We Must Acknowledge Our Enemies

I recently listened to a major Republican figure speak at a pro-life event. While most of what he said was true, he spoke an error with confidence—both are familiar to me, but the error was most concerning. I have elected not to mention the speaker’s name because it is immaterial and could easily have been said by any mainstream Republican, to similar cheers of applause.

In describing the fractured nature of our society, he described a small group of elites who are sowing division among groups who would otherwise get along. “Your fellow Americans are not your enemies,” he exclaimed. I beg to differ.

One must first ask who is meant by “your,” but in such a context, it seems rather inclusive. So, what about the unborn? Do they have enemies? Considering that they are being killed, it is inarguable that they do. How about the children of our society? They are being targeted by people who literally want to mutilate and sterilize them. They have real enemies. Our elderly and our sickest are under threat from those who promote euthanasia, deeming their lives of no value because they’re not contributing to the societal change jar. Our enemies are very real, and the cost of ignoring that can be counted in corpses.

The message of the speaker is the politically safe one. It is tiresome, for it is repeated with such frequency while being erroneous. The pundit blames a small group and pretends that things aren’t as bad as they are. If the small group that he points to can be ignored or dealt with, everything would be fine, it is alleged. That is what people want to hear. They want to hear that because it means that a solution is near. Sadly, it’s just not the truth. While it is true that cultural Marxism has infiltrated society such as to separate people into groups that hold tension toward one another, it is not the case that if everyone just identified better with the nationstate as a source of identity, we would have a healthy, functional society. It is also not the case that the problem is a small group of evil people.

A long line of martyrs would be aghast at the notion that we do not have enemies.

We have no culture. Massive numbers now support abortion until birth (look at the states that allowed citizens to vote on abortion), cannot define men or women, and are okay with mutilating children. It’s not a malevolent few that are the problem — it’s a massive section of the populace. Moreover, their viewpoints are the obvious and inevitable endpoints of the secular worldview, which is growing like a cancer. It is inherently nihilistic and fatalistic, seeing no special value in man as a created entity and thus reducing him to his usefulness and wantedness.

If you tell a person that he doesn’t have enemies, how can you prepare him for what’s coming? Persecution is increasing and some won’t even acknowledge that there’s a fight. It’s easier to appeal to people’s normalcy bias—to their tendency to assume that because their churches haven’t been torched or they haven’t been arrested, that it won’t happen in the future. It’s always easier to tell people what they want to hear. Normalcy bias is dangerous when there is a hurricane coming, as people who have survived them in the past refuse to leave or even prepare for the one that is on the way. We too have hard times on the horizon, and we must acknowledge the threat.

It further seems incredibly unbiblical and ahistorical to assert the absence of enemies. When Christ said to pray for our enemies, He acknowledged that we would have some (at least, if we’re following Him). There are no assurances that we will not face enemies. The long, bloody trail of martyrs attests to this, going all of the way back to the apostles themselves. The people who are Christ’s enemies (and thereby ours) make themselves such through their choices: “I have told you often, and now tell you again with tears, that there are many whose lives make them the enemies of Christ’s cross.” (Phil. 3:18)

Pretending that we don’t have enemies does not make them cease to exist—it vaporizes our possibilities for preparation. It condemns those to ignorance who might have been better warned, and inclines us toward passivity. Let us acknowledge the battles that lie ahead, and those whom we are fighting for today, because our very real enemies will not refrain from the fight.