The good news of the gospel has relevance for every aspect of society, but western culture would confine it to the private sphere. Arguably, Christians in America have spent too much time making political war on this aspect of western culture instead of laboring to proclaim the beauty, glory and reign of God which redeems all aspects of all cultures. Gospel missionaries must be ready to boldly proclaim the supremacy of Christ over every system of thought, even those that claim to be intrinsically objective.
Note: My use of Bill Maher here is not intended to be inflammatory — I actually find myself agreeing with a few of Maher’s points of view from time to time. Instead, I have chosen him because I believe he is representative of a growing number of somewhat snarky sensationalists that get traction precisely because of the cultural assumptions I present in this video. Remember, the answer here is not to adopt an “us vs. them” mentality (i.e., start picketing Bill Maher’s show), but to be loving-yet-sober missionaries who aren’t ignorant of the nation’s intellectual mood.
I appreciate the point your making. To use an imperfect image, sometimes the church acts like an ostrich and sticks its head in the sand, ignoring its environment. The difficulties of speaking to a culture are avoided, but eventually the real world will come knocking in.
At the same time, let’s recognize the difficulty in speaking to a culture that claims to be objective and tolerant. So, I can equally appreciate the silence of churches to speak on every “system of thought”. The time and effort invested in articulating the supremacy of Christ over, say, abortion, only to be dismissed out of hand… that has to be weighed by those Christians who would speak on behalf of us. It takes courage.
Any thoughts on the culture’s response to our “procla[mation of] the beauty, glory and reign of God which redeems all aspects of all cultures” ? ie, the dismissal and reduction/association of magic underwear with giant arks of Bill Maher? How do we respond to sound bites in a sound bite age?
Alex, great points. It is extremely difficult to make loving objective truth claims in plural culture.
With regards to cultural retaliation to Christian involvement in political/moral issues: One helpful thing to remember is that we aim to proclaim the lordship of *Christ* and Him alone. At times, the temptation to be simply a witness to Christ’s teachings overtakes His commands for us to be a witness to Christ the person. Christianity becomes Pro-life-ism, pro-justice-ism, etc. The list goes on and on. But the Christian is a witness to a glorious person, not simply that person’s commands. By the way, this is a major distinctive for Christianity as well.
This is a complicated issue, but your point is an excellent one, so I’d like to follow up in a post later.
Also, you make an excellent point about sound bites. I’ll respond to that in a post as well.
Well I’ll just have to subscribe to your feed then! It’s good food for thought, for reflexion; I look forward to it.
I’ll add that I’m writing to you as a young Christian from the sub-urbs of Montreal, a secular, post-modern, we’ve-rejected-our-parents’-religion-as-superstition, ethnically-diverse, lively-yet-hollow city. I think there’ll be some parallels with Chicago.
Welcome!
[...] From Montreal asked some great questions in the comments section of a recent post. I’d like to answer some of them more fully, and [...]