–– Warrick Jubber
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According to the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, there are currently more than 35 armed conflicts on the African continent, taking place in regions like Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan.
Whatever the state of political and military tensions on the African continent may be, Christians need to recognise that the world is engulfed in a war that involves all of humanity. It is not a physical war but a spiritual one that rages for control of our morals, of what we believe to be true, and ultimately of our worldview. However, many believers are ignorant of this ongoing war because they have embraced the myth of neutrality. Perhaps one of the enemy’s greatest tactics is to keep Christians ignorant of the war, or at least naive to the scale of the conflict.
The myth of neutrality is the belief that while there may be false religions in the world, there are areas of human thought and discovery that are neutral. This stems from a misunderstanding of the doctrine of common grace. Theologian Gregg Allison defines common grace as, “The universal favour that God grants to all people, both believers and unbelievers.” As Allison writes, it consists of God’s blessings given to all his image bearers in many realms, including intellectual. It is the common grace of God that allows mankind to make scientific discoveries and progress in human knowledge.
However, believers should not mistake this common grace ability of mankind to learn truths in areas such as mathematics, biology, geology, or astronomy to mean that men and women are capable of operating without bias in their truth claims. No area of human knowledge is neutral and uninvolved in the ideological war that engulfs every man, woman, and child.
The reason why humanity is not neutral is that the natural state of unbelievers which Paul says in Ephesians 2:2-3 is to walk
“according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among whom [they conduct themselves] in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind”.
The unregenerate are not neutral in the battle for truth because they are loyal servants of Satan in his rebellion against God, and therefore operate with a constant bias against God and the truth.
Paul was not ignorant of this ideological world war. He wrote in 2 Corinthians 10:3–5,
“Though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the tearing down of strongholds, as we tear down speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”
Believers need to follow Paul’s example and instruction, as John MacArthur wrote, “This is an ideological war, where our duty as Christians is to expose lies with the truth, answer evil ideas with righteous ones, and overthrow wicked false opinions with a biblical worldview.” In practice, this means that every believer must be diligent to mature in their understanding of Scripture in order to develop a thoroughly Biblical worldview.
African believers need to recognise that the so-called experts in the various branches of science are embroiled in an ideological war and are in rebellion against God and the truth He reveals, therefore they are incapable of providing objective and unbiased perspectives. They need to think critically and discerningly about every truth claim made by the sciences about matters such as the age of the earth, the evolution of man, human sexuality, and the idea of mental illness that redefines sin as sickness.
Furthermore, African believers also need to recognise that not only is science biased by the ideological war, but so too is culture. With the popularisation of Critical Race Theory, there is a renewed emphasis on the importance of African culture and the need to “decolonise” ideas in order to make them more African. For many African believers, culture is wrongly viewed as neutral in the battle for truth and is used as a building block for a worldview that complements, and can even compete with Scripture. However, every human culture, including African culture, is biased by the ideological war and the cultural ideas of men and women who are in rebellion against God.
The myth of neutrality must be dispelled by a recognition of the ideological war that rages in the world and the commitment of believers to pursue a Biblical worldview built upon the supremacy of Scripture as the source of truth over both science and culture.