What We Will Learn in the First Fifteen Minutes of the Next War

Truth is not a Social Construct

War is not a time to learn lessons. It is time to deploy them. However, should the monstrous pestilence of armed conflict visit one or more of our Western nations in the not-so-distant-future —a dreadful but increasingly tenable prospect—her peoples will be forced to relearn recently rejected truths, inviolable verities that are as irrefutable as gravity. For the truths of God and His created order—the light of nature, if you prefer— are as necessary for human survival as air and water. Yet, many in our society—from elected leaders to cultural influencers—have not only suppressed the undeniable but codified the inconceivable, all in a shameless strategy to defy and deny the reality of God. The game is not new. The rejection of God and His Law is as old as Adam and Eve and as formulaic as Saint Paul’s analysis in Romans 1:18-32. And the consequences are not in doubt. But as the children of the Secular Age (Taylor, 2007) exult in apparent cosmic independence from their Creator—impertinently snipping the lifeline to God and the source of all that is good—the weightless, postmodern astronauts delight in their untethered freedom. They dance in the vacuum of their supposed deconstructed space until the reality of Jupiter’s gravity sucks them into inevitable and inconceivable oblivion.

War is often the dreaded and deafening coda to the drunken symphony of imperceptible knaves. Diminished by their remarkable myopic naïveté and suicidal insularity, such people just as well wear a sign that reads, “Attack me.” And, oh, how the predators do tend to gather at such an invitation. Scavengers can smell the still-born foals of foolishness. Wealthy Westerners, now unrestrained and unashamed secularists, ridicule their Judaeo-Christian heritage while standing on the enduring foundation made possible by its fruitful faith. But like the sudden collapse of the 19th-century hegemony of the imperial empires at the sound of the “First Guns of August” (Tuchman, 1963), the seemingly indomitable Entente—Western Europe, Great Britain with her Commonwealth of Nations, and the United States—will undoubtedly, eventually and most tragically face the lessons they successfully avoided. Hidden behind the overgrown ivy of revisionist gardeners, there is a bronze historical marker erected by survivors of departed empires: “Beware! That which took generations to erect can be toppled in a day.” The specter of war crouches in the shadows like a cunning lioness, with demonic eyes, fixed on the throat of its victim. Yet, we scream, and dance around a fire with a defiant Michael Foucault-inspired fist to the heavens, “We will have no one to rule over us!” All the while, the unseen predator waits for her choice opportunity.

This is where many see us at this time. If correct, then as sure as the sun sets in the west, global bullies will decide “now is the time.” And decades of swords rattling become new moments of horror, as more lethal weapons unleash Apocalyptic nightmares.

So, what will we learn in the first fifteen minutes of war? First, a word on war: a nation defending itself against military aggressors, whether state actors or transnational terrorists, is but a man defending his home and family against invaders multiplied. Everything that we will learn about ourselves as we face a ruthless enemy is what we would know, by necessity, and, therefore, by instinct, at the most basic unit of society, the family. So, what will we learn in the first fifteen minutes of war?

1. Truth is not a social construct: Women are women and men are men. In the first fifteen minutes of brutal warfare, we learn that the “Transvestites Read Pornography Day” at the school libraries was not just a stupid idea, but a deadly and cruel miscalculation—deadly for our moral security and cruel to our children, and the poor, lost souls who need guidance not goading. Playing absurd games like “How many genders are there” (The POTUS says “There are, at least three”) was self-delusional madness. The children are always crouched at the stairs in their pajamas, listening, and watching. The innocents giggle at our adult silliness. They watch and imitate until it is all the rage. But the little boys and girls can’t tell real from postmodern fantasy. In the days of trial, we will remember these things and we will admit the truth, but too late. For, predictably, our children grew confused. Every self-doubting moment in childhood and adolescence became, naturally, a crisis of gender, So, being mentally trapped in our lies, we decided to acquiesce to their confusion. We drugged the self-doubting little ones, urged them to cross-dress—a practice as old as sin and denounced by God—and, ultimately, mutilated their genitals through the help of postmodern physicians in an unqualified confederacy with the lunatics. As any anthropologist or missiologist knows, a people’s language is the key to their culture. Was it for this reason that the English language was attacked? In an unending editorial project, we changed word meanings to keep up with the fast-moving death spiral of our rebellion against reality. We extended the absurdity to our speech. “What is your pronoun?” The players gazed menacingly at hesitant would-be participants: “Everyone must play the game,” they threatened—“everyone.” In the first skirmish with the enemy, we learn that playing silly games like “Men can get pregnant,” and “What is a woman?” leaves us vulnerable to those whose evil intent for harm is only matched by their grasp of the obvious. When, in the West, our strong young men, were recruited by existential challenges rather than social trinkets, they responded. Masculinity arises at exactly the right time for the home. Males are attacking and males must defend. When we send the message, “It is up to you to guard our homes, protect our women and children, and our elderly,” young men not only respond but do so with a sense of purpose and meaning required for victory in the struggle. As enemy men breach the front gate, it hits us: “Strong young males fight wars. Diminishing their masculinity disrupts the most basic God-given instincts that are necessary for human survival.” Recruiting could be challenging if our young men are competing against the girls’ swim team. We will learn just how wrong we were to tolerate muddleheaded thinking about supporting mentally and morally vacuous policies that condoned “gender choice,” before codifying it. The childish postmodern games that began with “There is no God, and we can do what we like,” diminished womanhood. Young women should not have to locate “the authentic self” by denying their irreplaceable person. Young ladies have a limited number of years to bear children. We were foolish (and guilty of, at least, treason to humanity and God) to encourage women to abort our children, discourage, diminish, or deny motherhood. Occasionally, we hear of a study that some institute has conducted. Decoupled from the corrupt consensus of the academic guild, the scientists stumble onto the truth that was understood instinctively in the olden days (ten years ago): Marriage between man and wife is the cornerstone of a functioning society. The circadian rhythms of life dictate the survival of species. Those seasons of life will not yield to the self-actualization of rebellious humans. Children are a gift. To prioritize their health and happiness is to guarantee another generation. Thus, motherhood is sacred to life and is rightly honored. Fatherhood is essential for healthy self-identities, and for a sense of heroism. “Heroes:” now there’s an apparent anachronistic concept. However, as philosopher Charles Taylor noted, secularization rejects “the virtues of heroism, for instance, the warrior virtues” (Taylor, A Secular Age, 219). We will learn quickly and at the highest regrettable cost that the essence of being human is not up for deconstruction and revision. We need men to be men, women to be women, and truth to be believed.

2. We will learn that great and good nations sometimes arise and beget great civilizations. In our unending quest to make all things equal we had to reject hegemony, i.e., the rise of great benevolent nations and realms, such as Great Britain and the Commonwealth Nations, and the United States of America. In doing so, we demonized the ways and means that allowed us such a privileged position to critique. One does not critique totalitarian regimes. In the first minutes of war, we will learn that those nations built, for instance, on English law that was developed, tested, refined, and renewed over centuries, infused with Judeo-Christian theology, is invaluable in securing victory. A worldview planted in Runnymead, expressed in English Law, and grounded in the Reformational truth of Scripture, leads to cultural superiority in literacy, science, commerce, engineering, medicine, and, in a phrase, human flourishing. Religion guards the virtues and encourages their public use. We will learn that, as it turned out, Christian nations aren’t perfect, but do, however, contain the vital serum allowing nations to adapt, revive, and achieve the good for millions of people that secularism and its poison shoots, socialism, communism, and “woke ideology” cannot.

3. We will learn that we are either a family or we are not. The lessons learned too late will continue to tally faster than the national debt. Aberrant tribalism that resulted from the melting of the unified core, viz., the loss of a cohesive national story, in which all are made into one, will have left us not only disorganized but disinterested. We will learn that removing the remnants of our history, such as the statues of Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln, both heroes in our national story (honor and loyalty in defeat, a vision of liberty and one of nation rather than disassociated regions) would be like England removing Oliver Cromwell’s magnificent statue from Parliament. Removing painful chapters does not unite us. Destroying each other by symbolic acts of intra-national rage—e.g., statue toppling, and teaching children to hate others based on skin color—defies the vision of Lincoln for our nation, “With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds . . .” (Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1865, NPS, 2022). Equally so, the present preoccupation of some with racial division built on historic injustices fails to honor the virtue in the drama. For instance, where would our nation be without the stories of former African slaves becoming clergy, educators, medical pioneers, farmers, astronauts, senators, governors, and more? No subgroup in the American family has contributed more examples of Christian resiliency and heroism than those Americans of African heritage. Instead of celebrating that as a vital part of one national family—as much the civic offspring of the Pilgrims as William Brewster’s children—we isolated, bifurcated, and insulated these stories from the singular national story. The same can be said for other subdivisions of the single national family. History teaches that when the center collapses in national life, people will scramble for the safety of smaller stories where they can find a home. This tribalism can be political, cultural, or, as we have seen in the early twenty-first century Western nations, ethnic associations. The nation explodes into fragments under the vacuum of the depressurized center. E Pluribus Unum deconstructs to “out of one, many.” And a house divided cannot stand. When the nation is tested with the threat of destruction we will ask ourselves, “Why did we do these things to ourselves?”

4. We will learn that God is not mocked. This will be the single greatest lesson learned if the vile red dragon of war arises against our Western nations. Our Western Civilization was built on an array of strong materials in the foundations: Jewish law and literature, Greek democracy, Roman administration, and the unique contributions of a variety of peoples. But the cornerstone of Western Civilization is undoubtedly the proclamation of the Gospel of God’s grace in Jesus Christ to sinful Mankind. There remains no more compelling and consequential life than Jesus of Nazareth. Other false messiahs have arisen. None were attested to have risen from the dead. No less than Saul of Tarsus, known to us as the Apostle Paul, not only claimed to be an eyewitness to the resurrected Jesus (thus, Jesus the Christ—the long-awaited Savior that all of the human literature anticipated, and, still, desires), but delineated the teaching of Jesus and established communities, that became nations, that became a missional movement, on the life of Jesus. Secularism denied God, denying Christ. In doing so, many lost their minds. They threw together their odd beliefs, making sure to reject the refined precious metals of Judaeo-Christianity. The golden calf of their making stood like the White House illumined in the colors of the rainbow; the rainbow, God’s sign of promise used to openly defy His Word and the reality of His creation. Cosmic treason. Thus, at the first guns of dawn, the gruesomely familiar sounds of combat went unheeded. The golden calf god of secularism is not real no matter how large the rainbow light show. Such folly is but a garish spectacle of dying lights beneath the tsunami of self-implosion. By then, we will know. The silly games about gender, biology, nationhood and race that so many subscribed to were dead wrong. As we tried to out-virtue signal the other we simply forgot what virtue is. In the end, however, Truth wins. Truth always ultimately wins. Thus, Truth matters. “Why did we pretend like it didn’t?” We ask too late.

The outcome of any such war, and even the likelihood of such a contest, can be reversed. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. The sovereignty of God over nations is indisputable. We need Him now more than ever. For if that day comes when the United States of America, standing with allied nations of the West, must face the sinister sight of a war, we will pray that every Airman, Guardsman, Marine, Mariner, Sailor, and Soldier will have a nation behind them that recites the words of the Father of our Country: “The blessings and protection of Heaven are at all times necessary but especially so in times of public distress and danger. The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier, defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country” (General Order, George Washington, 04 July 1775). Washington’s vision is one to live for, and, if our home is invaded, to die for. God save us from the inevitable sorrow of an unbelieving nation. May we learn the lessons now. Not then.

References

General George Washington, Commander in Chief, Continental Army, General Order to the Newly Formed Continental Army (Research Triangle Park, NC: The National Humanities Center), 2. See the teaching resource of source documents from the NHC location here.

“President Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address - Lincoln Memorial (U.S. National Park Service).” Accessed December 21, 2022. https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/lincoln-second-inaugural.htm.

Milton, Michael A. From Flanders Fields to the Moviegoer: Philosophical Foundations for a Transcendent Ethical Framework. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2019.

Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Harvard University Press, 2009.

Tuchman, Barbara W. The Guns of August. Macmillan, 1963.