There is no doubt that the Christian movement is out of
favor with contemporary culture. Christian opinions are often treated with hostility
in the public square. Is this really new
though? The intensity of it in America feels
like a radical turn, but it is certainly not new in the history of the
Christian movement.
When Paul
went to Athens
in the first century, he discovered a sexually deviant culture that was fully
immersed in spiritual error and often violently opposed to the Christian
message (Acts 17:16-34). The Roman
emperor Nero, famously sent Christians to the arena to be mauled by animals and
treated as sport for gladiators. According to history, he even
rolled them in pitch and used them as human torches. The really interesting thing to me is that,
far from hindering the Gospel, the message spread exponentially in the midst of
such aggressive opposition. At the end
of his life, Paul was planning to carry the Gospel to Western
Europe (Spain), and the church was experiencing consistent expansion.
What then
is the problem in North America? The church can grow in the harshest
environment. In fact, the truth of the
Gospel has never been more needed. The
obvious difference from then to now is that we are often not carrying the
message of hope and transformation into the marketplace (agora) as Paul did. As Chuck
Kelly said a few years ago, "We are trying to harvest an unseeded
generation." GBC missionary Tom Crites
gave the following options as "responses to lostness":
–
We can Separate from culture
–
We can Fight against culture
–
We can Imitate Culture
–
We can Reach Culture
It is obvious which of these represents the Biblical
path. Reaching the culture is the key to transforming the culture.
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