A War We Can Win

Christians lost the cultural battle years ago. This is confirmed by the latest decision of the US Supreme Court. We need a new strategy, one that targets a battle that we are better placed to win.

In his editorial, the cultural war. David Brooks suggests a different battle for Christians to fight.

Consider a different culture war, one just as central to your faith and far more powerful in its persuasive witness.

We live in a society plagued by formlessness and radical flux, in which bonds, social structures and commitments are strained and frayed. Millions of kids live in stressed and fluid living arrangements. Many communities have suffered a loss of social capital. Many young people grow up in a sexual and social environment rendered barbaric because there are no common norms. Many adults hunger for meaning and goodness, but lack a spiritual vocabulary to think things through.

Social conservatives could be the people who help reweave the sinews of society. They already subscribe to a faith built on selfless love. They can serve as examples of commitment. They are equipped with a vocabulary to distinguish right from wrong, what dignifies and what demeans. They already, but in private, tithe to the poor and nurture the lonely...

I don’t expect social conservatives to change their positions on sex, and of course fights about the definition of marriage are meant as efforts to reweave society. But the sexual revolution will not be undone anytime soon. The more practical struggle is to repair a society rendered atomized, unforgiving and inhospitable. Social conservatives are well equipped to repair this fabric, and to serve as messengers of love, dignity, commitment, communion and grace.

This is exactly right. Loving one another in the power of the Spirit is the place were Christians have a competitive advantage.

In Old Testament times, God used a prophetic approach. It was not that successful, because God knew it was not his best shot. He sent Jesus to live and die and rise again to open up a new and better way. With the ministry of Jesus, he shifted from prophetic confrontation to loving involvement. He shifted from pushing evil away, to drawing evil in and overcoming it with crushing love. That is why Jesus said that people would recognise his followers by their love (John 13:34-35). Loving one another is the power of the gospel.

God is saying, you will not win the war by persisting with a battle that was lost long ago. Confronting a strong enemy in a conventional warfare is pointless. A weaker force can amplify its strength by engaging guerrilla warfare (4GW), by attacking the strong force in it soft underbelly.

Instead of railing against the culture, we should start building Christian community within the culture, and draw in the lost and broken people who have been wreaked and discarded by modern culture. The people on television look happy and connected with the rest of the cast. But modern culture is not so rosy on the ground. In real life, people are isolated lonely, frightened and often hurt. They would be open to the gospel, and Christian community, if they were targeted by love. This is where modern culture is hugely vulnerable.

Brooks is wrong about one thing. He said that the defining face of social conservatism could be this.

Those are the people who go into underprivileged areas and form organizations to help nurture stable families. Those are the people who build community institutions in places where they are sparse. Those are the people who can help us think about how economic joblessness and spiritual poverty reinforce each other. Those are the people who converse with us about the transcendent in everyday life.

He is wrong about this. Social conservatives are not capable of doing what he suggests, because the prefer to stand on the side-lines in the conform of their mansions and yell at the encroaching evil. They claim the name of Jesus, but they are not willing to get their hands dirty and engage with the world and love and love and love as Jesus did. It will take a more radical type of Christian to do fulfil Jesus calling to love one another as he loved us.

More at http://kingwatch.co.nz/Church_Ministry/future_church_strategy.htm

Lost Cultural Battle

I do not expect to find wisdom in the New York Times, but David Brooks’ editorial on the Supreme Court decision summed up the situation really well.

Here is my take on the situation. A wise general knows:

• Persisting with a battle that is lost does not help win the war.
• Letting the enemy choose the battleground unnecessarily gives him a huge advantage.
• Fight battles at places where you are strong and the enemy is weak is the best way to win the war.

The battle for the culture was lost a long time ago. Continuing to fight that battle, as if we could still win it is pointless. We need to step back, and find a new way to challenge the culture, on a ground where we are strong.

David Brooks was right when he wrote,

Christianity is in decline in the United States. The share of Americans who describe themselves as Christians and attend church is dropping. Evangelical voters make up a smaller share of the electorate. Members of the millennial generation are detaching themselves from religious institutions in droves.

Christianity’s gravest setbacks are in the realm of values. American culture is shifting away from orthodox Christian positions on homosexuality, premarital sex, contraception, out-of-wedlock childbearing, divorce and a range of other social issues. More and more Christians feel estranged from mainstream culture...

These conservatives are enmeshed in a decades-long culture war that has been fought over issues arising from the sexual revolution... a culture war that, at least over the near term, they are destined to lose.

For four or five centuries, culture was shaped by newspapers and pamphlets, but mostly the pulpit. The sermon was the main culture-forming event of the week, so Christian values had a huge influence.

In the modern world, culture is determined by television, movies and social media, not by ideas from a book that most people have never read.

At first it seemed like television was on our side, because it portrayed a pseudo-Christian reality. When I first started watching television in the 1960s, programs like the Donna Reed Show portrayed real two-parent familes. That was the norm. There were single-parent shows like the Andy Griffith show and My Three Sons, but they were interesting because they were clearly abnormal. In hindsight, I presume they were the thin end of the wedge, because they made a single-parent family look practical.

Of course, the two-parent family living in the suburbs and driving everywhere that was portrayed in these programs was a miserable imitation of the Christian family. That is why it was unable to withstand the pressure of cultural change. The cultural battle was already lost, because Christians believed this pathetic distortion was “the Christian family”.

The 1970s brought the Happy Days of the Cunningham family, but even in this program the counter-cultural Fonz gradually moved from lurking in the shadows and into the heart of the family.

Now the counter-culture has becomes the culture. On modern US Television, alternative relationships are the norm, and they have been for a long time. In contrast, Christian families are rare, or odd. Christians might be forty percent of the population, but they are missing from television, except in the irrelevant ghetto of Christian television.

The battle for the culture has been lost for nearly twenty years. Those who understand this were not surprised by the Supreme Court decision. The judges are old, so they are just catching up to where the rest of the culture arrived a decade ago.

Continuing to confront a hostile culture about the sexual revolution just makes us look ugly. Especially the news is full of stories of church leaders joining the sexual revolution.

Last night on our TV news, I saw two men with Bibles standing on a street in the US and yelling at a 9 year old girl waving a rainbow flag. It was probably a set up, but it made Christians look ugly, especially because these men are not shouting at pastors who commit adultery. For many viewers, the incident would have confirmed their view that Christians are angry, hateful and hypocritical. If Jesus is like that, they are not interested in him.

In my next post, I would look at better battle strategy, one that will enable us to win the war, by losing, like Jesus did.