Imagine for a moment that the highly skilled disease-fighting cells serving as military reservists in your blood stream one day receive an urgent summons from control central to grab their weapons and hustle to the front line.
Trained to engage the enemy, and battle-hungry from languishing at boring desk jobs, they relish the prospect of mixing it up with the invading forces.
Now imagine their disappointment when they discover it was a false alarm; in fact a thorough search of the entire battlefield yields not a single alien foe. They got all dressed up for conflict and the enemy doesn’t have the common courtesy to show up for even a little skirmish. Nothing is fair in love and war.
Some of the warriors have their feelings hurt. Others are sick and tired of practicing all the time and never getting in the game. A whole company of soldiers refuse to return to base without inciting a conflict. So to relieve their frustration and justify their training, they turn on the near-by natives and beat the stuffing out of them.
This is kind of how it goes for millions of folks around the world suffering from an auto-immune disease. They are taking a beating at the hands of their own countrymen. Friendly fire is thinning their ranks.
In spite of the many advancements in medical technology, scientists and researchers remain baffled as to the human bodies’ periodic fits of self-destruction. No one is quite sure what prompts the body to misread orders from headquarters and become its own worst enemy. Why do cells designated by the original manufacturer to repel invading forces and protect the home turf suddenly change allegiances and attack their comrades? It’s enough to make one believe there might be something to this evolutionary junk.
All of us know and love someone with rheumatoid arthritis. We’ve seen the snarled hands, twisted backs, and knotty knees (naughty cells!). Ouch! It hurts just to look!
The reason these folks battle inflammation and pain is because their once-helpful and reliable white blood cells have gone crazy. Rather than protecting the fort, they have morphed into violent aggressors burning and pillaging within the walls. Instead of beating back the barbarians at the gate, they have changed flags and march against the crown. They have committed treason! It’s mutiny on the bounty! Jerks!
When good cells go bad, nothing is off limits. All rules regarding civility are suspended. Rogue cells turn cannibalistic. They attack and eat the bodies’ friendliest parts. Who could possibly have anything against cartilage? It has nothing but a joint’s best interest at heart. Yet, marauding white blood cells seek it out and devour it like piranha descending on a carcass. It’s inhuman.
When our primary defense system turns offensive, and our immune package becomes the enemy within, destruction is inevitable. Who can defend against an inside coupe? How do you fight when your fighting force becomes the adversary? How can you defend yourself when your defense system is a traitor? The whole deal is sick.
Our bodies are vulnerable. We are seldom as healthy as we appear. We live on the verge of self-destruction. So take your vitamins. Enjoy your knees; you’ll miss them when they are gone!
It’s no accident that scripture compares the Body of Christ to the human body. There are many similarities. Take for example the tendency to self-destruct from within.
My study of church history has surfaced the fact that the Body of Christ is often its own worst enemy; that more harm has been done from within than without. The greatest damage inflicted on the church has not come from enemies outside the body, but within the walls. We’ve been hurt by wolves in sheep’s clothing, Trojan horses, false teachers, legalistic bullies, misguided zealots, crooked preachers, abusive shepherds, slick predators, self-centered interests, jealous brethren, bad ideas, bad budgets, bad deals, bad advice, temper tantrums, stubborn traditions, low self-esteem, high pride, and mutant cell groups.
All the antagonistic cultures, governments, and organized insanities aligned against the church for the last two millennium have not caused as much damage as we have inflicted on ourselves.
None of our enemies have been as cruel or as effective as the enemy within. Nothing has injured our Body as badly as the Body itself. We suffer from a spiritual auto-immune disease inherent among fallen sinners. And it hurts.
I suppose this tragic phenomenon should not surprise us since it haunts every organization on the planet.
Every nation in the history of the world is history, save those present and accounted for. And only time separates us from history. And to some degree, the fall of every nation is related to its self-destructive tendencies. Consider Babylon. Greece. Rome and its once proud empire. The Turks. The Commonwealth. All gone because of internal decay and strife.
Same principles are alive and destructive in the corporate world. Anyone remember the Enron of the 90s?
I read with great interest an article in World Magazine about current reforms underway at the Pentagon. Unfortunately, our national security is being jeopardized by “management inertia, infighting, and power struggles.” Our defense system has turned against itself!
The list of illustrations appear endless. Self-destruction surrounds us. From organisms to organizations, nothing is immune from internal attack.
Can it be prevented? I think so, but only by supernatural intervention. Humans, and their creations, left to themselves, grow cannibalistic, and eat both their young and old. But if we can somehow permit God to enter the equation, we can stop the self-destruction. God wants to protect us from ourselves.
The church can be alive and well if we allow Jesus to be the Head of the Body. That means we surrender everything to Him, live in the power and peace of the Holy Spirit, and refuse to abuse our own. “Love,” says the apostle, “never fails.”