Culture Wars and the Christians

I miss the days when people could only yell at one another when they were in close proximity to each other. It was always far more entertaining and often more informative than what we’ve got now. We live in a day where this thing called “social media” has afforded us the opportunity to yell at people from all over the world, all the time, with almost no reprieve. Clever yelling gets rewarded by likes. Timid yelling, qualified by nuance and niceties is generally ignored and disappears. People (I’ve grown so weary of David French’s Sunday articles) have built entire platforms online by simply saying over and over again, “Look how stupid these people are.”

All of this has exasperated the much-touted and maligned “culture war,” and left a lot of Christians confused and often divided. The biggest division (as I see it) among Christians isn’t really along the lines of the culture war but along the lines of how to respond to this Cultural Cold War. On the one side, pitchforks in hand, are those throwing their lot in with one side or the other (usually with the political right) ready to step into the fray (or at least post stuff on Facebook). On the other side is a group of Christians who want peace above all else, and are often guilty of proclaiming “Peace! Peace!” when there isn’t any. Both groups are mostly responding to the political lines as they’ve been drawn and are pretty frustrated with each other. Tim Keller (former pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan) gets dragged into the whole thing as an example of either “the problem” or an exemplar of marvelous balance. But while debates circle among Christians about how to be “winsome” or how dangerous “winsomeness” is in this cultural moment, I think the real interesting debate lay underneath.

Both sides have some biblical things to say. The first group recognizes that something grave is truly at stake in the cultural, social, and political arguments of our day. Debates about sexuality, the nature of justice, abortion, and the power/role of the government are of enormous consequence for us, our children, and for our neighbors. The second group questions (rightly) the way the lines have been drawn. Should Christians align with the Republican Party? Should Christians align with the Democratic Party? Why allow secular politics to determine the culture of the church? These are important questions that matter greatly as we consider what allegiance to Jesus our Lord actually means as we live in this cultural moment and the ones that are coming.

To navigate this moment I want to lay out some principles that must guide Christians as we navigate these cultural waters, and that I pray would be central to our life as a church in the heart of Denver, half a block from our state capitol.

Jesus died and was raised and sent his Spirit into the church in order to build a culture.

The goal of Jesus’ death was not simply to whisk people away to heaven, but to redeem the world - to liberate it from lawlessness, from godlessness, and from every defiling thing. This is simply unavoidable in the New Testament. Too many Christians have been taught that the goal of Jesus’ work is merely the forgiveness of sins and a kind of internalized (read: spiritual) reconciliation with God. In the New Testament, these things are vital and central, and they are the ground for something else: namely the formation of a people who live differently in the world. The work Jesus commissioned his people to is the work of discipling the nations - teaching them to obey everything he commanded. In other words, he has commissioned his people into the work of reforming whole cultures into obedience to godliness. We have been freed from sins - sins that shape and define individuals, families, cities, and entire cultures. We are to repent of disobedience to God’s laws and seek to obey God’s laws because he has already redeemed us, justified us, and adopted us in his Son. This obedience will necessarily create a culture - a corporate way of being in the world that gives expression to our joyful gratitude to God, love for God, and obedience to God.

Christian obedience works its way all the way down and all the way up.

We shouldn’t reduce Christian obedience to a list of personal pieties. When we believe that Jesus is Lord we will seek to obey him in every facet of our lives. This, without question, includes our attitudes and the ways we treat people, but it also includes what we eat, who we vote for, how we educate our children, with whom we have sex, and what we believe to be the best way to live in the world. This obedience is never obedience that saves, but rather it is borne of our reconciliation with God. This reconciliation means that we are no longer at war with God and are now learning to trust him - not simply to forgive our sins, but to trust that he is wise and good and knows best how to navigate the world both as individuals and as cultures. In other words, allegiance to Jesus must work its way out all the way into our fingertips, institutions, businesses, governments, and families.

Christian obedience entails repentance and repentance is specific

Believing in Jesus and then obeying Jesus starts (at least in the New Testament witness) with repentance from sin. We have grown too comfortable treating sin as a kind of ambiguous force over against specific attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that are contrary to God’s law and contrary to the way that he has made the world. Sin is regarded as a power that enslaves us to sins. Repentance is not simply “Forgive me Father for sin.” It is “Forgive me Father for lying to my wife” or “Forgive me Father for drinking too much and getting drunk” or “Forgive me Father for neglecting my children’s discipline.” Repentance from actual sins that we actually commit is necessary for faith in Jesus and obedience to Jesus. This is true of individuals, but it is also true of cultural and social evils. Corporate repentance is dangerous and doesn’t work exactly the same way (see C.S. Lewis’ “Dangers of National Repentance), but it does mean that there are sins prevalent in specific cultures that should be confronted. Those sins should be defined by God’s law and the designs of God’s world - but they are real nonetheless, and should be named and resisted.

Obedience to God is the best way for everybody

Here’s where the teachings of Scripture come into direct conflict with our modern sensibilities. We claim that God really does know best. If I am to love my neighbor, I am to pursue what is objectively good for them. I think we are clearly to avoid coercion but I am required by love to call my neighbors to repentance and to be reconciled to God in Jesus and to live good, godly lives in him. This will mean hard conversations about individual sins and cultural ones. You cannot love your neighbor whose moral imagination has been shaped by an unbelieving culture without confronting those cultural claims.

Christian Faithfulness to this Mission will entail conflict - or something akin to a culture war.

Christians, while living in this age, must patiently oppose all rebellion to the rule of Jesus. We must proclaim his reign and therefore, proclaim the true, the beautiful, and the good according to the Scriptures. This will inevitably lead to conflict. Jesus promised this. Please note, he promised this. James tells us that friendship with the world (which he defines in terms of loving what the world loves, aligning ourselves with the world’s self-defined good) is enmity with God. There is all the way down a conflict between belief in God and its consequent obedience and unbelief. We cannot declare peace when there is no peace. If we are to love our neighbors then we will make enemies of our neighbors. If we proclaim and promote and desire for ourselves, our children, and our neighbors what is true and beautiful and good, then we will find ourselves at war with much of what our culture calls true and beautiful and good. If we trust God and therefore love and trust his words, then we will say these things out loud desiring our neighbors to repent of their sins and be reconciled to God. The lines in this culture war will not line up with the Republicans or Democrats - but not because we’ve found some safe space in the middle (what’s often called third-wayism), but rather because we belong wholly to Jesus and must obey and teach what God has said. We will often find ourselves in a world like ours (filled with horrors and common grace) co-belligerents with those who do not share our ultimate allegiances. But do not be fooled. We belong to Jesus and we strain for a world filled with the knowledge of the glory of God (namely the manifestation of his beauty and holiness) as the waters cover the sea. The world does not want this, and will actively oppose it, in fact, is actively at war with it. We should expect fierce opposition, slander and mockery even as we see (slowly and with often very crooked lines) God making all things new.

Finally, this all requires courage.

This sort of thing requires courage. Courage stands on what God has said, pursues the good of our neighbors, and defines love, winsomeness, and the common good in ways determined by God’s words, not on the basis of people’s reactions or feelings. Paul’s admonitions to Timothy in 1 & 2 Timothy are rife with a call to courage, to stand, to join Paul in his sufferings. Paul is thrown in prison, chided as evil, as opposing the Roman culture, beaten, and ultimately executed because he is promoting a culture at war with the one around him. Paul’s words are better than anything else I could say: “Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began…” (2 Timothy 1:8-10)