A Mark 9 solution for an Ephesians 6 Moment

Is there anything more immediately exhilarating than escaping the insane confines of the site formerly known as Twitter?

Yes, yes, I’m exaggerating. I know that there are things more immediately exhilarating (though not that many). But as I approach three months of not posting on X, my hyperbolic glee is only increasing.

I stopped posting at the end of December because I just couldn’t take it anymore. It’s become obvious that X – particularly “MAGA/Christian Nationalist influencer/podcaster X” -- is not a mere social-media site anymore, so much as an antisemitic, angry, utterly offensive and vulgar hellscape and loony bin (this is not to argue that the radioactive Leftist-Woke X is not similarly vile, but a) Bluesky has helped to thin that herd and b) I mute and block all those who remain).

At this point, who’s left on there with a fully intact, biblical Christian worldview, with a visible commitment to the Word of God governing all things personal, religious and political? Very, very few. And I just think that when you’re down to muting and blocking pretty much everyone except your local weathermen and accounts showing adorable puppies, it’s time to hit the exits.

The antisemitism alone drove me away. How long have a number of us on the conservative Christian side been decrying this disgusting and demonic trend, in vain? Closing in on three years. Yet today, I saw a post from Dr. Naomi Wolf, who was bemoaning the fact that her “beautiful and gifted friend” Emerald Robinson (formerly of Newsmax and One America News Network) posted a “shockingly antisemitic” essay. This is the same “beautiful and gifted friend” who also just posted on X that complaining of rising antisemitism is a step in a “plan” toward making “all Americans lose their freedom of speech … Don’t fall for the plan.” Dr. Wolf, are you really only now noticing this insidious trend?

My disgust over the constant bigoted, baseless attacks on the Jewish people and on Israel from the “conservative side” of the aisle – really, the Tucker Carlson side of the aisle – knows no bounds at this point. Every one of these types presents as part of a big (well-funded?) herd, all swaying this way to say they’re “just asking questions,” then that way to yell about the Iran attacks, then this way to say that America is “controlled by the Jews,” then that way to yell about “ignorant dispensationalists” who “just want to usher in the end times.” Enough with it.

It all makes me think of Mark 9:14-29. A man brought his demon-possessed son to Jesus, saying that he’d been that way since childhood. “Teacher,” he said to Jesus, “I brought You my son, because he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak; and whenever it seizes him, it slams him to the ground, and he foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth and becomes stiff. And I told Your disciples so that they would cast it out, but they could not do it.”

The passage continues:

“When Jesus saw that the people came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, ‘Deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more!’ Then the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead, so that many said, ‘He is dead.’ But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. And when He had come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ So He said to them, ‘This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.’”

Why was it that the disciples could not cast out the demon from the boy? Bible commentator Matthew Henry offered these thoughts:

“They enquired of (Jesus) privately why they could not, that wherein they were defective might be made up another time, and they might not again be thus publicly shamed; and he told them (Mark 9:29), This kind can come forth by nothing but prayer and fasting. Whatever other difference there really might be, none appears between this and other kinds, but that the unclean spirit had had possession of this poor patient from a child, and that strengthened his interest, and confirmed his hold. When vicious habits are rooted by long usage, and begin to plead prescription, like chronical diseases that are hardly cured. Can the Aethiopian change his skin? The disciples must not think to do their work always with a like ease; some services call them to take more than ordinary pains; but Christ can do that with a word’s speaking, which they must prevail for the doing of by prayer and fasting.”

“Vicious habits rooted by long usage … are hardly cured.” How familiar that feels, when I read X. Mark 9, therefore, is a simple reminder to me that though I’ve done my best to help warn, rebuke, out-argue, cajole and plead with the Vile “Christian” Antisemites of X to forsake their Jew hatred and myriad other Woke Right moral crimes for a few years now, there are things I simply cannot do. Things that take more than ordinary pains. Whether some “Christians” are simply too clueless to repent, or too prone to being unthinking sheeple to repent, or too stubborn (or paid too well) to repent, or too entrenched in these devilish schemes posing as reasonable “Christian” or political ideologies to repent, I have no way of knowing.

But I can see among their ilk that the devil is heavily at work among them. So I’ve concluded that what I should do about all this is to stop beating my head in vain against a wall on a social-media site and do what Jesus said to do when a spiritual crisis is simply beyond any human ability to solve: pray and fast. Breaking the power of the devil is way beyond my capacity. But it’s not beyond Jesus’ power. Nothing is impossible with Him!

That’s why praying and fasting is now going to be my primary strategy against the horrors unfolding on X, especially among those who claim to believe in Jesus. For any other Christian who sees what I see, and mourns over it all as I do, I hope you’ll join me. Let’s go before the Throne with boldness together. We have a faithful, gracious and merciful God who will hear us.

And He alone can turn things around and bring men back to their right minds.

“And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints.” (Ephesians 6:17, 18)