Subscribe to Kingdom Code
<100 subscribers
Subscribe to Kingdom Code
<100 subscribers
There’s a scene that plays out in countless American churches every Sunday, though you’ll never see it written in a bulletin.
A teenager mentions he’s learning game development. An elder smiles—that knowing, condescending smile—and says: “That’s nice, but when are you going to do something that really matters for the Kingdom?”
A young woman talks about pursuing film school. Her small group leader gently redirects: “Have you considered missions instead? This world is passing away. Why invest in temporary things?”
A programmer mentions he’s building educational software. A pastor pats his shoulder: “Just remember, technology is a tool of the enemy. Don’t let it pull you away from what’s eternal.”
This is the sound of surrender disguised as wisdom.
Across ten thousand Sunday school rooms, youth groups, and pulpit sermons, an entire generation of Kingdom-gifted creators, builders, and innovators has been taught a single, devastating doctrine:
The material world doesn’t matter. Culture is a distraction. Technology is dangerous. True spirituality means withdrawal.
And while the Church retreated to its prayer closets, Babylon took everything.
Every movie studio. Every gaming company. Every social media platform. Every AI model. Every lever of cultural formation was handed over without a fight, and the Church called it “staying pure.”
This isn’t biblical Christianity. This is strategic catastrophe dressed up as piety—and it’s time to name it for what it is.
The retreat didn’t start with good intentions. It started with a theological virus that the early Church spent centuries trying to kill—and somehow, it survived.
In the first and second centuries, a heresy called Gnosticism swept through Christian communities. Its central claim was simple and seductive:
The material world is evil. Physical matter was created by an evil demiurge, not the true God. Salvation means escaping creation, not redeeming it.
The Church Fathers fought this viciously. They understood what was at stake. If creation itself is corrupt, then:
The Incarnation is impossible (God couldn’t take on evil flesh)
The Resurrection is meaningless (why redeem a body you’re trying to escape?)
The Dominion Mandate is invalidated (why steward what’s inherently corrupt?)
Christian engagement with the world becomes contamination rather than mission
The early Church rejected this utterly. They affirmed that God created the world good (Genesis 1:31), that Jesus took on actual flesh (John 1:14), that the final vision isn’t disembodied souls floating in clouds but a New Jerusalem descending to a New Earth (Revelation 21:1-2).
Physical. Material. Restored creation.
The Church won that battle. Or so we thought.
But Gnosticism is a virus, not an army. You can’t kill it—you can only drive it underground, where it mutates and finds new hosts.
And somehow, through a thousand subtle channels—medieval asceticism, revivalist pietism, dispensational escapism—the same poison seeped back into modern evangelicalism:
“This world is not our home” (true, but weaponized to mean “abandon it”)
“Don’t love the world” (1 John 2:15’s kosmos as system of rebellion conflated with physical creation itself)
“Set your mind on things above” (Colossians 3:2 twisted into justification for checking out of earthly engagement)
“We’re just passing through” (turned into a license for cultural surrender)
The result? A Church that treats creation like a sinking ship instead of occupied territory. A Christianity that’s more interested in evacuation than invasion.
This is Gnostic dualism wearing a Jesus fish bumper sticker.
And it’s killing us.
Let me be precise about what broke.
The doctrine of heaven isn’t the problem. The misapplication of heaven—the idea that Earth is disposable and our job is just to hold out until the evacuation—is the problem.
For millions of American evangelicals, eschatology (the study of end times) has been dominated by one narrative: pretribulational dispensationalism. The idea, popularized by the Left Behind series and countless prophecy conferences, goes like this:
The world is getting worse and will continue getting worse
Christians will be “raptured” (removed from Earth) before the really bad stuff happens
Then tribulation, then Jesus returns, then finally Kingdom restoration
Therefore: our job is to evacuate as many people as possible before the ship goes down
This sounds spiritual. It feels urgent. And it’s strategically catastrophic.
Because if you genuinely believe Earth is a lost cause and evacuation is imminent, why would you:
Build institutions that last generations?
Create art meant to endure?
Develop technology for long-term human flourishing?
Contest Babylon’s capture of media, education, and government?
You wouldn’t. You’d do exactly what the Church has done: retreat into maintenance mode, manage decline, and wait for the airlift.
While Christians waited for the rapture:
Hollywood became a propaganda mill for moral relativism, perversion normalized, rebellion glorified
Academia became a factory for ideological conformity, truth subordinated to power
Big Tech became a surveillance and behavior modification infrastructure
Gaming became a $200 billion industry encoding worldviews into the next generation’s consciousness
Government became an ever-expanding Leviathan reshaping reality itself
And the Church called it “prophecy being fulfilled.”
No. This wasn’t prophecy. This was desertion.
We didn’t lose the culture war because Babylon was stronger. We lost because we forfeited the battlefield and convinced ourselves it was God’s will.
Let’s go back. Before the retreat. Before the contamination. Before we decided Earth was disposable.
“God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’”
— Genesis 1:28
This is the first command given to humanity. Not “survive until extraction.” Not “avoid contamination.” Subdue. Rule. Steward.
The Hebrew word kabash (subdue) means to bring under control, to make something serve its intended purpose. It’s active cultivation, not passive waiting.
Adam wasn’t placed in Eden to avoid it—he was told to “work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15). Cultivate and guard. Create and protect. Build and steward.
This applies to everything:
Agriculture: Transforming wild land into productive fields
Technology: Forging tools, discovering principles, harnessing creation’s potential
Architecture: Building cities, structures, infrastructure
Art: Creating music, stories, visual beauty reflecting God’s creative nature
Media: Using communication to spread truth across time and space
None of this is worldly distraction. All of this is mandate.
When sin corrupted creation, God’s response wasn’t to abandon it. His response was invasion.
The Incarnation—God taking on flesh, entering the material world, walking on the dirt He created—is the ultimate refutation of Gnostic escapism. If physical matter were inherently evil, the Incarnation would be impossible. Jesus would be contaminated the moment He took on a body.
But instead:
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”
— John 1:14
God dignified matter by inhabiting it. He dignified creation by redeeming it from within, not by evacuating the righteous and letting the rest burn.
And His final vision? Not souls floating in ethereal bliss, but:
“Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away... I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.”
— Revelation 21:1-2
Coming down. To earth.
Physical. Material. Creation restored, not discarded.
If the end goal is redeemed creation, then our mission now is anticipating that restoration—taking what’s corrupted and purifying it, taking what’s broken and reforging it, taking what’s been captured and liberating it.
We’re not escaping the world. We’re preparing it for the King’s return.
Here’s what the enemy understood that the Church forgot:
Whoever tells the stories controls the worldview. Whoever builds the tools shapes the culture.
Babylon doesn’t fear your prayer meetings. Babylon doesn’t fear your Bible studies. Babylon fears Christians who:
Build technology that serves human flourishing instead of addiction
Create art that points beyond itself to transcendent meaning
Tell stories that encode truth instead of lies
Construct institutions that last generations
Make stories that wrestle with moral complexity instead of normalizing nihilism
That Christian is dangerous.
So Babylon spent centuries whispering a lie the Church was already primed to believe:
“The really spiritual thing is to withdraw. Stay pure. Don’t touch the world—it’ll contaminate you. Let the pagans have their art, their media, their technology. You focus on saving souls.”
And the Church, infected with Gnostic escapism and rapture imminence, believed it.
Every domain Christians abandoned, Babylon claimed:
Film: Once a medium Christians pioneered, now a propaganda delivery system for every inversion imaginable—rebellion as virtue, authority as tyranny, traditional family as oppression, perversion as liberation.
Music: From tools of worship to tools of demoralization—lyrics glorifying violence, hedonism, nihilism, played on repeat until they become the internal soundtrack of a generation.
Gaming: A $200+ billion industry that delivers hundreds of hours of interactive worldview formation per title, encoding moral frameworks into decision-making loops—and Christians dismissed it as “just games.”
Technology: The tools reshaping human consciousness itself—social media algorithms, AI models, VR environments—built almost entirely by people who view Christianity as the enemy of progress.
Education: The institutions forming the next generation’s understanding of reality, history, morality, meaning—captured top to bottom by ideologies explicitly hostile to Kingdom truth.
And Christians sat in their prayer closets congratulating themselves for staying “separate.”
Here’s the test question that exposes the absurdity of Christian technophobia:
Is a hammer sinful?
No. Obviously not. It’s a tool. You can:
Build a church with it
Build a brothel with it
Crush someone’s skull with it
Hang a picture of your family with it
The hammer has no moral agency. The person wielding it does.
Now apply this to every technology Christians are told to fear:
The printing press: Published the Gutenberg Bible. Also published Mein Kampf.
Film: Made The Passion of the Christ. Also made pornography.
The internet: Spreads the Gospel to closed nations. Also spreads every imaginable perversion.
Social media: Connects isolated believers. Also weaponizes envy and breeds demoralization.
Video games: Can tell redemptive stories and explore moral complexity. Can also normalize occultism and brutality.
Every tool can be wielded for Kingdom purposes or Babylonian purposes.
The question isn’t “Should Christians use this tool?”
The question is: “Will Christians be among those shaping how this tool is used, or will we cede that territory entirely to Babylon?”
“’I have the right to do anything,’ you say—but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’—but not everything is constructive.”
— 1 Corinthians 10:23
Paul doesn’t say “technology is inherently evil.” He says: Use discernment. Does this build up or tear down? Does this serve the Kingdom or serve the flesh?
If movies or technology have become an idol that consumes your time and energy—repent and reorder priorities.
But that doesn’t mean movies themselves are evil any more than food is evil because gluttony exists.
The corruption of a thing doesn’t negate its proper use.
The doctrine is simple: Every domain Babylon has captured must be contested.
Not abandoned. Not avoided. Contested.
Don’t just critique Babylonian systems—build replacements:
If gaming journalism is captured by access-driven propaganda, build independent review platforms
If major studios are ideologically compromised, support or create independent studios
If distribution platforms censor, fund alternatives or build new infrastructure
If consultancy firms corrupt narratives, form Kingdom-aligned groups that help studios tell true stories
Parallel infrastructure is how you survive siege.
The early Church didn’t just complain about Roman persecution. They built alternative systems: hospitals when the Empire left plague victims to die, schools when education was reserved for elites, mutual aid networks when the poor were disposable, manuscript preservation when knowledge was at risk.
They built a civilization within a civilization.
Do the same with media, technology, and culture.
Paul was a tentmaker. Jesus was a carpenter. David was a musician and poet. Bezalel was a craftsman specifically filled with the Spirit to create beautiful things for the Tabernacle (Exodus 31:1-5).
God gifts people with creative and technical abilities for Kingdom purposes.
If you’re gifted in:
Game design: Make games that encode truth—not heavy-handed propaganda, but stories that operate on Kingdom principles
Music composition: Write music that elevates rather than degrades, that stirs the soul toward transcendence
Visual art: Create beauty that points beyond itself
Writing: Document inversion, articulate counter-vision, tell better stories
Programming: Build tools that serve human flourishing instead of addiction and control
Film: Tell stories that wrestle with real moral complexity instead of easy answers
Babylon’s media encode specific ideologies:
Might makes right
Moral relativism (there are no transcendent standards)
Rebellion against authority is always justified
Power is its own justification
There is no meaning beyond what you construct
Kingdom-aligned media should encode different truths:
Actions have consequences that ripple through systems
Sacrifice can be redemptive
Authority can be righteous or tyrannical—discernment matters
Power without purpose is destruction
Meaning is discovered, not invented
You don’t need to make “Christian stories” with altar calls and Bible verses in every dialogue box. You make good stories that operate on true principles.
RESPONSE: Separate from the system of rebellion (kosmos), not from physical creation or cultural engagement.
Jesus prayed: “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one” (John 17:15).
In the world. Not of it. But IN it.
Separation means you don’t adopt Babylon’s values. It doesn’t mean you abandon every domain Babylon has touched. By that logic, you couldn’t use money (Babylon uses it), language (Babylon speaks it), or roads (Babylon built them).
Separation is a matter of allegiance, not location.
RESPONSE: Because God does.
He didn’t abandon creation after the Fall. He entered it. Walked in it. Died for it. And is restoring it.
If God Himself invested in the material world to the point of Incarnation and Crucifixion, maybe it’s not as disposable as your escapist theology suggests.
Your work won’t all survive into eternity—wood, hay, stubble will burn (1 Corinthians 3:12-15). But your faithfulness in stewarding creation will be tested and rewarded. Build with gold, silver, precious stones—create things of quality and truth—and whatever survives the fire is Kingdom contribution.
Even temporary faithfulness has eternal weight.
RESPONSE: False dichotomy.
The Great Commission says “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). A disciple isn’t just someone who prayed a prayer—it’s someone whose entire life is being transformed to reflect Kingdom reality.
You can’t disciple nations without engaging their cultures.
How do you make disciples in a world where every movie normalizes rebellion, every game encodes nihilism, every song glorifies hedonism, and every algorithm is designed to addict and demoralize?
You contest those systems. You create alternatives. You demonstrate that Kingdom life produces better art, better stories, better technology, better culture.
Cultural engagement IS evangelism. It’s pre-evangelism (clearing the ground so truth can be heard) and post-evangelism (showing what Kingdom life actually looks like when embodied).
Jesus said something that should have ended the retreat forever:
“I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
— Matthew 16:18
Gates are defensive structures.
Hell is on defense. The Kingdom is on offense.
We’re not supposed to be huddled inside the castle waiting for rescue. We’re supposed to be storming every gate Babylon has erected:
Media gates
Technology gates
Education gates
Entertainment gates
Art gates
Science gates
Government gates
Every domain where truth has been inverted, beauty corrupted, goodness redefined—that’s a gate to storm.
Not with violence. Not with political power grabs. But with:
Better stories
Better art
Better technology
Better institutions
Better culture
Demonstrating that Kingdom life produces superior fruit.
The Great Retreat is over.
It failed. Spectacularly. We handed Babylon every cultural lever, every storytelling medium, every tool of formation—and called it holiness.
No more.
The earth is the Lord’s (Psalm 24:1). Every domain of creation belongs to Him. We’re not escaping it—we’re reclaiming it in His name, one contested inch at a time.
To every Christian told that their gifts don’t matter:
Your game design matters.
Your filmmaking matters.
Your music matters.
Your programming matters.
Your writing matters.
You’re not wasting time on “worldly things.” You’re fulfilling the Dominion Mandate. You’re imaging the Creator. You’re contesting occupied territory.
You’re doing exactly what you were made to do.
Build. Create. Contest. Reclaim.
Make the enemy regret they ever thought you’d stay in the prayer closet.
The King is returning to a restored creation. Our job is to prepare it—not by evacuating the faithful, but by transforming the territory so that when He arrives, He finds His people not hiding, but reigning.
Now go build something that makes Babylon nervous.
There’s a scene that plays out in countless American churches every Sunday, though you’ll never see it written in a bulletin.
A teenager mentions he’s learning game development. An elder smiles—that knowing, condescending smile—and says: “That’s nice, but when are you going to do something that really matters for the Kingdom?”
A young woman talks about pursuing film school. Her small group leader gently redirects: “Have you considered missions instead? This world is passing away. Why invest in temporary things?”
A programmer mentions he’s building educational software. A pastor pats his shoulder: “Just remember, technology is a tool of the enemy. Don’t let it pull you away from what’s eternal.”
This is the sound of surrender disguised as wisdom.
Across ten thousand Sunday school rooms, youth groups, and pulpit sermons, an entire generation of Kingdom-gifted creators, builders, and innovators has been taught a single, devastating doctrine:
The material world doesn’t matter. Culture is a distraction. Technology is dangerous. True spirituality means withdrawal.
And while the Church retreated to its prayer closets, Babylon took everything.
Every movie studio. Every gaming company. Every social media platform. Every AI model. Every lever of cultural formation was handed over without a fight, and the Church called it “staying pure.”
This isn’t biblical Christianity. This is strategic catastrophe dressed up as piety—and it’s time to name it for what it is.
The retreat didn’t start with good intentions. It started with a theological virus that the early Church spent centuries trying to kill—and somehow, it survived.
In the first and second centuries, a heresy called Gnosticism swept through Christian communities. Its central claim was simple and seductive:
The material world is evil. Physical matter was created by an evil demiurge, not the true God. Salvation means escaping creation, not redeeming it.
The Church Fathers fought this viciously. They understood what was at stake. If creation itself is corrupt, then:
The Incarnation is impossible (God couldn’t take on evil flesh)
The Resurrection is meaningless (why redeem a body you’re trying to escape?)
The Dominion Mandate is invalidated (why steward what’s inherently corrupt?)
Christian engagement with the world becomes contamination rather than mission
The early Church rejected this utterly. They affirmed that God created the world good (Genesis 1:31), that Jesus took on actual flesh (John 1:14), that the final vision isn’t disembodied souls floating in clouds but a New Jerusalem descending to a New Earth (Revelation 21:1-2).
Physical. Material. Restored creation.
The Church won that battle. Or so we thought.
But Gnosticism is a virus, not an army. You can’t kill it—you can only drive it underground, where it mutates and finds new hosts.
And somehow, through a thousand subtle channels—medieval asceticism, revivalist pietism, dispensational escapism—the same poison seeped back into modern evangelicalism:
“This world is not our home” (true, but weaponized to mean “abandon it”)
“Don’t love the world” (1 John 2:15’s kosmos as system of rebellion conflated with physical creation itself)
“Set your mind on things above” (Colossians 3:2 twisted into justification for checking out of earthly engagement)
“We’re just passing through” (turned into a license for cultural surrender)
The result? A Church that treats creation like a sinking ship instead of occupied territory. A Christianity that’s more interested in evacuation than invasion.
This is Gnostic dualism wearing a Jesus fish bumper sticker.
And it’s killing us.
Let me be precise about what broke.
The doctrine of heaven isn’t the problem. The misapplication of heaven—the idea that Earth is disposable and our job is just to hold out until the evacuation—is the problem.
For millions of American evangelicals, eschatology (the study of end times) has been dominated by one narrative: pretribulational dispensationalism. The idea, popularized by the Left Behind series and countless prophecy conferences, goes like this:
The world is getting worse and will continue getting worse
Christians will be “raptured” (removed from Earth) before the really bad stuff happens
Then tribulation, then Jesus returns, then finally Kingdom restoration
Therefore: our job is to evacuate as many people as possible before the ship goes down
This sounds spiritual. It feels urgent. And it’s strategically catastrophic.
Because if you genuinely believe Earth is a lost cause and evacuation is imminent, why would you:
Build institutions that last generations?
Create art meant to endure?
Develop technology for long-term human flourishing?
Contest Babylon’s capture of media, education, and government?
You wouldn’t. You’d do exactly what the Church has done: retreat into maintenance mode, manage decline, and wait for the airlift.
While Christians waited for the rapture:
Hollywood became a propaganda mill for moral relativism, perversion normalized, rebellion glorified
Academia became a factory for ideological conformity, truth subordinated to power
Big Tech became a surveillance and behavior modification infrastructure
Gaming became a $200 billion industry encoding worldviews into the next generation’s consciousness
Government became an ever-expanding Leviathan reshaping reality itself
And the Church called it “prophecy being fulfilled.”
No. This wasn’t prophecy. This was desertion.
We didn’t lose the culture war because Babylon was stronger. We lost because we forfeited the battlefield and convinced ourselves it was God’s will.
Let’s go back. Before the retreat. Before the contamination. Before we decided Earth was disposable.
“God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’”
— Genesis 1:28
This is the first command given to humanity. Not “survive until extraction.” Not “avoid contamination.” Subdue. Rule. Steward.
The Hebrew word kabash (subdue) means to bring under control, to make something serve its intended purpose. It’s active cultivation, not passive waiting.
Adam wasn’t placed in Eden to avoid it—he was told to “work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15). Cultivate and guard. Create and protect. Build and steward.
This applies to everything:
Agriculture: Transforming wild land into productive fields
Technology: Forging tools, discovering principles, harnessing creation’s potential
Architecture: Building cities, structures, infrastructure
Art: Creating music, stories, visual beauty reflecting God’s creative nature
Media: Using communication to spread truth across time and space
None of this is worldly distraction. All of this is mandate.
When sin corrupted creation, God’s response wasn’t to abandon it. His response was invasion.
The Incarnation—God taking on flesh, entering the material world, walking on the dirt He created—is the ultimate refutation of Gnostic escapism. If physical matter were inherently evil, the Incarnation would be impossible. Jesus would be contaminated the moment He took on a body.
But instead:
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”
— John 1:14
God dignified matter by inhabiting it. He dignified creation by redeeming it from within, not by evacuating the righteous and letting the rest burn.
And His final vision? Not souls floating in ethereal bliss, but:
“Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away... I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.”
— Revelation 21:1-2
Coming down. To earth.
Physical. Material. Creation restored, not discarded.
If the end goal is redeemed creation, then our mission now is anticipating that restoration—taking what’s corrupted and purifying it, taking what’s broken and reforging it, taking what’s been captured and liberating it.
We’re not escaping the world. We’re preparing it for the King’s return.
Here’s what the enemy understood that the Church forgot:
Whoever tells the stories controls the worldview. Whoever builds the tools shapes the culture.
Babylon doesn’t fear your prayer meetings. Babylon doesn’t fear your Bible studies. Babylon fears Christians who:
Build technology that serves human flourishing instead of addiction
Create art that points beyond itself to transcendent meaning
Tell stories that encode truth instead of lies
Construct institutions that last generations
Make stories that wrestle with moral complexity instead of normalizing nihilism
That Christian is dangerous.
So Babylon spent centuries whispering a lie the Church was already primed to believe:
“The really spiritual thing is to withdraw. Stay pure. Don’t touch the world—it’ll contaminate you. Let the pagans have their art, their media, their technology. You focus on saving souls.”
And the Church, infected with Gnostic escapism and rapture imminence, believed it.
Every domain Christians abandoned, Babylon claimed:
Film: Once a medium Christians pioneered, now a propaganda delivery system for every inversion imaginable—rebellion as virtue, authority as tyranny, traditional family as oppression, perversion as liberation.
Music: From tools of worship to tools of demoralization—lyrics glorifying violence, hedonism, nihilism, played on repeat until they become the internal soundtrack of a generation.
Gaming: A $200+ billion industry that delivers hundreds of hours of interactive worldview formation per title, encoding moral frameworks into decision-making loops—and Christians dismissed it as “just games.”
Technology: The tools reshaping human consciousness itself—social media algorithms, AI models, VR environments—built almost entirely by people who view Christianity as the enemy of progress.
Education: The institutions forming the next generation’s understanding of reality, history, morality, meaning—captured top to bottom by ideologies explicitly hostile to Kingdom truth.
And Christians sat in their prayer closets congratulating themselves for staying “separate.”
Here’s the test question that exposes the absurdity of Christian technophobia:
Is a hammer sinful?
No. Obviously not. It’s a tool. You can:
Build a church with it
Build a brothel with it
Crush someone’s skull with it
Hang a picture of your family with it
The hammer has no moral agency. The person wielding it does.
Now apply this to every technology Christians are told to fear:
The printing press: Published the Gutenberg Bible. Also published Mein Kampf.
Film: Made The Passion of the Christ. Also made pornography.
The internet: Spreads the Gospel to closed nations. Also spreads every imaginable perversion.
Social media: Connects isolated believers. Also weaponizes envy and breeds demoralization.
Video games: Can tell redemptive stories and explore moral complexity. Can also normalize occultism and brutality.
Every tool can be wielded for Kingdom purposes or Babylonian purposes.
The question isn’t “Should Christians use this tool?”
The question is: “Will Christians be among those shaping how this tool is used, or will we cede that territory entirely to Babylon?”
“’I have the right to do anything,’ you say—but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’—but not everything is constructive.”
— 1 Corinthians 10:23
Paul doesn’t say “technology is inherently evil.” He says: Use discernment. Does this build up or tear down? Does this serve the Kingdom or serve the flesh?
If movies or technology have become an idol that consumes your time and energy—repent and reorder priorities.
But that doesn’t mean movies themselves are evil any more than food is evil because gluttony exists.
The corruption of a thing doesn’t negate its proper use.
The doctrine is simple: Every domain Babylon has captured must be contested.
Not abandoned. Not avoided. Contested.
Don’t just critique Babylonian systems—build replacements:
If gaming journalism is captured by access-driven propaganda, build independent review platforms
If major studios are ideologically compromised, support or create independent studios
If distribution platforms censor, fund alternatives or build new infrastructure
If consultancy firms corrupt narratives, form Kingdom-aligned groups that help studios tell true stories
Parallel infrastructure is how you survive siege.
The early Church didn’t just complain about Roman persecution. They built alternative systems: hospitals when the Empire left plague victims to die, schools when education was reserved for elites, mutual aid networks when the poor were disposable, manuscript preservation when knowledge was at risk.
They built a civilization within a civilization.
Do the same with media, technology, and culture.
Paul was a tentmaker. Jesus was a carpenter. David was a musician and poet. Bezalel was a craftsman specifically filled with the Spirit to create beautiful things for the Tabernacle (Exodus 31:1-5).
God gifts people with creative and technical abilities for Kingdom purposes.
If you’re gifted in:
Game design: Make games that encode truth—not heavy-handed propaganda, but stories that operate on Kingdom principles
Music composition: Write music that elevates rather than degrades, that stirs the soul toward transcendence
Visual art: Create beauty that points beyond itself
Writing: Document inversion, articulate counter-vision, tell better stories
Programming: Build tools that serve human flourishing instead of addiction and control
Film: Tell stories that wrestle with real moral complexity instead of easy answers
Babylon’s media encode specific ideologies:
Might makes right
Moral relativism (there are no transcendent standards)
Rebellion against authority is always justified
Power is its own justification
There is no meaning beyond what you construct
Kingdom-aligned media should encode different truths:
Actions have consequences that ripple through systems
Sacrifice can be redemptive
Authority can be righteous or tyrannical—discernment matters
Power without purpose is destruction
Meaning is discovered, not invented
You don’t need to make “Christian stories” with altar calls and Bible verses in every dialogue box. You make good stories that operate on true principles.
RESPONSE: Separate from the system of rebellion (kosmos), not from physical creation or cultural engagement.
Jesus prayed: “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one” (John 17:15).
In the world. Not of it. But IN it.
Separation means you don’t adopt Babylon’s values. It doesn’t mean you abandon every domain Babylon has touched. By that logic, you couldn’t use money (Babylon uses it), language (Babylon speaks it), or roads (Babylon built them).
Separation is a matter of allegiance, not location.
RESPONSE: Because God does.
He didn’t abandon creation after the Fall. He entered it. Walked in it. Died for it. And is restoring it.
If God Himself invested in the material world to the point of Incarnation and Crucifixion, maybe it’s not as disposable as your escapist theology suggests.
Your work won’t all survive into eternity—wood, hay, stubble will burn (1 Corinthians 3:12-15). But your faithfulness in stewarding creation will be tested and rewarded. Build with gold, silver, precious stones—create things of quality and truth—and whatever survives the fire is Kingdom contribution.
Even temporary faithfulness has eternal weight.
RESPONSE: False dichotomy.
The Great Commission says “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). A disciple isn’t just someone who prayed a prayer—it’s someone whose entire life is being transformed to reflect Kingdom reality.
You can’t disciple nations without engaging their cultures.
How do you make disciples in a world where every movie normalizes rebellion, every game encodes nihilism, every song glorifies hedonism, and every algorithm is designed to addict and demoralize?
You contest those systems. You create alternatives. You demonstrate that Kingdom life produces better art, better stories, better technology, better culture.
Cultural engagement IS evangelism. It’s pre-evangelism (clearing the ground so truth can be heard) and post-evangelism (showing what Kingdom life actually looks like when embodied).
Jesus said something that should have ended the retreat forever:
“I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
— Matthew 16:18
Gates are defensive structures.
Hell is on defense. The Kingdom is on offense.
We’re not supposed to be huddled inside the castle waiting for rescue. We’re supposed to be storming every gate Babylon has erected:
Media gates
Technology gates
Education gates
Entertainment gates
Art gates
Science gates
Government gates
Every domain where truth has been inverted, beauty corrupted, goodness redefined—that’s a gate to storm.
Not with violence. Not with political power grabs. But with:
Better stories
Better art
Better technology
Better institutions
Better culture
Demonstrating that Kingdom life produces superior fruit.
The Great Retreat is over.
It failed. Spectacularly. We handed Babylon every cultural lever, every storytelling medium, every tool of formation—and called it holiness.
No more.
The earth is the Lord’s (Psalm 24:1). Every domain of creation belongs to Him. We’re not escaping it—we’re reclaiming it in His name, one contested inch at a time.
To every Christian told that their gifts don’t matter:
Your game design matters.
Your filmmaking matters.
Your music matters.
Your programming matters.
Your writing matters.
You’re not wasting time on “worldly things.” You’re fulfilling the Dominion Mandate. You’re imaging the Creator. You’re contesting occupied territory.
You’re doing exactly what you were made to do.
Build. Create. Contest. Reclaim.
Make the enemy regret they ever thought you’d stay in the prayer closet.
The King is returning to a restored creation. Our job is to prepare it—not by evacuating the faithful, but by transforming the territory so that when He arrives, He finds His people not hiding, but reigning.
Now go build something that makes Babylon nervous.
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
No comments yet