Sermon Response - Take a Stand... The Culture Wars

[At my church our pastor is starting a new preaching series on the life of Elijah, a prophet you can read about in 1 Kings 17 and following. I've decided to write a few blog posts in response. Perhaps I will write regularly on this series, maybe not. Your comments are much appreciated. If you, however, prefer consumerism-talk to prophetic-talk then feel free to skip these posts.]

This week at church my pastor began preaching a series on the life of the Old Testament prophet Elijah. He titled the first sermon Taking a Stand in an Anything Goes World (you can find audio or video here if you want to check it out). As always, it was a good sermon. Simply put, my pastor is an excellent communicator. And he is an incredibly devoted Christian, wise in his understanding of Scripture and gracious in his treatment of people.

The sermon was rousing. The idea behind it was that, just like at other times in history, we are living in a time of special moral depravity, and the times we live in need prophetic intervention. He compared our times with times such as the African slave trade, when William Wilberforce stood up and helped end that horror in Britain. And, of course, he compared the moral depravity of our day and age with that of Elijah's time, which was the time of the wicked rule of King Ahab and his nasty wife Queen Jezebel. Elijah stood up. And so should Christians stand up today. Christians should prophetically stand up for what is right in the morally backwards culture of the United States.

Well, yes and no. Let me start with the no.

(there is more to this long post)

The parallelism of the sermon struck me as not quite true. The idea is this: Israel was wicked under the rule of Ahab, and Elijah prophetically calledIsrael /Ahab back to God - and likewise - The United States is wicked under the rule of morally void cultural leaders, and we prophetically should call the United States back to God. I probably lean a bit too Reformed in my theology (our church on the other hand isDispensational ), and that is why the equivalency seems off. If Elijah is our model of prophetic example, shouldn't we be directing our message at today's church and not today's culture? Elijah brought his message to Ahab ofIsrael, not Ethbaal of Sidonia. The the church wants to clean things up, it should clean shop - take care of cleaning up the moral decline in  the church. And believe me, as a life-long Christian who is happy with his faith and glad to be a part of the church, I can still attest that there is a lot of cleaning to be done. (I've been responsible for a few messes myself.)

So it seems to me that long before Christians should be concerned about the culture wars, Christians should be active in the church wars. Clean up the inside first.

And yet for people of faith (Christian or other), there are genuine concerns with the "culture" of the United States. (I put culture in quotes because it seems very suspicious of me to over generalize about culture. I appreciate the academic work ofsociologists like Christian Smith and Robert Wuthnow, and even pollsters like George Barna. But I'm suspicious of pastors who use survey data without nuance to support a pre -existing belief that culture is mostly morally corrupt.) Some things in our culture - seen from a Christian perspective - are simply outrageous. Partial birth abortion is completely outrageous. There is simply no morally decent argument in favor of it. The proliferation of pornography on the Internet is completely outrageous. Theunwillingness of government to censor (yes I just said "censor") pornography is morally inappropriate. So yes. People of faith (Christian or other) feel like they should stand up for what is morally right in our culture. And since we happen to live in the United States, that involves voting with the moral concerns of one's faith. Christians should vote like Christians.

Very few Christians ought to prophetically engage culture, though. Frankly, I'm with Saint Augustine on this one. A long time ago he wrote a little book called Faith and the Creed in which he basically said that most Christians are not smart enough to be prophets. I feel that's right. Most of us are not called to engage culture like Elijah or Isaiah or even Martin Luther or William Wilberforce. Some are. But most are not.

- Issues I might write more about:
    The culture wars
    Why Christians are so suspicious of each other
    A good Christian way to disagree with culture

Comments

[Steve]

The real question is whether, in cleaning up the church--which indeed is a good place to start--we need more moralism and more old fashioned religion, or whether we need more Jesus.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQOkWULpW8g&feature=related

Second, in engaging culture, perhaps we should stop ranting about the irreligious culture that surrounds us and start creating a new culture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG9rrZOEGh0

Like starting a digital audio company with quality content, or something like that.

[yoshi]

You need more secularism. Thats the answer.

Because this is a fundamental problem (pun intended). Which belief do you feel the state should believe in? What do you believe in? You will find that most don't believe in what you believe in.

Please define censorship ... and what magical board enforces it?

Do you get where I'm going here? Or do you believe that Theocracy is the answer?

[Traditionalist]

My two cents: I think the only moral issues christians should be concerning about are the ones within the church. This is because the cosmic setting of christianity tells us that all else is just foolishness. Mankind has fallen, our culture is occupied territory where the rebel oppressor is in charge. According to the classical christian theology this status changes for the better only at the end. We are here - not to reclaim the lost lands by ourselves, but to save individuals from the occupiers hands. The Original King has promised us a new earth and a new heaven.

Moral decadence of the world is nothing we should be surprised of and fighting it was not the mission which Christ left us with.

[Dave Bruno]

@Traditionalist - you will have to excuse my quick and passionate response, but I must strongly object to your comment. Perhaps I will devote an entire post to it. For now,

You miss the forest for the trees. If Christians are on earth to save individuals, what do you expect of those who are saved? Will they not change their orientation, do things differently? How does this *not* engage and even change culture? How does this *not* fight against an immoral worldview?

Both your theology and your history are very mistaken. I find it astonishing that anyone can read the OT or NT and claim that Israel was not interested in affecting the other nations around them or that Jesus and his followers were not interested in affecting the culture around them. This comment is not the place to put in tons of details, but the Bible simply is packed with examples of people doing God's will and challenging culture.

Historically the church also has challenged culture. To suggest that it is not the church's role to engage culture is to suggest that you understand what millions of Christians before you have not. I find that arrogant.

Now, my point about the sermon is not that Christians ought to ignore culture. My point is that following the example of Elijah, Christians might want to start by challenging themselves first. I think that is consistent with, for example, Jesus' prayer in John 17.

I apologize for responding so strong. But I think you deserve it, or more. And I'd suggest you stop using the moniker "Traditionalist" and seek a more humble means of engaging the world and other Christians.

[Nina Ruth]

Thanks for sharing some thought-provoking FOOD! As a Christian (just plain 'ol), I have a heart for seeing the church (starting with ME) "cleaned up"...as I read the Bible, I see that the Believers usually engaged in culture wars BY LIVING RIGHTEOUSLY, not necessarily by specifically setting out to engage in culture wars. Yes, we're called to vote & to speak out against injustice & immorality, but we have to LIVE it first! Great thoughts, thanks, Dave!