Peter 3:10). The reason for this is the world must be remade (Matthew 19:28) in the same way the soul is remade (Titus 3:5-7), because sin has riddled it through and through (1 Cor. 15:50-58).. This leads to the fact that humans also have what theologians call the noetic effects of the Fall.
The noetic effects of the Fall are the universal story that explains the intellectual crisis in which humanity finds themselves. The phrase “noetic effects” refers to the intellectual consequences of sin experienced within every human. John Calvin points out, “…mankind lost the spiritual gifts necessary for us to have a proper relationship with God, gifts such as faith, righteousness, heavenly wisdom, and sanctification.”[1] Therefore, mankind is forced to exist in a house of mirrors. The results are devastating. See also history.
God’s Solution to Mankind’s Problem
When we consider the fact that not only is our world corrupt, but our original desires are as well, we find that without an external intervention we are without hope. There must be something outside of man and something not made of the corrupted world to step in and make things right. This is the reason God sent His Son, Jesus Christ. He was the long-awaited Messiah sent to exchange His life for ours. After living a perfect life, dying in humanity’s place, and being resurrected from the grave, He did so with both a promise to return and a promise to send a Helper, the Holy Spirit. The Helper was sent to convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:7-11). In effect, the Holy Spirit’s work is to awaken God’s people to their sin-reality and the corrupted reality of the world. When this occurs, one need only to look to Christ in faith—transferring their trust from themselves to being right with God to the finished substitutionary work of Christ on their behalf.
Our 21st Century Church
Since the first Holy Spirit-empowered witnesses of Christ (Acts 1:8) spread from Jerusalem to the uttermost parts of the earth, we have all experienced at some level the Church’s growing pains leading to our modern supermarket version of Sunday services. In some corners of the world, Christianity is mocked, in others it is dismissed as antiquated, and yet in others it is grounds for death. In the west, and specifically where I live in the Bible Belt of America, church still maintains a semblance of respect. The problem, however, is that much of the respect is not from biblical wisdom, but the Church’s acceptance of its Sittlichkeit[2] to the world.
Carl Trueman, in his book, Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, describes Sittlichkeit as an individual finding “their self-consciousness in being recognized by a society, and this occurs because she is behaving according to the conventions of that society. In short, there is a need for the expressive individual to be at one with the expressive community.”[3] Translate this into the church today. First, our society has—through incredible tools—developed more effective and more efficient means of marketing, communicating, and connecting individuals virtually, digitally, and globally than ever before. Second, the Church—in large part—has responded in kind. The results are often not what was intended. While the desire may be pure and hopeful, what I have found is that it is unsustainable. Perhaps you have heard a quote attributed to William Ralph Inge which says, “Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.” In other words, no Church can keep up with the changes of the culture without being left behind. Thus, modern evangelical churches must wake up to the reality that what draws people to their church must be sustained to keep them. Good intentions. Bad outcomes. The draw must be outside of them. It must be from a Source that is not merely nominal, but actual. If biblical wisdom (Prov. 2:1-7) from Word of God is not the primary pursuit of the individuals comprising the Church, we will lose the battle of the dancing horseflies every time.
Like the horseflies that made their sole ambition my annoyance, so too is both the culture and my own sin. The result is a constant battle that leads to different outcomes. One is apathy and the other is training. My aim in this book is the latter. Specifically, training in the Word of God. But we need new eyes. The next installment will be to address that issue.
[1] Kirk Summers, “Reformation Humanism: Reading the Classics in the New Theology,” Reformation & Renaissance Review: Journal of the Society for Reformation Studies 20, no. 2 (July 2018): 142, https://doi.org/10.1080/14622459.2018.1468603.
[2] Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 61.
[3] Trueman, 62.
— September 2, 2021