Posted on 06/03/2004 11:20:45 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Some weeks ago I spoke to a gathering of pastors about engaging the cultural battles of the day. Afterward, the pastors had a lot of questions—but they were also a bit confused. One asked: “But won’t engaging the culture this way interfere with fulfilling the Great Commission? Isn’t this our job—to win people to Christ?”
That people still think this way left me momentarily speechless. “Of course we’re called to fulfill the Great Commission,” I replied. “But we’re also called to fulfill the cultural commission.” Christians are agents of God’s saving grace—bringing others to Christ, I explained. But we are also agents of His common grace: We’re to sustain and renew His creation, defend the created institutions of family and society, and critique false worldviews.
As I spoke, I saw the pastors’ eyes light up in a great “Aha!” moment.
This is a matter on which the Scriptures are very clear. In Genesis, we’re told that for five days, God created the universe. On the sixth day, He created human beings—and ordered them to pick up where He left off. They were to reflect His image and have dominion—but from then on, the development of the creation would be primarily social and cultural: It would be the work humans performed as they obeyed God’s command to fill and subdue the earth.
The same command binds Christians today. We bear children, plant crops, build cities, form governments, and create works of art. While sin corrupted God’s created order, it did not obliterate it. And when we are redeemed, we are both freed from sin and restored to do what God designed us to do: create culture.
Remember, every part of creation came from God’s hand, every part was drawn into the mutiny of humanity against God, and every part will someday be redeemed. This means we must care about all of life. In Colossians 1, Paul notes that “everything” was made by and for Christ, and that everything will be reconciled by Christ; it’s clear that Christians are saved not only from something (sin) but also to something (Christ’s lordship over all of life).
This is why Christians must never limit themselves to evangelism alone or to the “feel good” church. We must not stand by while our culture is hijacked by alien philosophies hostile to the created order. Look at the issues before us: gay “marriage”—an oxymoron which will undermine the family; the creation of life in man’s image, that is, cloning; abortion; and terrorism driven by religious extremists, to name just a few.
If Christians do not seize the moment and act on the cultural commission, there soon will be no culture left to save. But when we do our duty, we can change the world. Look at Christians like William Wilberforce, who spent most of his life fighting—and winning—the war against slavery in Britain.
We need to do the same thing. It means voting wisely, contending for truth, and helping redeem our neighbors and our neighborhood.
Yes, Christians must evangelize the world. But each of us must also work out our role in the common grace in our own lives, glorifying God by helping restore His creation. In so doing, we will bring the majesty of God and His righteousness to bear against the crumbling structures of a fallen society.
I'm saying let's consider what would be some contemporary and historical parallels to Luke 3:19-20. "But when Colofornian & Lost Highway rebuked Politician John Doe because of his embracement of same-sex marriage, and all the other evil things he had done (including infanticide--which is abortion, etc.) Politician Doe added this to them all: He locked lobbyists Colofornian & Lost Highway up in prison." (Revised Luke 3:19-20)
Or how about when 19th century Mormon politicians like Brigham Young (Gov of Utah Territory) was rebuked for embracing polygamy? This wasn't just a personal rebuke upon Young, but rather a political attempt to slam the door on an entire lifestyle that would contagiously spread and continue to infect coming generations!
I'm not maintaining that a Christian will never venture into politics. What I am maintaining is that there is no law that will win the culture war. A ban on abortion, while a good thing, will not win the culture war. What will is bringing people to Christ so that, hopefully, they wouldn't even consider such a thing.
Herod responded kind for kind. Herod's locking up of John was a political act. Herod was responding to a clear political threat of open lobbying. John didn't preach vs. what Herod was doing behind closed doors. He engaged in an open rebuke.
Are you trying to tell me that pastors & prophetic types go around "preaching" personal rebukes in open forums in the public square? Tell me who and when.
Hey, doesn't a person have to be alive in order to be "won to Christ?" (Hint: yes!)
Does abortion kill? (Hint: yes!)
Can people who have been aborted be "won to Christ?" (Hint: no!)
Do laws in any and all lands that protect people from murder help facilitate the Great Commission? (Hint: yes!)
Why do you think Paul writes to Timothy the following? "I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone--for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives..." (1 Tim. 2:2).
Paul knows that the gospel operates best in a context of a culture of peace. Or are you trying to tell me that it's best to wait for every country to endure a Rwanda event and then, perhaps, we can win them (at least the survivors, that is) to Christ?
Hey, I was a one-time staff member of a church directing evangelism and outreach, so I know where you're coming from...And let's face it, it has a biblical underpinning:
"They triumphed over him [the accuser] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony" (Rev. 12:11)
But Rev. 12:11 doesn't stop there. It adds, "they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death."
Why? Because the Body of Christ follows their leader, who did not love His life so much as to shrink from death--even death on a cross (Phil. 2:8). Jesus didn't rescue us spiritually from afar; He did bodily. He committed a social act of rescue by carrying a cross and then being nailed to it. And He expects us to pick up our own crosses on behalf of the "least of these."
Folks can say no laws will win the culture war. But so what? No single proclamation of the gospel will win the spiritual war or the kingdom wars afoot, either.
But ultimately, accumulatively, the Kingdom does advance by both word anddeed;
Don't hold the bar so high for other folks' worldview ("no law will win the culture war") and then think that a low bar of a smattering of testimonials is going to win the spiritual war.
Let us not forget the "batting averages" of the original apostles: Only one died a natural death (John).
Uh, and just how do you spin what Jesus did to the money changers? Walk in your own shadow and you will never see the light.
Why, uh, uh, uh, Jesus got to point (a) on His sermon notes (preaching the law), but the moneychangers ran away before they could hear point (b) (preaching the gospel). Yes, that's the ticket.
True. But don't reduce what Christ is doing through His people. He's doing more than just preach the gospel thru them.
We need to get back to the purpose & reason Christ came. What does John say that reason was in 1 John 3:9? "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work."
What was the devil's work? Sin, as manifested in countless ways. But let me define some of those ways: Abortion, homosexuality, lust, pornography, trafficking of people, gambling at the expense of the poor, etc. etc. etc. Are not acts of murder, abortion, etc. among the kingpins of Satan that Jesus came to destroy? (And are we only to fast-forward the halting of carnage to some rapturous moment?)
Now, true, Christ alone acts, but He is embodied now in a people (John 17:23; Acts 9:5; Eph. 2:19-22). He chooses to act both directly (Acts 9) and indirectly through His Body. Was all of the devilish destruction accomplished at the cross? Not according to John (John 14:12) or Paul (Col. 1:24,29).
Hey, if there's any reason the two books of the Corinthians exist in Scripture, it's to let us know that while a major transformation already took place in the lives of these folks (1 Cor. 6:9-11; 2 Cor. 5:17), they were far from injecting that inward transformation into their relationships (tolerating a man sleeping with his father's wife--1 Cor. 5:1).
Do you mean to say that "presto, upon conversion, all Christian male teens & young adults are thereby not bothered by easy access to porn since we've changed their hearts & minds & therefore why bother changing porn laws?"
Interesting the way our Lord chose His disciples. On the one hand, Simon le terroriste, as the French Bible calls him, an ultra-nationalist. OTOH, Philip, named after the dad of the dude who'd conquered Israel, bringing in hellenic ideals of beauty (and sodomy), and leaving the expression "apakorish" (epicurean) as a term of hebraic contempt that has endured to this day.
Obviously, God's plan for the world some kind of family life from the beginning and still does. I have a wife and son. But there is no indication what that pre-Fall family was supposed to be like in enough detail to pin Christian hopes on it -- precisely because the focus of biblical narrative is on creating a redemptive event EVEN WHILE WHILE FAMILIES WERE DOING WHAT THEY DO. Whatever families were supposed to be, God apparently felt the need to proceed on and redeem creation by additional means!!!!
The orders of creation are broken now and insufficient as agents of grace. Hence, a New Creation. Since we don't know what God intended the family to be like before the Fall in any detail, and clearly the family as an institution never accomplished anything like a "redemption", arguments that imply that God's plan to redeem culture is through the family are not biblical.
The truth is, christians talk about families changing their culture when their churches aren't changing their culture.
Tom Wright's work has demonstrated just how much Jesus' refusal to be a zealot got him in trouble. He may not have changed Simon's name to "ex-zealot" (I don't think he changed John's name to "ex-fisherman") but after they met Jesus John left his nets in the boat with his family -- and Simon was no longer a zealot.
The pattern, again, is beyond dispute: whatever you did as a "zealot" you stopped doing when you met Jesus. In every case.
I agree all the issues you list are important ones. They are addressed and solved by the Gospel.
There is no remedy for sin -- either its power or its guilt -- except a personal response to the redemptive work of Christ. One person at a time. Nothing else. To preach otherwise is not only futile, but heretical.
John called a Jewish ruler to obey the law. There are still prophets in the church, as well, whose office is to declare God's heart and mind out loud.
There is nothing wrong with christians speaking publicly and calling sin sin -- homosexuality, adultery, witchcraft, drugs, etc. But a christian who does not at the same time remember and say that you cannot find power to be free from sin except through Jesus is no longer speaking as a christian.
I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you.
And they died because of the "word of god and the testimony of Jesus." I suppose we are disagreeing about what that includes.
If a Christian is "bothered" by porn, what he needs is not a porn law. And a porn law will not address his sin problem.
Oh, I see. This is where we disagree. You actually think WE WIN THE CULTURE WAR. Whew.
Not only do I say no law will win the culture war, I say that the gospel will not win the culture war. The bible clearly teaches the course of human society will be from bad to worse, just as it was in the days of Noah. The condition of the world's culture at the end of time is described in Revelation: steeped in the occult, driven by commerce, guilty of the blood of the saints.
Draw a straight line between now and that portrait and you have the course of your future "culture war".
So, in summary, here is the rest of human history: Jesus won the spiritual war, for all who find Him. The church loses the culture war, and wins the spiritual war one person at a time. The culture kills more and more Christians. Jesus comes back, and the culture goes to hell. Then, there is new heaven and new earth.
How is that "culture war" working out for you, by the way?
Some of the Corinthians were bad christians. Paul, if you noticed, wasn't happy with them.
The level of zealousness didn't change; just the orientation of it--from misdirection to God-directed. Prior to Saul's conversion, he was zealous for the law and zealous for the traditions he felt he was protecting.
Post-conversion, he was just as zealous as ever--but now for Jesus Christ, the gospel, and the poor ("...I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles...All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do." Gal. 2:7,10)
Too many evangelicals would reduce Paul's newfound focus to be only Christ and the Gospel. Those are the types who would cite Gal. 2:7 while ignoring Gal. 2:10.
The level of zealousness is not the problem; actually, it reflects part of who God is. Paul told the Galatians that "It is fine to be zealous, provided the purpose is good..." (Gal. 4:18). Paul's purpose was good; only part of Saul's purposes were.
The church loses the culture war, and wins the spiritual war one person at a time. The culture kills more and more Christians. Jesus comes back, and the culture goes to hell.
While it's worth making some distinctions between the culture war and the spiritual war, the reality is they are part of the same fabric. They have the same combatants (although the Church is often AWOL on both fronts). Spiritual weaponry is required for both. The fact is the world is both a battlefield and a mission field.
To treat it only as a battlefield neglects The Great Commission. To treat it only as a mission field neglects The Cultural Commission.
You can say that we'll eventually lose the culture war. So what? That is not breaking news. Even Jesus said the Church would never win the war vs. beating off conditions churning out the poor. He said, "The poor will always be with you." So just because that's a war we can never win, we're simply supposed to lay down our attempts to feed, clothe and house them, and concentrate on only their spiritual condition?
No, we can no more neglect the condition of our culture than we can neglect the condition of the poor around us. Paul didn't compartmentalize his eagerness to remember the poor (Gal. 2:10) from his stewardship of the Gospel (Gal. 2:7). So why do evangelicals do that?
The "culture war" has many different types of victims: The poor, the possessed, the addicted, those embracing false identities, etc.
Let us stop trying to reduce the Gospel to mere words floating about: "...our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction." (1 Thess. 1:5).
The fact is that the Gospel is embodied in these clay vessels of ours. And how we respond to those in bondage to specific cultural minefields is relevant to our corporate reputation: "The Lord's message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia--your faith in God has become known everywhere" (1 Thess. 1:8). Paul was specifically commending their "work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance (and suffering) inspired by hope" (1 Thess. 1:2,6).
You started off playing down stewardship of our culture as mere "good works"; Paul also was impressed by the Thessalonians' good works...but he didn't see them as "mere."
Tis agreed. But it's a little more complex than that.
You can say that the 1/3rd or so who survived Titanic were actually rescued "one person at a time"--for that is how people were loaded into the boats. But in reality, there was also a corporate dimension about it. People were saved en masse--both corporately one boat at a time--and also corporately as one major salvation thrust coordinated from the top on down.
Likewise, we only see the "one person at a time" strategy of God played out; but it's more complex than that. He's arranged for manned lifeboats (churches) to be strategically placed next to our culture's sinking ships. He's coordinating the entire major campaign from the top down.
Those sinking ships are our cultures in this world. The icebergs are real corporate sins like abortion, internet porn made available to our children and their parents, greed, etc. These "entities" (cultures) are corporate dimensions. And Jesus treated them as such:
"I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgement than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up the skies? No, you will go down to the depths." (Luke 10:12-15).
We Westerners put the focus on one-by-one personal evangelism and personal repentance. Jesus saw repentance as corporate ("they would have repented long ago"...see also "you and your household" of Acts 16:31).
The word "you" in our culture is individualistic; the word "you" in the original Greek or even today's cultures (like the Japanese culture) is treated as plural (as in you, yourselves).
Just as Abraham negotiated with God if a city would be saved for having X number of righteous people living in it, God looks on us as both individuals and as corporate creatures who either take on attributes of our culture or attempt to redeem aspects of our culture. (We either are part of the cultural problem or seek to be a redemptive part--Ezekiel 9:4-9).
When God at times handed the Israelites over to other nations (e.g.Ps. 106:40-42), he did so on a corporate basis even though there no doubt were righteous men in their midst.
Therefore, we are our brother's keeper in more ways than one. If the Church does not act like what salt's purposes were in Jesus' day--to be a preservative--then it is good for nothing and only fit to be tossed out with the rotten food.
We've all read the history books about cultures that died out. Jim Black wrote a book called NATIONS THAT DIE. It was important indeed for Christians in the Roman culture that died to proclaim the gospel; but there is also a Generational Commission. Our children (and their children, etc) are missionaries we send to a time we'll never see. And so it will be important for me to know that my children and their generations of offspring actually have a vibrant enough culture for them to be salt and light in; I do not desire to be partially responsible for fostering a culture that will one day doom saltless Christ-ones to be tossed out with the rest of that declining culture.
To bring it back to where I started with the Titanic illustration: Too many churches are catering only to the wealthy just as the Titanic's lifeboats neglected those travelling in "steerage." Where are the church lifeboats that target the 40% of women in our nation who've had abortions? Where are the church lifeboats who realize that due to the easy accessibility of porn, that a young teen can become an addict just as easy in a culture of spiritual revival as it can in a culture of red-light districts?
I'll tell you where those church lifeboats are. They're lining up to welcome the first-class passengers.
"Zealot" is not simply a descriptor of a personality type, but of a political activist. After you meet Jesus, you stop being a political activist. That is the evidence offered by YOUR example, Simon.
Why? Because you no longer believe in the value of political action.
In spite of all that has been said, I get the sense you and I are talking past each other and may agree more than we realize.
"Fighting the culture war", to me, means being politically involved and taking action to clean up our culture wherever possible.
I think we only disagree on what kind of change God values. Does it make a difference to God that babies are murdered in their mothers' wombs? Of course. Would a law against it be a good thing? Of course. "Thou shall not kill" has never been repealed.
But "Thou shall not kill" was still in force when Jesus walked around. His MAIN FOCUS was not to call "society" back to the law; it was to call people (individually and in large crowds) to return to a love of God which would, of course, reconcile them to the moral law.
This passage struck me as odd:
And so it will be important for me to know that my children and their generations of offspring actually have a vibrant enough culture for them to be salt and light in; I do not desire to be partially responsible for fostering a culture that will one day doom saltless Christ-ones to be tossed out with the rest of that declining culture.
I don't think the ability of the Christian to be salt and light is dependant on the surrounding culture.
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