There is no doubt that we are living in significant times.  Both troubling and exciting.  In all the chaos there is no shortage of opportunity – opportunity to serve and have a Kingdom aligned impact.  Our mandate remains that we are here to be fruitful and multiply and make disciples of all nations.  They are inseparable.  In order to keep our focus we need to avoid the times of confusion.  We are seeing the resurgence of the Babylonian spirit of confusion.

Age of Confusion

We live in the time of great confusion.  What is evil is called good (Isa 5: 20).  Much of this is taken together in the ebook by Darrow Miller, Scott Allen and Stan Guthrie titled A Toxic New Religion – Understanding the Postmodern, Neo-Marxist Faith that Seeks to Destroy the Judeo-Christian Culture.  This is the latest addition to the works of Miller and the Disciple Nations Alliance.   Miller’s original book, Discipling Nations, is a cornerstone work that informs a theistic world view.  Especially, if you supplement the book with the free online training as well as with A Toxic New Religion.

I won’t go into a detailed review of the book here but will be unpacking certain topics in follow-up posts as they relate to the topics highlighted here today.  What is important is to note how mass deception is a hallmark of our times from fake news to deep fakes, from people deciding on their own gender to business exploiting people and planet for profit and calling it growth.  Cancer also grows.  Never before has there been such a perfect storm of deception and the digital tools to spread it.  Miller et al. highlights this confusion.  It is meant for the Church as a whole and helps to dispel lies by establishing truth.  There is also a shift happening in the world of science and business that speaks to those who have a calling as servant leaders in business.

Two Shifts

I always write with two specific target audiences as it relates to my own experience.  The first group is the active Church members who do not necessarily belong to an institutionalised church, but believe in relationship, community, unity, and functional local church in some way or form.  Among these, I specifically write to those who have greater influence, formal or informal.

The second group I write to overlaps with the first as the Church is not something you go to but a way you live.  They are business people; servant leaders.  Those who know that they need to play a role in the business world as a calling.  It is not about the size of impact, profit, or giving that is important.  The singular desire to see the great pleasure, satisfaction and pride in your Father’s eyes the day you go home because you did what you were suppose to do, is the motivation

In follow-up posts I will look at each of the separate groups in a bit more detail to help unpack the underlying shifts and hopefully clear up confusion so that people can understand themselves and their environment better.

Church

The church started as a community of believers, went to Greece and became a philosophy.  From there it went to Rome and became an institution and finally arrived in the USA and became a business.  Throughout this time the Church influenced the dominant worldview that in turn influenced politics and economics.  This Judeo-Christian worldview was the reason for great economic growth and affluence.

Unfortunately it is never just one thing and throughout this time leaders who are led by untransformed hearts and minds also brought great exploitation, inequality and destruction.
We now see a backlash against the Judeo-Christian worldview as it is perceived to be a patriarchal, right-wing movement that inhibits the freedom of minorities and previously disadvantaged groups.  This is the influence of Marxism that is focused on power, oppression, class, and economics.

Unfortunately the critique is not ungrounded but the accusers take on the role of victim all too easily and twist the facts to fit their personal version of the truth.  The basic family unit as God intended is under attack and along with it our sexual identities as God intended them to be.  The Church is seen as the persecutor.  This is the toxic new religion where a truth or reality beyond the individual mind is rejected.  There is no unifying metaphysical truth; no one God.  We are not co-creators anymore but sole creators.  Truly independent and ‘free’.

Business

Along with the shift from a theistic worldview to a secular, atheistic worldview, we see the rise of the Newtonian thinking and influence on the world of commerce.  The Newtonian model is one of predictability, control and stability.  All things can be measured and planned.  Information and decisions are the privilege of the elite.

Power issues infused Newton’s work even though it empowered human beings to think for themselves.  Newtonian physics also influenced the business world through the work of Frederick W. Taylor that became known as Taylorism.  His work influenced key business figures such as Henry Ford. To a large degree this is still the dominant business philosophy.  Quantum thinking is now challenging all of that.   Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg made paradigm shifting discoveries at the turn of the previous century.  I am not a physicist and this is not the place to unpack all there truly mind altering discoveries.  I will return to some of the ideas in the future.

What is important to note is that through the work of these early pioneers we now have computers, cellphones, the internet and a multitude of other gadgets and gismos because of the equations derived from quantum mechanics.  What they discovered was that the way the world worked at sub-atomic level is in direct contradiction to the world as observed by our senses at a macro level.  It showed that things were not as solid as it might be perceived.  99.99999 percent of the sub-atomic is energy and 0.00001 percent is physical substance.  The conclusion is that we are actually more nothing than something.  Additionally, what we decide to focus on has a measurable impact on the formation of the something.  This further reinforces the worldview that we are sovereign creators.

Once again, there is much to take in, but what is important to note here is that these scientific insights are shaping the dominant business worldview .  It is evident in the work of Dispenza, Beck and Cowan, Laloux, and Zohar, to name but a few.  We will get to their contributions in future posts.

What to Do!?

If you want to have influence and contribute to the Kingdom of Heaven you have to learn! Become aware of the various lies and deceptions.  This is important as believer in general, but also as business person.  I will do my best to guide you through the malaise.  I encourage you connect with me on LinkedIn if there is anything I can help with.

Bottom line:  it is time to wake up and go from Survive to Alive