Survivalists finally have their day in the sun. For decades, their advice on everything from hoarding gold to canning food has been viewed as kook-dom. I suspect that many people now wish they had taken their warnings a little more seriously. Perhaps their timing was a bit off in the seventies; it may still be. Yet, it is certainly hitting closer to home, for the mask of statist promises of prosperity through economic regulation and manipulation are now exposed as self-serving and self-enriching demagoguery, elitist arrogance, and hopeless futility. The state can no more produce or guarantee prosperity than a genie in a lamp. Even if Bernanke begins dropping his money from a helicopter, a scenario he once envisioned in a speech and is now practically doing, it is worthless paper. It has always been worthless, but we believed the lie because we wanted to survive and thrive conveniently, in our self-contented little worlds of endless prosperity, low-demand credit, and continuously expanding markets. These do not exist. They have never existed. We suspected it; we now know it. The survivalists do not seem quite so kooky, do they? We have all become survivalists.
It does not have to be this way. Cultural death by submission to more federal control, nationalization of business, economic stimulus packages, and lawless politicians may be rejected. We can tear up government checks. We can get out of debt and live within our means, a lifestyle that provides significant stability in precarious times. We could, under legitimate local and state leaders, simply ignore the threat of withheld federal "money" if we do not submit to every new piece of unconstitutional legislation. We could refuse to vote for men who promise "change" when they really mean "more of the same," and worse. We could elect a President - and I would settle for a governor or even a county commissioner first - like John Tyler, who vetoed as unconstitutional every piece of legislation that came to his desk. Even his own party wanted to impeach him. We could, I suppose, follow Thomas Jefferson’s oft-repeated mantra that a "little revolution is a healthy thing every now and then." We have guns. Many officers in the U.S. Army are reportedly Christian. There might be a Lee or Jackson among them, if given half the chance and a goal more glorious than ferreting out foreigners who live in caves and pose less of a threat to the United States than do the federals in Washington D.C. These ideas do not seem nearly as crazy as they did a decade or two ago, a year ago, even six months ago. They will probably not materialize. The liberty-loving, sic semper tyrannus Scots-Irish have been amalgamated and pacified into the American culture of the status quo. We do not have a President like Andrew Jackson, who once challenged the Supreme Court to try and enforce their decisions, no one who will shut down the Federal Reserve System as he once did the central banking movement. Postman’s prophetic critique of the negative epistemological impact of television falls on deaf ears because our surround-sound systems have made us deaf to rational argument. We might miss the clearance sale at Macy’s. We are all eyes now - for pop-tarts and pornography. Our ears do not work because our minds are mush. We are not yet ready to take to the fields. We will continue to live in this comic strip of catastrophe.
There is something the survivalists miss. Survive to what? Let us say I have enough guns and gold to make it through what looks like a massive cultural upheaval. I live in Idaho. I have a garden, a few chickens, and a cow or two. Is this it? Do I honestly think that this is surviving, to become a virtual monk in my insulated little world of manure, generators, and bomb shelters? Better than starving, you say. Not necessarily. Only if I assume that survival is the inverse of the selfishness that has produced the current calamity, that what I hate about mass culture - narcissism and consumption - is perfectly legitimate as long as it is practiced by me and my family. This is the ugly side of survivalism, the final intensification of individual autonomy and prosperity. Let the world burn as I long as I can live as I please, free from the contamination of others, of the "system," of having to cope with the hoi polloi, who are so stupid. Not all survivalists, of course, have this mentality, but this streak is present in most and is as dangerous as group think. Think of an inverted capitalist pyramid, with all the markets (mine) and means of production (mine), serving the most important consumer (me). While we could all do with more self-reliance, less consumerism, and more independence of though, it does not lie in survivalism. It is no good to replace many with one false god, even if it is in the name of God. Survivalists, whether the rugged, gun-toting he-men of western myth, religious monasticism, or isolated cultures, usually survive to die later - alone, fragmented, martyrs to their ingrown hubris. There is a simple and biblical explanation for this: none of us lives unto himself and none of us dies unto himself (Rom. 14:7). We are part of the human community and will either suffer or thrive within it. We will have to find another way to survive.
I would suggest that the Lord is our strength. Read Psalm 18. David has been running from Saul, hiding in caves, eating off the land, living the dream of survivalists everywhere. At no time, however, does David attribute his victory to his self-sufficiency, sword hoard, stash of cash, or ingenuity. He recognizes that his conflict with Saul is part of a larger conflict, of God’s kingdom against man’s, of pretensions to power with real power, of human weakness triumphing over seemingly insurmountable odds. David gives himself into the hand of the living God: his rock, fortress, high tower, and strength. David understands that God is working out his purposes even through Saul. And David, as the Lord’s anointed, prayed to be delivered from the hand of his enemies. God came down - with fire and wrath, thick smoke and darkness, in response to David’s prayer. The Lord triumphed over his enemies - not in a day or even a year, but triumph he did in response to the prayer of David, his anointed.
David prayed, of course, as a type of Jesus Christ, the Anointed of God. By faith in Jesus Christ, we share this anointing as adopted sons. We have his Spirit, the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, the Spirit who convicts of sin, righteousness, and judgment, the Spirit of guaranteed redemption and overcoming sanctification. By the anointing we have received, we are kings and queens with Jesus Christ, reigning with him in the heavens. Our prayers, like David’s, if offered in faith and with God’s glory supreme in our thinking and motives, ascend to the heavens as sweet-smelling incense to the Lord. He receives these prayers and hurls them back to the earth in the form of his judgments against the wicked, against usurpers who deny the kingdom and sovereignty of his Son, who persecute his church, who are doomed to destruction in history, throughout history, and at the end of history. Yes, David was a survivalist, for a while, but he survived by the power of God, not by his own ingenuity, and he survived to reign, not remain holed up in a cave to live out his days as an enemy of government, the system, or of the human community. The interesting thing about this sort of survivalism is that it does not require relocation. It can be lived out in the city or in the country. It is practiced when the more we see God’s enemies massing and threatening, the more we turn to the power of God, to confident prayer, to the everlasting kingdom of God.
But here we counter a problem. The church has forgotten herself, her identity, her destiny, and her strength. Read Psalm 48. I am virtually certain that most Christians, when they read this Psalm, think of Jewry, the state of Israel. It has nothing to do with either. Mount Zion is the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the inspired writer absolutely identifies it for us (Hebrews 12:22-24). Zion is the "mountain" or kingdom in and through which the triune God reigns over the nations. It is the mountain of his holiness (v. 1), the holy temple in which he dwells, the church of Jesus Christ that is being built up as God’s dwelling place through the Spirit (Eph. 2:22). As such, the church is beautiful; it alone is the joy of the whole earth (v. 2; Eph. 5:26-27). It announces joy through its witness-bearing; it shows joy by its love and service; it possesses joy definitively because God dwells in our midst by his Spirit (Gal. 5:19-22). Because it is his city, it is our refuge, the impregnable fortress that the gates of hell cannot conquer (v. 3). As we by faith live this reality, for we are still saved by hope on this side of eternity, the kings of the earth pass by in wonder and fear (vv. 4-6). Here is a city against which their most formidable weapons are powerless (v. 7).
Therefore, we must live as God’s city, to survive, yes, but to overcome and labor for that day when the entire world is brought into God’s city. Such a life requires faith (v. 8); we must believe that God will establish it forever. The destiny of history is Mount Zion, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we are gathered together in this temple, we must think on God’s loving-kindness (v. 9). His covenant love is our salvation - not our efforts, merits, or feelings - his faithfulness and infallible promise alone. We must praise God and rejoice in him (vv. 10-11), especially in his judgments, for he is our Defender and never rests from his purpose to make Mount Zion the praise of all the earth. And we must love Zion - yes, with all her historical warts, weak men, and sometimes treacherous actions. We must love her foundation, her past, her present, and her future, for the generations following will be motivated to add to her beauty only if they see us loving the church, being lovely towers of the church (vv. 12-13). Our confidence in these glories is that God is our God and will be our guide unto death (v. 14). He will never forsake us or swerve from his promises.
So what is the problem? First, we have largely failed to understand that God’s primary work in history is the building of Mount Zion, his church. All other political movements, parties, and nations ebb and flow, rise and vanish, based upon their actions and relations to the church. We have it the other way around, that the church will only survive if we align with the power of the day. Second, we do not love the church. O, we may love our own particular church, which is at best, and only if it is faithful to the charter of the city, the Bible, only one small tower in the city. To hear some Christians speak of their particular church, one would think they are describing a new brand or bargain store they have discovered. How many professing Christians, with a gun to their head, could name ten great leaders of the church’s past? Five? Three church councils? One? How many Protestants can speak intelligibly about the Reformation for one minute? We set up our churches under the energy of some new spiritual guru, as if we were the first ones to think of anything, without even a backward glance to see if we are standing in the clear stream of Mount Zion, the living water, Jesus Christ, or if we are instead floundering in the polluted stream of our own arrogance and commercialized religion. To love the church is to love her past, to love all of her, wherever the Lord is pleased to erect another tower in his great city.
Third, there is nothing in us to make the kings of the earth tremble. Where is our righteousness? Low-demand preaching feeds and is fed by low-demand piety. Where is our strength, our fearlessness, the confidence that the world cannot gobble up our destiny with its harebrain schemes of prosperity, unity, and power? If we had these, we would not support the political candidates that come scratching at the door, like the drowning men trying to board Noah’s ark. We would proclaim the truth that "Jesus Christ is Lord," invite them to enter the city whose gates are always open, and steadfastly refuse to jump on their sinking ship. We need play no political games to survive. We simply need to speak and live the Word of God. If they get mad at us and fire a few volleys over our stern, we can laugh at them as God does (Psalm 2). A pop-gun poses no threat to the citadel of the Lord of hosts. Yet, such confidence is ours only if we are part of Mount Zion, one or part of one of the mighty towers of strength and beauty our heavenly Father is erecting over history, serving the King of the city with faith and joy. The greatest problem in the west today is not political and economic failure. In these, we are now simply joining the rest of the world that never partook of the Reformation and more fundamentally have never seen themselves as part of Mount Zion. The days of borrowed capital are over. Will we return to Mount Zion? Will the church return to herself, to prayer, to surviving by depending upon the power and faithfulness of God? The great problem or challenge is the recovery of the glory of Mount Zion - in the hearts and lives of the tens of millions of Christians who profess to be its citizens. The glory is still there, and the power, and the promises.
This is a movement you and I can contribute to at all times and wherever we happen to live. You know, we think of revival as a lightning bolt from the sky. I take a different view. Revival occurs when believers start seeking the Lord, when righteousness becomes more important to us than prosperity, when we start living as if our destiny as God’s peculiar people is vastly more relevant than getting a political party to look our way. Love for righteousness is revival. Heart-felt, consistent, kingdom-focused prayer is revival. Keeping oneself unspotted from the world is revival. Refusing to compromise God’s word when the temptation to compromise is fierce is revival. Right now, these may seem to be only survival, and within the mediums of our hyper-distracted culture, pathetic. They are far more. They are evidence that Mount Zion is not dead. God is working, building, indwelling. The city of God still shines on the hill, for God dwells in his church, the living stones of his covenant people.
In our present collapse, the temptation is great to run to the hills. Do. Make sure, however, is it the right hill - Mount Zion, the citadel of glory and light, God’s temple of holiness. Only those who dwell within her walls will survive.