Foreign Interference

This week, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians dropped a bombshell on the Canadian government. What started in September 2023 as a hunt for foreign interference with our electoral process has yielded much more. There is suggestion of widespread foreign interference in the Canadian government, including the finding that sitting Members of Parliament are colluding with foreign actors.  Suddenly, denials are published; accusations of “traitors in our midst” are thrown around; and stoic silence becomes a favorite defense. To imagine that other countries have backdoor influence over those in the highest offices in our country is a disturbing thought.  But why? After all, cross-border influences are quite common. Almost every room in my home has a product from China; we define our economies by the amount of goods and services we can put in the hands of other countries. On the darker side, terrorist organizations have been recruiting young people from the western world for years; most of our computer viruses come from outside Canada; numerous governments have interfered with Israel’s hunt for Hamas by declaring Israel criminal for their war in Palestine; and Canada has just declared an official wing of the Iranian military a terrorist organization. We think very little of these “foreign interferences”.  But when foreign powers actively try to shape the way we govern ourselves for their own advantage, we take note.

As I puzzled over this, my mind went to another interference that we have been warned about in Scripture.  It is the philosophies of this age influencing the mind of the believer.  Paul tells us in Romans12:1 not to let our minds be shaped into its mold.  John warns, “Don’t love the world, or anything that is in the world.” (1 John 2:15).  To John, the principle of love is not the emotionality that makes people sway to a piece of music.  It is to let one’s heart, mind and behaviour be determined by the object of love.  It would not be harsh to say that the world has been allowed to seep into the minds of believers, and many in fact have opened the floodgates to such influence by what we read, who we listen to and how much time we spend in it.  Then we read the warning of “foreign interference” in Paul’s address to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20.  “Ravenous wolves will make their way among you, devouring many.” Jude 4 tells us that these have “crept in unnoticed among you, causing divisions”.  Peter sounds the same warning in 2 Peter 2:1 to tell us that false teachers will come in among us, so that the way of the truth may be distrusted.  As we think on these things, we realize that what is foreign to the ways of Christ must never be given any influence in our lives.  What seems harmless today becomes poison tomorrow.  What seems innocuous to us wounds our children who watch us.  What we are able to hold back when we are spiritually strong becomes a weapon unleashed within us when we are spiritually weak.  Beware of spiritually foreign influences.  Cling to Christ.  That is the definition of “faith”.  And let “the things of this world grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.”