Don’t look now, but we are all becoming desensitized. And what we are becoming desensitized to is the most outrageous thing we ever could have imagined: domestic terror. Public massacres. Our fellow citizens going berserk and shooting a crowd full, a room full, or a building full of innocent men, women, and children. A neighbor being led away in handcuffs after murdering his family. School children taking semi-automatic weapons to school and creating horrifyingly bloody scenes the likes of which most soldiers have never even been exposed to.

We have seen so much of this we are no longer shocked by it – or at least, not as much as we used to be. This worrisome fact should, by all accounts, be more shocking than the actual incidents. A few decades ago the notion was unthinkable. We would never allow our society to deteriorate to such depths. It proves beyond any doubt that humans are creatures of their environment and will accept any situation as normal upon sufficient exposure. It also proves something else – that we do not have the control we like to think we have over the status and direction of our societal conditions.

The Bible tells us in no uncertain terms that Satan is the god of this world, and that we live right under his throne. We Christians are to understand we are only sojourners here, at least while he is still in a position of influence. We are to hold to an attitude that this world is not our home. It only becomes more obvious every day that Satan is truly in charge of the culture. This is why news headlines which would have been shocking and unacceptable three decades ago are now the status quo. We are simply overpowered.

Not that we should give up fighting the evil. It is, after all, our lot while we are here. God does come to our aid when we seek him, and empowers us in mighty ways for His kingdom. But we need to acknowledge the fact the battle is spiritual, and must be fought with spiritual weapons. Without them we are utterly helpless. The enemy is simply too strong, and he has now mustered a considerable army in the form of a progressively liberal culture. God wins in the end, of course, which means those of us on God’s side win in the end – but this earth in its current condition and direction is headed for unavoidable destruction. Make no mistake about that. It is confirmed in Biblical prophecy.

Meanwhile we can, and should, fight the good fight. Which side we are on defines us. Complacency is not commendable. We don’t know the day of the Lord’s coming, even as the fig tree is shooting out tender branches everywhere we look. But the fight is not for the earth. Its destiny is fixed, and in God’s hands.

Consider the Old Testament. The prophets had foretold of inescapable destruction coming upon all of Israel, including the Northern Kingdom. Yet God granted the Northern Kingdom reprieves when two good kings, Hezekiah and later Josiah, led the nation back to God. I see great parallels between those kings and our current USA President, whom I consider a gift from God to His people in this country. (But it is beginning to look more like a Josiah comparison than a Hezekiah one, as bad as things are getting. Josiah was the last good king before the destruction. Can you imagine how bad things would be getting for us, and how rapidly, had the other candidate won? Praise God for His mercy.)

Because the battle is spiritual, human-conceived solutions are useless, as Psalm 60:11 and Psalm 108:12 remind us. All you have to do is look at the standard liberal reaction to domestic terror incidents. It’s always the same: take away everyone’s guns. The reaction is impulsive, of course, fraught with human callowness, but so misplaced and so dismissive of the issue at hand it becomes pure irony. The problem is, and always has been, the wicked human heart when left in its natural condition. It is the leftist agenda which promotes a Godless existence in the first place, and thus is ultimately responsible for public massacres. The leftist agenda is Satan’s program. The culture they promote obviously does not result in better, satisfying lives. The suicide rate this century has steadily climbed to what the CDC defines as “epidemic levels.” The leftist ideal evidently leaves people empty and depressed, as perfectly captured in Pascal’s famous quote (inspired by Ecclesiastes 3:11):

Every heart has a God-shaped hole in it…

…which only God can fill. If it is left unfilled, no real satisfaction can be attained and life becomes truly meaningless.

More frequent domestic massacres seem to fit the signs of the end times Jesus gave in Matthew 24; in particular Matthew 24:12, which the ESV translation really brings to light in our current application:

“And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.”

A Godless society, made up of people with unfilled God-shaped holes in their hearts, inevitably increases in lawlessness and decreases in love. Such things are heavily promoted by the enemy. The rapid deterioration we are now seeing hauntingly fits with the prophecy of Revelation 12:12.

The Bible told us 2,000 years ago that this is how it will be towards the end, and that things will only get worse. But we don’t know if we will first have Hezekiah and Josiah-style remissions en route, and we don’t know exactly how close to the end we are. I used to yawn at the news and look up, just waiting for that trumpet – but I no longer think it’s what God wants of me.

We are in a fight. God is looking for people He can use. The goal is not political. The war is nothing less than a battle for souls. We fight for the Kingdom of God. Let us do it in a way that will bring others into the Kingdom, in a way which glorifies Him. Even if we manage to exert effective positive political influence, if we neglect the filling of the God-shaped holes in peoples’ hearts our accomplishments are ultimately futile.