The
Pathology of the Kosmic System
It is two elements, Satan’s independence of God or autonomy and his
hostility or antagonism to God that are the core elements of Satanic
though—that the creature thinks that he can live independently of the creator.
Once the creature thinks that he can live independently of the creator he
begins to develop his own understanding of life, of creation, of everything
within creation, in antagonism to God. Once he begins to live independently of
God it will be long before he becomes antagonistic to God. This works itself
out throughout human history as what the Bible calls worldliness. Once of the
primary ways in which Satan influences the human race is through this concept
developed in the New Testament called worldliness. There are three enemies in
the Christian life: the world, the flesh [sin nature] and the devil.
We need to know how the cosmic system works. Most of the time in the New
Testament the “world” is translated from the Greek word kosmos [kosmoj]. In the negative sense t
describes the entire arrangement and system of thinking arrayed against God. It
has as its primary meaning, order, arrangement and adornment. One meaning of kosmos has to do with the inhabited
world, as in John 3:16: “for God so loved the world,” i.e. the inhabited
planet. But in other passages the concept of “world” has to do with the
thinking of those who inhabit the planet over against or in contrast to the
thinking of God. In James chapter three the thinking of the world is described
as the wisdom of the world and it is described as being earthly, natural and
demonic. All the systems of human thought that are independent of God these
basic characteristics of Satanic thought—autonomy from God, the thought that
somehow we make meaning of life, somehow make life work, somehow organise our
marriages, our society, everything that we do in such a way that by excluding
God we can find meaning, purpose, stability and happiness. This is all part of
this concept of the cosmos. In the Old Testament the idea of order and
arrangement is foundational to the creation describes in Genesis chapter one.
It is very clear from the way that the creation is described that there is a
plan, that there is order and progression.
In contrast to what God has created in terms of a universe that has
perfect order, balance and arrangement, we have the introduction of chaos and
disorder. This occurs once Lucifer falls, and once man falls is the restored
creation of Genesis one, then there is the introduction of chaos. Chaos is the
opposite of cosmos which has the idea of balance and arrangement. But the word kosmos is never used in the LXX in the same sense
that it is used under the development in the New Testament. The New Testament
develops the idea that kosmos
represents Satan’s attempt to bring order and beauty out of the chaos that was
introduced by sin. His goal is to show that he can be God, and in order to do
that he has to bring about stability, order and beauty within creation apart
from God. So these various systems that all come under the category of cosmic
thinking are all oriented to trying to bring order, stability and beauty out of
a world that is chaotic as a result of sin. So at its very core it is going to
want to deny the concept of sin, the concept of depravity, the concepts of
rebellion as associated with the Satanic fall.
When we think about the word kosmos,
at the very core of its meaning it has the idea of order, adornment, it brings
out the idea of something that is attractive and beautiful. So when this is
applied to the false systems of thinking that developed in Satan’s world one
thing we see is that they have an attractiveness, an appeal, a beauty that has
an affinity to the sin nature. This is why it is so important to understand the
concept of worldliness in our generation. Whoever you are, wherever you live
and whenever you live you are surrounded by a form of cosmic thinking. That
form of cosmic thinking has a direct affinity to your sin nature, and when we
are living apart from God then our sin nature just latches on to those values
in the cosmic system of our day and uses them to rationalise, justify and
strengthen the autonomy of the sin nature. It often leaves us blinded to the
influence of our own sin nature. It is through the cosmic system that Satan
primarily blinds the minds of unbelievers, 2 Corinthians 4:4. He does that
through appealing to the sin nature through his various systems that seem to
make life work apart from God. So when we look at this word kosmos we see that it picks up certain
nuances related to the universe, related to the world of idea, related to
values in some contexts, and also to the concept of beauty and aesthetics. So
it is a word that does a lot of work. It has a lot of facets to it, depending
on the context.
In theology the word kosmos
has to do with all systems of thought that are developed in independence of
God. We live in a world today that refuses to think about methods. As long as
the results are okay—as long as we have a large church, a long as we fill a
stadium with converts, as long as people seem to grow closer to whatever they
call God—then we want to give that the stamp of approval. However, we must
remember that a right thing done in a wrong way is still wrong, that method is
as important as what we are trying to accomplish. Method often reflects a
viewpoint that is actually antagonistic to biblical Christianity, so that we
can be engaged in evangelism, in church, in worship, and we can do it in such a
way that conforms to the methods of the world. What we have done is we have
compromised our message and the truth by how we are going about the Christian
life. Satan promotes these systems of thought and they appear to work; he
wouldn’t have much success if they didn’t appear to work. So there is a lot
that we can go to to validate all these different systems but at the core they
operate on these twin supports of autonomy and antagonism.
The
cosmos is a vast order or system that Satan has promoted, which conforms
to his ideals, aims, and methods. It is civilization now functioning apart from
God—a civilization in which none of its promoters really expect God to share,
who assign to God no consideration in respect to their projects; nor do they
ascribe any causativity to Him. This system embraces its godless governments,
conflicts, armaments, jealousies, its education, culture, religions of
morality, and pride. It is that sphere in which man lives. It is what he sees,
what he employs. To the uncounted multitude it is all they ever know so long as
they live on this earth. It is properly styled the satanic system, which
phrase is in many instances a justified interpretation of the so-meaningful
word, cosmos. It is literally a cosmos diabolicus.
A synonym that
comes into play here is often translated “world,” the Greek word aion [a)iwn]. It is in this
sense what relates to what Germans describe as zeitgeist. aion is the
word for age, the time period, so it has a temporal aspect, whereas kosmos looks more at the order and in
some case the physicality of the concept. The Germans coined a word in the 19th
century, zeitgeist, meaning ths
spirit of the times, the thinking of the times, the general intellectual and
world cultural climate of an era. Another word is worldview, which as to do
with that basic set of beliefs that people hold that enable them to organise
the data, the information, in the world. That is its core definition.
When we come to
Romans 12:2 we read a familiar passage: NASB “And do not be
conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so
that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable
and perfect.” The word “world” in that verse is not kosmos but aion. It has the idea of
the thinking of the time. If we look at our world today we live in a transition
period. Some people say that we are emerging from modernism into postmodernism.
So that term “emerging” in that context has been applied to a new heretical
direction in the church called the emergent church movement. It is talking
about how we have to have a new concept of church, a new concept of worship, a
new message, because we now live in postmodern times and we have emerged from
modern times. So we live in a culture today that is dominated by two ideas:
modernism and postmodernism. Postmodern is also based on pure relativism
whereas modernism is based on a very optimistic view that man on his own can
answer all the questions of life and bring in a utopic society simply on the basis
of his own ability. Both systems reject the concept that man is a creature
created by God but in a fallen state. So we are not to be conformed to the
belief system in which we live, the culture around us. There is a contrast
between how a believer thinks.
We may have been
born is a Christian home, a home of unbelievers, of atheists, a home dominated
by some other world religion or philosophy, but as we grew up we were also
taught various things about the nature of reality. We heard those from our peers,
from teachers and professors in schools and universities, and as we grew up as
an individual we began to make choises as to what we were going to think and
believe about the nature of reality, the world around us. We formed our own
concept of what life was all about, and into that concept we included a number
of different factors. If a person is not a Christian then whatever his thinking
is composed of it is not based on truth—truth as the Bible defines it, absolute
truth. But once a person becomes a believer he can have a concept of absolute
truth that is grounded in an autonomous creator: the Triune God, not just any
creator but a creator who is composed of three eternal, co-equal persons. That
becomes ultimate truth, and ultimate truth is oriented to the thinking of that
creator. So once again we are brought back to this concept of thought and once
we become a believer we can have our thinking changed or transformed, and this
is the whole process of the Christian life. It is fundamentally a process of changing
how we think. The trouble is that once we get saved, and even if we are saved
at a young age, we still inbibe a lot of cosmic values as we grow older until
we begin to learn enough about the Bible, learn enough doctrine to really be
able to understand these things. It takes time to grow and to change and to
have our thinking transformed and the only thing that can do it is a consistent
detailed study of the whole counsel of God.
A thirty-minute
homily on Sunday morning is completely insifficient to transform the thinking
of people who are virtually brainwashed day in and day out by the thought
systems of the culture around them. We don’t realise how much we are bombarded
with these ideas that come across in films, television shows, art, music, periodicals,
and even just the way the news is packaged and formulated conveys certaion
values and ideas. Unless we have an external vantage point by which we can
evanuate these things then we become influenced by them and get sucked into the
thinking. The whole process of the believer is just learning to think more
objectively and critically about the world around him, and the only way he can
do that is by having a thorough understanding of the Word of God; that is the
standard, that is what gives us that objective vantage point to understand
these things. So we have not to become conformed to the world. In some sense
then we have to not become conformed to the worldview, the zeigeist around us;
we have to understand something about them. If we don’t know what they are we
don’t know how to avoid getting sucked into their thinking.
Cosmic thinking or
the systems that are devised in cultures are designed to enable mankind to
explain life, to solve problems, to build civilisations—and that involves
everything related to law, politics, marriage, social life, all of which flow
out of cosmic thinking—to structure his relationship apart from God. That is
the core concept: he is going to do everything but he does it apart from God.
So we can do a lot of things that have an affinity with the Bible but because
they are grounded on something that is independent of God it has adopted a
Satanic form of thinking.
There are two basic
reasons why it is important to study csmic thinking. The first is for the
purpose of evangelism. We need to understand the thinking of those to whom we
are communicating the gospel and to be able in the process of explaining the
gospel to them to juxtapose the gospel to false forms of thinking that
characterise this unbeliever’s thought. When we do this we are following a set
biblical pattern. This doesn’t mean that every time we witness to someone that
we are going to get into some deep conversations related to these things.
It has been pointed
out by numerous scholars that almost everything said in Genesis chapter one is
a direct counterpoint to the belief system of the Canaanites who were the
culture the Jews were going to be exposed to once they went into the Promised
Land. So they were taught about God’s creation but not in isolation. Words, terms
and concepts are used that have specific connotations that were in contrast to
the thought forms and cosmology of the Canaanites. When we go further down in
Scriputre to the ten plagues on the Egyptians in Exodus what those plagues show
is that God has a sense of humour when it comes to the false religious systems
of the Egyptians because He is going to use these plagues to show that the
whole Egyptian pantheon, the whole Egyptian cosmogony, is incapable of handling
the issues of life. Each of the plagues
used something out of the Egyptian culture and turned it against the Egyptians
to show that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was the creator God who was
over and above any of the gods or goddesses that autonomous man could invent.
We see the same kind
of thing when Elijah is on
In evangelising we
have to have an understanding of different cultures so that we can, through the
power of the Holy Spirit, make the gospel as clear as we can as we interact
with them. Peter says this is 1 Peter 3:15 NASB “but sanctify Christ
as Lord in your hearts [thinking], always {being} ready to make a defense to
everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with
gentleness and reverence.”
Another reason that
we come to understanding cosmic thinking around us is because we have all grown
up with it. Every one of us is influenced in ways beyond what we would be
comfortable in if it were truly exposed to us and we would probably be shocked
at how much our own thinking has been influenced by the cosmic thinking around
us. So the second reason we study worldliness or the cosmic system is to
understand how we have been affected in our own thinking. Because if we are
going to exchange the cosmic ideas in our own soul with the eternal truths of
God’s Word—and sometimes these may seem to be very similar ideas—then by
studying the thinking of the culture, the civilisation around us, the zeitgeist of our own era, we come to
understand the thoughts that have affected our own souls.
When biblical truth
is taught from the pulpit what happens in almost an unconscious way for most of
us is that we take that principle and envelop it in our human viewpoint frame
of reference and it becomes reshaped, rethought and transformed, almost
instantaneously, and rather than transforming or changing our thinking it is
just shifted around and we stay in our own comfort zone. Because of the
autonomy of the sin nature and the arrogance and hostility of the sin nature to
truth, if we are not careful we reshape biblical truth into our own frame of
reference.
James 4:4 NASB
“You [spiritual] adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world
is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world
makes himself an enemy of God.” The Bible juxtaposes these two concepts: that
you can think like the world or you can think biblically. You can’t do both,
they are mutually exclusive. The challenge to every believer is to learn to
think as God thinks. When we don’t what happens is that it not only affects our
own spiritual life, drags us down, but we are living our life on the basis of a
pseudo system, a false system, and sooner or later it will come crashing down
around us.
Eventually we have
to realise that we are in the devil’s world and we are not supposed to be
polishing the brass on a sinking ship, as J. Vernon McGee used to say, because
the culture is going to end. It is a pagan culture and our job as believers is
to be in the world but not of the world. We are not to think as the world
thinks. That doesn’t mean that we distance ourselves like some groups. Satan is
the ruler of the cosmic system and the only solution is the truth of God’s
Word. The only way that we come to understand how to live and how to think is
through a consistent study of the Word of God where we probe it in all of its
depths. It is not something that we just skim over the top, pick up a few ideas,
and go home and say we feel so good about church this morning, but where we are
challenged to think more deeply about every area of our lives as a result of
what God’s Word says.