In Psalm 120:5-7 (MSG),
the writer expresses his weariness with ceaseless conflict: “I'm doomed to live in Meshech, cursed
with a home in Kedar, my whole life lived camping among quarreling neighbors. I'm
all for peace, but the minute I tell them so, they go to war!”
The polarization of
Western society is a byword now—a given. Western civilization isn’t very civil.
Like the writer in this Psalm a person who wants a reprieve from the endless
sniping and combative posturing, neighbor to neighbor, is thought to be absurd.
When I ask, “Isn’t there a better way, like say, dialoguing and ‘seeking first
to understand then to be understood?’” I feel like a space alien. At my most
paranoid, I suspect that I am viewed as a liberal. No matter that I thoroughly
believe Biblical fundamentals: inerrancy (check!), miracles (check!), soteriology
(check!), virgin birth (check!), Christ’s divinity, exclusivity, bodily
resurrection, physical return, etc. (check, check, check, check, check!).
Somehow unwillingness to engage in angry verbal or social media skirmishes with
non-Christians apparently undermines my theological soundness.
But if a person comes to
believe that there is absolutely no redeemable return in an activity and they
continue to do it, what should be said about that person? At the very least we
should say that they are misaligned—they lack integrity—their convictions and
behaviors do not match. That’s what I’ve come to believe: that not only are
culture wars unproductive for the advancement of the Kingdom of God, they are
counter-productive and harmful. Here are a few reasons I have personally
reached this conclusion.
Because of the Nature of Regeneration and Change
A very basic Christian
belief is that moral transformation is unalterably connected to being spiritually
reborn (2 Corinthians 5:17). Few people (if any) decide to live by Biblical
morality without first trusting in Christ. It was only after people encountered
Jesus, were convicted of their separation from God and need for change that
they found the power for a new kind of life. And even when people met Christ
and experienced the new birth, they still continued to experience a struggle
with sin in their flesh (Romans 7). We should want a Biblically just society
that reflects God’s holiness, but we should also be aware that people are
powerless to change without God. That begs the question, are Christians
attempting to moralize our culture without attempting to Gospelize it? Gospel
proclamation precedes cultural transformation.
Because Reconciliation is a Great Biblical Value
It almost seems to me that
many Christians do not trust the power of the Gospel, so we shift our focus to
moralizing. By moralizing I mean we demand that people own our view of morality
but we withhold by our silence the Message that changed our hearts (if indeed
they have been changed). Our anger toward those who lay no claim on knowing God
further alienates their affection from Him because of their identification of
us with Him. So instead of experiencing reconciliation with God, which is why
Jesus came (2 Corinthians 5:18-21), they are pushed farther away.
This is well illustrated
in Luke 15 in the parable of the Lost Sons. We often miss the point of this
parable. The ultra religious Pharisees of Jesus’ day complained that He received
sinners and ate with them. So He told this parable to them (Luke 15:2). In it
Jesus chronicled the path of two sons. One demands his father’s inheritance,
leaves home, lives a wasteful life and has a genuine awakening that leads him
back home, broken and remorseful. The older brother, entitled and joyless,
refuses to celebrate his brother’s return. Of the two sons, the older brother
ends up alienated from his father. His anger and indignation toward his brother’s
failure prevents him from being right with the father, who has embraced the
younger son and renewed him as his own. There are many “older brothers” in
churches today whose anger toward lost sinners is greater than their joy over
the return of prodigals.
Because People Already Know what We are Against
If a person did an
informal sociological study and asked people in Walmart, “Did you know that
Christians are against homosexuality and abortion?” how many people do you
think would answer, “I did not know that”? Unless a person has been living on
Mars, they know what Christians oppose. What they don’t know is the Good News
that God Himself loved them so much that He took on flesh and blood expressly
to die for them. Blasting away at the faults of those who make no profession of
faith in Jesus is low hanging fruit. It’s much easier than attempting a Gospel conversation
with them, but it’s not redemptive!
I have long felt that the
longer a person is inside the church the more likely it is that they will
forget how they got there. It was all grace. It was all God’s free gift in
Christ! It was all because of God’s phenomenal love for every stinking one of
us.
Because we all Need Grace!
It’s not that
righteousness does not need to be proclaimed. We are all unrighteous and in
need of hope! The question is what kind of righteousness do people hear us
proclaiming? Is it the righteousness of moral performance or of imputed
(gifted) forgiveness? Martin Luther wrote, “When the conscience has been
thoroughly frightened by the Law it welcomes the Gospel of grace with its
message of a Savior who came into the world, not to break the bruised reed, nor
to quench the smoking flax, but to preach glad tidings to the poor, to heal the
brokenhearted, and to grant forgiveness of sins to all captives.”
I can’t tell anyone else
what to do. But to be consistent with my own understanding of truth and to
relate to the world through the lens of my own experience, I am heart sick over
the quarreling that has replaced Gospel witness, and I want nothing to do with
it. The only people I see Jesus angry with in Scripture are the religious moralists
(God help us!) who were so well they couldn’t see their need for a Physician.
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