Stupendous Change Leadership Series: The Age War: Command & Control
10/January/2007 13:31 Filed in: Weekly Column
Volume 9, Issue 2
PDF copy
Command and control are the operative words for any stupendous change occurrence. It just so happens that war is the stupendous change happening where command and control principles are most often understood. War is hell on earth, or so I have been told by those who have first hand combat experience. Thankfully, by the grace of God, I do not. I have however, been a listener in many instances where combat veterans from WWII up through Iraq have tried to cope with this hell and still maintain, or reestablish their normal personality.
After the attack on the World Trade Center, I wrote an article by this same title on 13 September 2001. While not all the world’s events have transpired as outlined in that piece, much of it is still relevant. Furthermore, the very secret nature of some aspects of man induced stupendous change events are kept highly classified, or unknown to the general population until after the event and beyond.
The main purpose of military attacks is to disrupt to the maximum extent possible the enemy command and control structure and replace it with yours. This is called to achieve the mission. This is true with the World Trade Center incident, or other so called terrorist attacks around the world, as it is also true with US military operational patrols in Bagdad.
As pointed out in that earlier article there has always been a war going on in this world. Generally recognized throughout history, this is a war between good and evil. In our post-modern, post-Christian era, the problem is just the bad karma of lowly evolved religious bigots, trying to convert others to specific antiquated dogma.
This war however truly exists, and it is much more dramatic than any of the above concepts. This war is between the personal Creator God of the universe and His followers, and the evil personality of Satan and his minions. It must be said that all stupendous change events in some Divine way fit within the context of this war. The results of this military action are already determined, as a matter of absolute fact, completed by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. All that remains is a period of time until God finishes collecting the billions of individual unique personalities, to fulfill His purpose in the life to come. This eternal life is generally described in human terms as heaven, even though that concept is woefully inadequate.
Since war is hell on earth, every human being would just as soon take a pass on the whole thing. However that being said, we will enter into the fray so that we can get our own way. We want to be the captains of our own ship of destiny, we just call it Self Esteem. All those ships have a same different name however, Sinful Damnation. Few are the brave souls who have the fortitude to look over the bow or the stern to read this actual name. This is also strange, for similar personality ships sailed by Christians have your own name on the bow and stern, with the homeport of Freedom.
This good - evil war, or God - Satan war we could call the War of this Age, or Age War. But smaller more human wars are fought and have been fought almost continually throughout history. In all wars there is the aggressor and the defender. Some are fought over worldly territory, some over ideas, most are combinations of the two. Trying to give names to specific types of wars is almost fruitless, like trying to name the varieties of apples.
We are told that Iraq, which began as a front on the War on Terror, or a Freedom War, has now become a insurgency, or a civil war. It is reported this week that the United States is making air strikes to disrupt Al Qaida forces in Somalia. This evening President Bush is expected to order 20,000 more troops to Iraq. So to counter the current course of the Iraq War we have invented the “Surge to end war.”
One of the least common wars, is a true war of freedom, or a revolution. Except in the case of the American Revolution, these wars are usually highjacked by other oppressive forces and the situation at the end turns out to be worse than the despot they replaced.
What made the American Revolution a success is that it rested upon the principals of self determination, freedom and the absolutes or universal principles found in the Bible. The French Revolution and the ensuing blood bath focused just upon worldly self determination. French fighting rested upon the concept that only the individual, or as Francis Schaeffer would say, the particulars have value and there are no absolutes. He would contrast this with the fact that the particulars, in this case human personalities have value, compared to other particulars, because they were created by God in His image. The French at the time, and for the most part still don’t even grasp that distinction.
By the entropy principles of thermodynamics that French particulars view has now become the norm in the United States and throughout the world. Perhaps the one reason that the Iraq policy has failed is that George W. Bush, in his evangelical Christian training never was taught the difference either. But as much as all would like to blame Dubbya, the fault lies squarely with the church, particularly (pun intended) American evangelicalism.
American evangelicalism has distorted its eternal message, from the eternal grace of God working in the world, into activism of moral, social, political, and material relativism. As a result, in the context of this message, it has lost control of it’s command structure. These are virtually the same programs that halved the size of American denominational liberalism in the first half of the 20th century. From Christian liberalism, evangelicalism developed vibrancy. God’s word alone (God’s command and control structure), was the basis by which evangelicalism arose counteracting that earlier decadence. Calvary Chapel is a good example of one of those early evangelical successes.
What evangelism and Calvary Chapel has not understood, is that while resting on the Bible alone is essential to spiritual growth, true growth in a spiritual sense rests in the application of Bible absolutes, particularly, the paradigm of deductive truth rather than inductive reasoning. This is truly what separates Francis Schaeffer and Chuck Smith.
For those who might bother to look at Isaiah 28, there is a contrast set between “precept upon precept” teaching. Simply stated when precepts become ends unto themselves, they become idols. “That they might go and fall backward, and be broken And snared and caught.” Simply put, the precepts in verse 10 are deductive absolutes (indicatives), the precepts in verse 13 are inductive particulars (imperatives). In the Reformation sense, the context of this passage states gospel first, pointing to the standards of the law.
Just as evangelicalism followed Protestant liberalism, there is a new revolution going on within the church in America and around the world. That term I did not invent, but comes from George Barna, the Christian pollster. By doing an internet search you can find more information on this phenomena, including a 2005 book “Revolution.” We have also put together a brief PDF overview here.
So God is performing a Revolution among His people, which will change the world. By definition this stupendous change within God’s people is part of that battle of the Age War. As part of the Age War all of humanity is going to be affected by these battles. You can either look at these occurrences as stupendous change events, or disasters, catastrophes, terrorist attacks, or just bad karma, it is your choice. However, you will and are required to make changes in the status quotient of your life. In other words, stupendous change will interrupt the command and control of your life. Are you prepared for it, or will you be a casualty, that is the question?
In warfare, as in a stupendous change event, the mission is to violently disrupt enemy command and control structure, especially on the battle field, and to create chaos among the ranks of the enemy. Some of this chaos is actually physical disruption, more important however is the psychological upheaval that the attack may incur. The insurgents in Iraq know that their only hope of victory does not lie in military exploits, but in disrupting the determination of Americans, more specifically the Congress, to pull out American troops. This strategy worked in Viet Nam. It looks like it is again working in Iraq.
Why does this insurgency warfare work? Simply because of strategic mistakes made by the United States. In Viet Nam, it was the domino theory. In Iraq, the talk is about weapons of mass destruction, or to dispose a dictator, terrorism, or oil, or western personal freedom. All these may have been contributing factors, but in the Age War itself, it is the conflict between the God of the Bible and the God of Islam, Allah. Any radical Islamic Mullah will tell you that.
So why are we there, save national arrogance? Perhaps a better way to phrase this is, Why are we fighting this war, when they control the high ground? America’s enemy here understands that it is an Age War conflict and to be successful, you must use Age War weapons. The United States has chosen to fight this war with a worldly particulars strategy only. The civil war, or insurgency fighters in Iraq are fighting the war understanding that Absolutes are at stake, even if those absolutes are vastly inferior to the Absolutes of the Creator of the Universe.
How do you fit in the Age War of stupendous change?
Barna has described the eventual victors. Essentially you can join the revolution and be ultimately and eternally victorious, or you can be a short and/or long term casualty. In his reporting Barna basically describes the visual observations of this Christian revolution. That is the data, to this we must apply a theory to have reproducible science.
Earlier this week I posted a brief “Oikos Thought” on the website called True Science. Science is really the fusion of research and theory. If the research data doesn’t fit your theory, then your theory should change. It is only logical, using your God given brain, and not resting on your emotions, what you want, or have been conditioned to believe.
The theory behind Barna’s Revolution concept is that there is a God who is truly changing the lives of these people, while the observable normal demographics have remained consistent.
To expand upon that, you must go back to one of those underlying imperative precepts of the Bible. That is through the Word of God, both in the imperative and the indicative, God works from mass chaos, to community and individual order and freedom. The community is called the Body of Christ, more popularly the church. However, as Christianity has always taught, sometimes successfully, many times not that way, all who call themselves members of the church, are not part of the Universal church, the Body of Christ.
What that means, if you indeed are a revolutionary in the Barna sense, you have access, right in the present, and especially during times of stupendous change, the ability to alter chaos and be free of it trying to alter your command and control structure. The Apostle Paul in his epistles speak about it in terms such as, “the unsearchable riches in Christ, or in war terms, ”more than conquerors.” These are the imperatives. They function not for self glory, but for the ultimate glory of God, from hence comes their power to change you and others.
Bible indicative war statements such as Ephesians 6, naturally flow from practice of the imperatives above. However, this war, as we have seen is just not a spiritual war, but also of things on the ground, storms, earthquakes, terrorist attacks. This vast array of onslaughts, will alter your command and control structure, but that is not necessarily a bad thing, if you look at them as changes in reality.
The wonderful thing about looking at all things as stupendous change events, is then you can automatically look to make changes in your personal and community command and control mechanisms as you gather or receive more scientific or empirical data. In other words you automatically update your theory, in a truly scientific way, and in the process grow in the knowledge, not only of worldly change, but also your unique gifts as a personality created in the image of God. That makes you a more effective fighter in the revolution, not only for yourself, but also your family, friends and the greater community at large.
The time is now to adopt a better command and control mechanism! The first step is to ask God, to join His revolution! You have freedom to gain, and chaos to overcome.
PDF copy
Command and control are the operative words for any stupendous change occurrence. It just so happens that war is the stupendous change happening where command and control principles are most often understood. War is hell on earth, or so I have been told by those who have first hand combat experience. Thankfully, by the grace of God, I do not. I have however, been a listener in many instances where combat veterans from WWII up through Iraq have tried to cope with this hell and still maintain, or reestablish their normal personality.
After the attack on the World Trade Center, I wrote an article by this same title on 13 September 2001. While not all the world’s events have transpired as outlined in that piece, much of it is still relevant. Furthermore, the very secret nature of some aspects of man induced stupendous change events are kept highly classified, or unknown to the general population until after the event and beyond.
The main purpose of military attacks is to disrupt to the maximum extent possible the enemy command and control structure and replace it with yours. This is called to achieve the mission. This is true with the World Trade Center incident, or other so called terrorist attacks around the world, as it is also true with US military operational patrols in Bagdad.
As pointed out in that earlier article there has always been a war going on in this world. Generally recognized throughout history, this is a war between good and evil. In our post-modern, post-Christian era, the problem is just the bad karma of lowly evolved religious bigots, trying to convert others to specific antiquated dogma.
This war however truly exists, and it is much more dramatic than any of the above concepts. This war is between the personal Creator God of the universe and His followers, and the evil personality of Satan and his minions. It must be said that all stupendous change events in some Divine way fit within the context of this war. The results of this military action are already determined, as a matter of absolute fact, completed by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. All that remains is a period of time until God finishes collecting the billions of individual unique personalities, to fulfill His purpose in the life to come. This eternal life is generally described in human terms as heaven, even though that concept is woefully inadequate.
Since war is hell on earth, every human being would just as soon take a pass on the whole thing. However that being said, we will enter into the fray so that we can get our own way. We want to be the captains of our own ship of destiny, we just call it Self Esteem. All those ships have a same different name however, Sinful Damnation. Few are the brave souls who have the fortitude to look over the bow or the stern to read this actual name. This is also strange, for similar personality ships sailed by Christians have your own name on the bow and stern, with the homeport of Freedom.
This good - evil war, or God - Satan war we could call the War of this Age, or Age War. But smaller more human wars are fought and have been fought almost continually throughout history. In all wars there is the aggressor and the defender. Some are fought over worldly territory, some over ideas, most are combinations of the two. Trying to give names to specific types of wars is almost fruitless, like trying to name the varieties of apples.
We are told that Iraq, which began as a front on the War on Terror, or a Freedom War, has now become a insurgency, or a civil war. It is reported this week that the United States is making air strikes to disrupt Al Qaida forces in Somalia. This evening President Bush is expected to order 20,000 more troops to Iraq. So to counter the current course of the Iraq War we have invented the “Surge to end war.”
One of the least common wars, is a true war of freedom, or a revolution. Except in the case of the American Revolution, these wars are usually highjacked by other oppressive forces and the situation at the end turns out to be worse than the despot they replaced.
What made the American Revolution a success is that it rested upon the principals of self determination, freedom and the absolutes or universal principles found in the Bible. The French Revolution and the ensuing blood bath focused just upon worldly self determination. French fighting rested upon the concept that only the individual, or as Francis Schaeffer would say, the particulars have value and there are no absolutes. He would contrast this with the fact that the particulars, in this case human personalities have value, compared to other particulars, because they were created by God in His image. The French at the time, and for the most part still don’t even grasp that distinction.
By the entropy principles of thermodynamics that French particulars view has now become the norm in the United States and throughout the world. Perhaps the one reason that the Iraq policy has failed is that George W. Bush, in his evangelical Christian training never was taught the difference either. But as much as all would like to blame Dubbya, the fault lies squarely with the church, particularly (pun intended) American evangelicalism.
American evangelicalism has distorted its eternal message, from the eternal grace of God working in the world, into activism of moral, social, political, and material relativism. As a result, in the context of this message, it has lost control of it’s command structure. These are virtually the same programs that halved the size of American denominational liberalism in the first half of the 20th century. From Christian liberalism, evangelicalism developed vibrancy. God’s word alone (God’s command and control structure), was the basis by which evangelicalism arose counteracting that earlier decadence. Calvary Chapel is a good example of one of those early evangelical successes.
What evangelism and Calvary Chapel has not understood, is that while resting on the Bible alone is essential to spiritual growth, true growth in a spiritual sense rests in the application of Bible absolutes, particularly, the paradigm of deductive truth rather than inductive reasoning. This is truly what separates Francis Schaeffer and Chuck Smith.
For those who might bother to look at Isaiah 28, there is a contrast set between “precept upon precept” teaching. Simply stated when precepts become ends unto themselves, they become idols. “That they might go and fall backward, and be broken And snared and caught.” Simply put, the precepts in verse 10 are deductive absolutes (indicatives), the precepts in verse 13 are inductive particulars (imperatives). In the Reformation sense, the context of this passage states gospel first, pointing to the standards of the law.
Just as evangelicalism followed Protestant liberalism, there is a new revolution going on within the church in America and around the world. That term I did not invent, but comes from George Barna, the Christian pollster. By doing an internet search you can find more information on this phenomena, including a 2005 book “Revolution.” We have also put together a brief PDF overview here.
So God is performing a Revolution among His people, which will change the world. By definition this stupendous change within God’s people is part of that battle of the Age War. As part of the Age War all of humanity is going to be affected by these battles. You can either look at these occurrences as stupendous change events, or disasters, catastrophes, terrorist attacks, or just bad karma, it is your choice. However, you will and are required to make changes in the status quotient of your life. In other words, stupendous change will interrupt the command and control of your life. Are you prepared for it, or will you be a casualty, that is the question?
In warfare, as in a stupendous change event, the mission is to violently disrupt enemy command and control structure, especially on the battle field, and to create chaos among the ranks of the enemy. Some of this chaos is actually physical disruption, more important however is the psychological upheaval that the attack may incur. The insurgents in Iraq know that their only hope of victory does not lie in military exploits, but in disrupting the determination of Americans, more specifically the Congress, to pull out American troops. This strategy worked in Viet Nam. It looks like it is again working in Iraq.
Why does this insurgency warfare work? Simply because of strategic mistakes made by the United States. In Viet Nam, it was the domino theory. In Iraq, the talk is about weapons of mass destruction, or to dispose a dictator, terrorism, or oil, or western personal freedom. All these may have been contributing factors, but in the Age War itself, it is the conflict between the God of the Bible and the God of Islam, Allah. Any radical Islamic Mullah will tell you that.
So why are we there, save national arrogance? Perhaps a better way to phrase this is, Why are we fighting this war, when they control the high ground? America’s enemy here understands that it is an Age War conflict and to be successful, you must use Age War weapons. The United States has chosen to fight this war with a worldly particulars strategy only. The civil war, or insurgency fighters in Iraq are fighting the war understanding that Absolutes are at stake, even if those absolutes are vastly inferior to the Absolutes of the Creator of the Universe.
How do you fit in the Age War of stupendous change?
Barna has described the eventual victors. Essentially you can join the revolution and be ultimately and eternally victorious, or you can be a short and/or long term casualty. In his reporting Barna basically describes the visual observations of this Christian revolution. That is the data, to this we must apply a theory to have reproducible science.
Earlier this week I posted a brief “Oikos Thought” on the website called True Science. Science is really the fusion of research and theory. If the research data doesn’t fit your theory, then your theory should change. It is only logical, using your God given brain, and not resting on your emotions, what you want, or have been conditioned to believe.
The theory behind Barna’s Revolution concept is that there is a God who is truly changing the lives of these people, while the observable normal demographics have remained consistent.
To expand upon that, you must go back to one of those underlying imperative precepts of the Bible. That is through the Word of God, both in the imperative and the indicative, God works from mass chaos, to community and individual order and freedom. The community is called the Body of Christ, more popularly the church. However, as Christianity has always taught, sometimes successfully, many times not that way, all who call themselves members of the church, are not part of the Universal church, the Body of Christ.
What that means, if you indeed are a revolutionary in the Barna sense, you have access, right in the present, and especially during times of stupendous change, the ability to alter chaos and be free of it trying to alter your command and control structure. The Apostle Paul in his epistles speak about it in terms such as, “the unsearchable riches in Christ, or in war terms, ”more than conquerors.” These are the imperatives. They function not for self glory, but for the ultimate glory of God, from hence comes their power to change you and others.
Bible indicative war statements such as Ephesians 6, naturally flow from practice of the imperatives above. However, this war, as we have seen is just not a spiritual war, but also of things on the ground, storms, earthquakes, terrorist attacks. This vast array of onslaughts, will alter your command and control structure, but that is not necessarily a bad thing, if you look at them as changes in reality.
The wonderful thing about looking at all things as stupendous change events, is then you can automatically look to make changes in your personal and community command and control mechanisms as you gather or receive more scientific or empirical data. In other words you automatically update your theory, in a truly scientific way, and in the process grow in the knowledge, not only of worldly change, but also your unique gifts as a personality created in the image of God. That makes you a more effective fighter in the revolution, not only for yourself, but also your family, friends and the greater community at large.
The time is now to adopt a better command and control mechanism! The first step is to ask God, to join His revolution! You have freedom to gain, and chaos to overcome.