In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the government controls the population by controlling thought. The ruling regime removes words from the dictionary or changes their definitions from time to time, all with the purpose of moulding the cultural narrative and keeping the population from formulating certain thoughts and holding certain opinions.
If a certain word does not exist then how can the concept be described and articulated?
I remember for a long time seeing a certain set of thoughts and ideas prevailing in entertainment, political discourse and culture, but I couldn’t find the word to describe it.
One day I found out what it was, and where it came from.
It was “Infidelity”. Nothing to do with unfaithfulness in a relationship, Infidelity is the name of a kind of anti-religion religion. It came clearly on the scene in the lead up to and through the French Revolution.
Infidelity describes the kind of belief system that led to all kinds of other wrong belief systems: Infidelity came about through Enlightenment philosophy, and one of the best understandings of it is expressed by Thomas Paine who says, to effect, that his own mind is his own church (or religion).
Infidelity is opposed to God, the Scripture and to religion. It is empowered by the spirit of error, and is clearly an antichrist ideology.
All the different sciences and bodies of ideas, where they have disconnected from truth and connected to the error of Infidelity have produced all kinds of bad results. Just look at Communism, Evolution, Psychiatry, Liberationism, Modernism and Post-Modernism. The list is much longer.
Western culture has been nearly destroyed by Infidelity.
The problem was that Infidelity also entered the churches, first with the German Higher Critics, and on down the line through different lines, reaching through to very bad examples who are often upheld as heroes, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jnr, etc.
Sadly today, the long march of Infidelity has passed through the seminaries, into their original language studies, textual criticism, hermeneutics and so on, right through all kinds of flavours of Evangelicalism such as Calvinism and modernist Pentecostalism.
Various Fundamentalist types have been somewhat resisting Infidelity, but not to full success. You can’t resist things in a silly way, which some have done, in a certain zeal to resist “worldliness” some have tried to fight with carnal weapons. It’s a big topic.
The point I want to get to, though, is that while Infidelity exists, the nearest concept, which is not exactly the same, is “secular humanism”.
I have not been able to find “Infidelity” in Wikipedia, for example, and yet this is a major movement and “Infidelity” is much referred to in 19th century theological literature.
If no entry and no acknowledgment of this belief system exists, then how do people identify and resist it?
It’s pretty logical that you need to know you enemy to defeat him. Otherwise are we beating the air?
The world doesn’t know what Infidelity is, but the Christian should know.
Secondly, Christians should know what Infidelity has done to Christianity.
Infidelity has obscured the meaning of Scripture and made it seem hard, remote and distant. It has made it non-immediate.
In the area of getting the Bible to us, Infidel influences have made out as if the transmission of Scripture is just natural, that God has no special hand in it.
In the area of interpreting the Bible, Infidel influences have made out like the Bible was just for its original audience and we can just pick up scraps of “application” to us today.
Psalm 12 and Psalm 94 are examples of Scriptures which are about Infidelity and are about the times we live in.
Of course, the Christian influenced by Infidelity will say that it is not so and could not possibly be so. He has had Bible College training and that is certainly not how to interpret the scripture!
Psalm 12 speaks of false Bibles and false interpretations, and yet the pure Word of God is at hand!
Psalm 94 promises believers right interpretation of Scripture despite the workings of enemies all about.
Scripture was written for us, even us, and the promises are seen in our day. The King James Bible is right and for us, and by God we can understand and know the truth. There are so many verses to back up this view, but there are many agents tainted by Infidelity that will have none of it!
“A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels: To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings.” (Proverbs 1:5, 6).
Are you attaining? You can attain. You should attain. So attain.
Jesus said, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free.” (John 8:32). Do you believe it?
Thomas Scott said, in his old commentary on Psalm 12, “He will cut off the flatterer as well as the slanderer, and the proud infidel as well as the covetous oppressor. He waits, till his people are sufficiently tried, and till his enemies have filled up their measure: but he hears the sighs and prayers of his afflicted people; and he will defend their cause, and deliver them from the generation of the wicked, and from the wicked one, and that for ever. He will also rise to revive his church from the ruins, with greater glory: he hath promised, and his word is more pure and precious than the finest silver. Let us rest upon it, and comfort our souls with it; though we cannot but grieve to see the degeneracy of the times, and the abounding of iniquity and infidelity. And even should we witness the advancement of the vilest of men to the highest dignities in church and state, and the consequent triumphs of error and wickedness over the cause of truth and holiness; still let us wait and pray: the Lord will yet make his cause triumphant; and the prayers of the remnant of his people are an appointed means of ushering in those better and more glorious days, which cannot now be very far distant.”
Although the problems of Infidelity really raced ahead in English-speaking societies in the 1960s, both in the secular space and in the religious space, yet for all that, the best believing movements existed at the same time.
It could be easy to think everything has gone bad, but the fact that people know and stand for right ideas today is a miracle, because the pervasive spirit of antichrist has in some ways touched everywhere and everyone, and yet, it did not win.
Pray for the deliverance and triumph of God’s people. In Psalm 12, a time comes when God arises, in Psalm 94, a time comes when the wicked fall.