Os Guinness — On the Subversion of the Modern Church

Key insights from Os Guinness’s The Gravedigger File: Papers on the Subversion of the Modern Church

The author, Os Guinness, wrote The Gravedigger File: Letters on the Subversion of the Modern Church, in the style of C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letter.

Using satire, the author gave an expose of top secret correspondences between active “on the field devils” and their headquarters office, The Directorate.

Written in 1983, the author presents many of the philosophies and ideas employed to subvert the modern Church by its adversaries.

In The Screwtape Letters, the primary goal of the devil is to subvert and ensure the individual Christian derails from his calling and heavenward quest.

In The Gravedigger File, the devil’s (and his agents’) goal is to subvert the the American and ultimately, the entire Church wherever it is found.

Most of the book focused on the challenges and hindrances confronting the Church in our times. While the devil, Screwtape, targets a single Christian at a time, The Gravedigger and his agents subvert the Church by working directly from within it.

This they do through secularization, privatization, and pluralization. With these, The Director (and his agents) aims to create a world that completely dispenses with the Christian world-view.

The author did a great job of intimating the reader on the “behind-the-scenes” exchanges. It ironically seems to give the impression that the Church has been cornered into a no-escape, and permanently irrelevant position.

Not so.

In the last section, the author challenged Christians and the Church to return to the faith and ground their feet on the unchanging truth of God’s word.

Written 40 years ago, many of Guinness’s prophecies and predictions have and are still coming true in our time. The illustrations in the book are interestingly poignant.

The insightful lessons provide some blueprints for Christians who are keen on interacting with the world without becoming one with it.

Favorite Quotes and Insights

1. Most Christians, as a current jibe runs, would rather die than think
2. The underlying strategy of Operation Gravedigger is as stark in its simplicity as it is devastating in its results. It may be stated like this: Christianity contributed to the rise of the modern world; the modern world, in turn, has undermined Christianity; Christianity has become its own gravedigger.
3. The more the church becomes one with the modern world, the more it becomes compromised, and the deeper the grave it digs for itself.
4. 10–80–10 Strategy: The author describes this as the Gravediggers (and the Directorate’s) master strategy to (1)win over 10% of the church to be a counter-elite on the devil’s side, (2)reduce 80% of the church to a state of passive acceptance (either cowed or complacent), while (3)disregarding the active resistance of the remaining 10% of the church who are not unaware of the devil’s devices.
5. Lessons from Samson’s Fall: “A person’s or group’s strong point often becomes an unguarded point. Also, a person’s true strengths are not only likely to be left exposed; they can easily be turned inside out and made into real weaknesses.”

Samson could become prodigal only because his strength was prodigious. When his gifts became his master, they were the key to his undoing.

Now listen to how the devil present many of his insidious strategies to infernal crew,

Our long-term objective was clear: to work out the best way to turn the church’s strengths into weaknesses and turn their enormous advantage into a disadvantage.

For instance, if their desire to witness leads to cultural involvement, cultural involvement leads in turn to the danger of worldliness. The price of contact would be contamination.

In the word of The Gravedigger, “Most Christians have no trouble seeing themselves as “believers.” They may be vague about what they believe and vaguer still about why they believe, but they believe.”

Do you know what you believe, or you’re just following the multitude?

For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. (2 Peter 1:16 NKJV)

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