The Culture War Will Be Won in the Trenches

There is a rather enlightening, if depressing book entitled *Degenerate Moderns* by E. Michael Jones that demonstrates that most of our modern ideological woes - the constant pull towards leftward social and moral ideas - are largely an elaborate attempt to cover over and justify sexual immorality. His examples run the gamut from espionage rings in the British Security Service in the 40s to sociological studies in Samoa to Kinsey's theories which arose out of the University of Indiana. All in all the book is largely about sexual misconduct happening in private that swung the whole ideological norms of the West.  

Rousas J. Rushdoony argued similarly in the opening chapters of his marvelous *The Politics of Guilt and Pity*. There he makes the case that since humanity needs atonement, knows it needs atonement, *and* wants nothing to do with Christ, we come up with elaborate political schemes for justifying our cultural sins. But at the bottom of our secularized moralizing is something quite simple: guilt. We are desperate to cover things up with the latest social cause. Perhaps now we can atone for our sins with this new one - whether its a country (or countries) collectively agreeing to wear masks, destroy all their jobs for CoVid or marching in the streets and burning down Targets for "justice" vaguely defined, or our increasing obsession with protecting everyone's feelings - we need atonement. 

I think that thesis bears a lot of fruit and could use a lot more applications to current events. But a thread I'd like to pull on grew out of some reflections on the stories in Jones' book. Some women in our church are reading Jim Wilson's *How to be Free from Bitterness*. It's a marvelous little book I try to pick up frequently because its so practically helpful. It dawned on me as I was listening to the discussion unfold above my head (literally, I was in the basement), that all of our big culture war level issues can be tied quite nicely to some fairly basic sins in the bible. Much ink and tweets (or X's?) are spent addressing vast conflicts on a culture-wide scale. We often put our efforts confronting big Moral Vision questions - and we should. But do you know where they come from? They didn't come *from* Freud and Nietzsche and Marx - that horrid little triad just named something that was already in the water. They come from everyday normal sins like greed and lust and envy and bitterness and pride. These sins get blown up on a massive scale, politicized, protected and then, well, destroy civilization. Pastors, the biggest problem in your church is not the feminists. It's not the porn industry. It isn't the alphabet lobby. Don't get me wrong, those things should be fought tooth and nail. But often we're in danger of confronting big cultural ideas instead of confronting actual people and our own actual sins. The biggest problem in your church are bitter and envious wives who don't think they need to repent of their envy and bitterness. The biggest problem in your church is lustful and proud men who will not submit to the rule of Jesus and love and lead their wives and kids. The biggest problem in your church is parents who won't discipline their kids. And the biggest problems are people controlled by their passions - their emotional life, and then calling it love and compassion and empathy. And because they are the biggest problem in most every church, they are the biggest problem in the cities we minister in and in the nation we live in. These little bitternesses, these prickly little envies, those hidden lusts, they get coddled and excused and redefined into virtues. But they build up a head of steam and become culture-shaping laws and parades and film production companies. They become our confusions over words everyone has known for centuries like "love" and "justice". And they grow into world-shaping ideologies that justify unknown horrors and petty but wicked behaviors.

The abortion industry is the fruit of a million people's envy and lust and is designed to make such sin possible, livable. The Red Pill (Black-pill, I don't know I get all the pills mixed up) pick-up artists is the collective fruit of a million people's hubris and bitterness - excused as natural and manly and "reclaiming masuclinity". Ideologies too, not just policies and weird niche groomers. Marxism, feminism, a big part of the therapeutic culture of our day - all built to feed or defend or accelerate those little sins. 

I preached a wedding homily a couple weeks ago where I told the bride and groom that the most important battle in the whole culture war would be fought for their marriage - to obey Jesus, to trust God's words, and to navigate sins from within, temptations from without, and well, the Devil too. Christians - the war over a God-honoring, fruit-bearing, joy-filled culture is real. Its not just in your heart. It will be fought in the public square with laws and elections and by Christians learning to tell better stories on pages and screens. It will be fought in church position papers and denominational meetings. **But the most significant battle** will be learning to put all these things to death in ourselves and one another. It will be wives coming to terms with why they hate Ephesians 5:22 so much - is it bitterness? envy? It will be husbands coming to terms with why they are impatient with their kids or why they avoid their duties in the home with any escape they can find - even work. Is it pride? lust? greed? Yes, the culture war will be fought on big stages, but mostly it will be fought in the trenches of individual homes and hearts - with families and roommates and over careless words spoken in haste that Jesus said we'd be judged for. It will be fought by people who have been forgiven in Christ and so are eager to forgive others and to seek forgiveness. It will be fought by people who do the daily work of tending to the garden of our own souls and the garden of our family - pulling up weeds, trimming branches, protecting the fruit.

How Much More... Some Reflections on Hebrews 2 and Christian Discipleship in Denver

“Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.” - Hebrews 2:1-4

Watered Down Whiskey and the Glory of the Gospel

The Protestant Liberalism of the early 20th century often spoke of finding the kernel at the heart of the Bible's teachings while removing the accretions of religious myth and miraculous language. This reductionism was their attempt to salvage the Christian message in a scientific age where things like a 6-day creation or resurrection from the dead were offensive to reasonable secular people. J. Gresham Machen wrote his masterful Christianity and Liberalism in response to this movement redefining American Christianity. He observed that what was left was an entirely different religion, not to be confused with historic Christianity. With those "accretions" stripped out, the remaining kernel had been distorted and reshaped according to modern man's thinking such that there was no Christianity left but something else. 

This pattern has continued with much preaching and teaching in modern Evangelicalism, though the stripped-away portions have changed. There are a variety of opinions and debates about what one is allowed to remove and what kernel of biblical teaching should remain. But the effect is the same; what's left is something different than Christianity. What's left is an entirely different sort of thing than what has been passed down to us in the Creeds, Confessions, and most notably in the Scriptures themselves. What is no longer of much concern is the materialist problems in the text of Scripture and the teachings of Christianity - things like miracles and resurrections and God's remarkably efficient six day creation. These things are of little concern to modern pop culture. What is always stripped away in these scenarios is what our neighbors find offensive or unsettling. In our day, that means essentially two things: 1) The Bible's teachings on sexuality and sex, and 2) the troubling language of judgment, the infinite divide of the antithesis, and the death of the myth of neutrality. Regarding the first, we must strip it or water it down because it does not fit our age's flat, egalitarian emphasis. Or perhaps better to use the Bible's language here: It does not serve our lusts. and the Second must be stripped away because, in our therapeutic age, such distinctions make everybody feel bad - as though there might be people we know at enmity with God. 

The troubles with this are legion, but I want to focus on one: This approach to Christianity strips it of the richness, beauty, and joy that is given freely by our God. It is of particular concern to me because it leads to the anemic Christianity that has rooted itself in and around Denver, Colorado. The sort of Christianity grown up in the front range of Colorado is like watered-down whiskey. Not whiskey with a drop or two of water added to unlock the flavor, but the sort of "watered-down" where you can't taste the whiskey. Like a high schooler's Jack and Coke, the Coke is present in quantities sufficient to drown out any taste of whiskey. But what you're left with is simply flat cola with a funny taste. 

Instead of homes filled with the cheerful tumult of children chasing dragons, the smells of warm bread, and the joys of marriage, we have the never-ending frat scene of 30-year-olds sipping cocktails, gutting themselves for a feeble and impotent promiscuous sexuality. Instead of the glory of the church gathered to sing with artistic beauty and wonder, the thundering of God's word, and the feasting joy of God's table, we have smoke machines, professional musicians, and therapeutic messages designed to avoid offending the sensibilities of the people who aren't in the room yet. Instead of strong men and beautiful women embracing the full range of God's diverse and often gendered wisdom, we have an increasingly genderless monoscape sipping well-made coffee (Why is it that no matter what else is dying in a civilization, the coffee just gets better?) 

Most of all, we are left with a domesticated god. A God who rarely offends without extended qualifiers. Preachers who spend 15 minutes warning their audiences and qualifying with all the linguistic nuances before they mention a text like "Wives submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord" or "I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man" or "The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers." God is no longer free to offend us. He is no longer allowed to frighten us. He is no longer allowed to contradict us. He is only allowed to delight and comfort us. The gospel bids us to come and die, but instead we celebrate a gospel where the God revealed in Scripture must hide himself lest we feel unsafe or uncomfortable. But in domesticating this god, we have killed any chance at the sort of fullness of life, joy and glory Jesus promises us. We live in an age of unbearable lightness, lacking the weighty substance God created us for. We have what we have demanded of God and Christianity, a thin, comforting accouterment to our modern, largely secular lives. We've drowned our whiskey in store-brand cola, forsaking the difficulty and the glory of what God has given us. 

The road forward entails a rebellion of sorts. We must rebel against every instinct which winces when it reads the text of Scripture. An older, faithful minister sat in my living room a few years ago, answering questions from a room full of younger pastors and church-planters. He was asked what one bit of advice he would give the young pastors in the room. He responded, "Resolve now, before you ever step into the pulpit, to follow the text of Scripture wherever it leads." One young guy in the back blurted, "But everyone will leave my church!" The older pastor responded, "Follow the text wherever it leads." 

This is no mere fundamentalist rigidity. This is the path to savoring the very fatness of life. It is simple, but it is hard. Most glorious things are difficult. Raising children with joy and to know and fear the Lord is difficult. Worshipping with God's people, in the beauty of holiness is difficult; it involves things like learning music and learning how to use our voices together. Warm hospitality with rich food and wine is difficult, but it is marvelous. Learning to trust and delight in every word that proceeds from the mouth of God is hard, but it is the fount of real faith. Stop looking for the kernel that does not offend. Stop watering down your whiskey. Drink it straight, share it straight. Eventually, you'll stop wincing, and with some practice, you'll begin to taste the richness and its multiplying flavors.