Christ and Culture in Reverse Gear
The contemporary western church is moving from a post-Christendom relationship to culture back to being a besieged minority. This is the reverse trajectory of the early church. Careful study of the changing relations of church and culture in the first four centuries has much to teach contemporary western Christians about our relationship with a changing cultural landscape.
The relationship between God’s church and its surrounding culture is complex, dynamic, and fluid. Most of today’s global believers, along with most believers in history, are in contexts where Christianity is a cultural minority—whether the surrounding culture is animist, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or communist. These believers have long learned how to be a godly minority, living as strangers and exiles (1 Pet 2:11), as did Joseph in Egypt, along with Daniel, Esther, and the rest of God’s people during the Babylonian and Persian exiles.
We in the west, and certainly including Australia, are in a fluid context. Our context has the legacy of a dominant Christian culture which is reflected in things like the location and size of church buildings, chaplaincy access to public institutions; legal structures and the general tone of public life in which political leaders at least paid lip service to Christian values.
All that is rapidly changing. Our dominant culture is increasingly one of aggressive and progressive secularism.
In Australia we see widened access to anti-life measures such as abortion on demand and euthanasia. Legislation of same sex marriage a few years back seems a quaint small step in view of the present tsunami of issues around gender identity. As for Christian beliefs and the church, we seem to have moved from some kind of widespread acceptance to indifference and are now seen as holding to dangerous ideas and practices that deserve condemnation and state-sanctioned suppression. The recent debate around the Presbyterian Church’s submission to the ALRC on the right of Christian schools to practise their beliefs throughout the school illustrate this. (Ask John McClean about that!)
How do we make sense of this? How do we respond? Do we take the Benedictine option and retreat to our caves and ignore the world? Do we try and preserve an imagined golden age of “Christian Australia”? Do we spit angry words of judgement on the world as we are pushed back from one foxhole to another?
Related Posts:
You Might also like
-
Truth and Logic in East and West
Biblical Christians cannot embrace Eastern philosophy and religion and still be true to the biblical witness. While there might be some helpful teachings here and there, the overall scheme of things is in direct contrast to what Christianity teaches, including the belief that there is absolute truth, and there are falsehoods that stand against these truths. There are real spiritual and theological and moral opposites, not just two sides of the same coin.
Before I became a Christian I spent a fair amount of time looking into Eastern philosophy and theology. I read many of the key works, and tried to get my head around Eastern thought. But then I became a Christian and I very quickly gave up on that worldview and way of thinking.
But of course I still have encounters with folks who embrace Eastern thought – be they Westerners like me who have looked into it, or those from the East itself. When it comes to discussing Christianity with them, it often boils down to a debate between how Westerners and Easterners think.
The common claim is that the West is rationalistic and logical while the East does not embrace this way of thought. Logic, we are told, is simply a Western concept, and things like the law of non-contradiction are fine in the West, but have no application for those in the East.
But is this actually the case? Are there two radically different ways of thinking and viewing the world, and never the twain shall meet? No, is my short answer. And to tease this out further, let me mention a comment that came in to a social media post I had done. I had been discussing a common debate found in Christian theology. And with my morning Bible reading spurring me on, I had said this:
Hundreds of biblical passages speak to the fact that God is fully sovereign and in control. Hundreds of biblical passages speak to the fact that people are responsible for the choices that they make. How these two truths cohere will remain a mystery this side of heaven. But a number of times both truths are fully affirmed in a single verse, such as Mark 14:21: “For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.”
Since this can be such a hot potato topic with so many getting all hot and bothered theologically, I added a comment saying that those who want to start WWIII over this are advised to take it elsewhere. After all, with entire libraries devoted to these issues, we will just not get very far arguing in tiny Facebook comment boxes.
Well, things were going pretty good with folks seeming to respect my wishes. But then someone came along from unexpected quarters. I had expected an ornery Calvinist or a grumpy Arminian to write in, but it did not occur to me that I would get into a debate with an Easterner – in this case an Asian Christian friend. She sent in this comment:
“It’s a problem because western intellectual history is based on Aristotle’s non-contradiction theory. The Eastern mind has no problems accepting contradictions. In fact that ability is a sign of intelligence. However, in the west, it’s considered illogical. BTW the Bible is essentially an Eastern book.”
I thanked her and gave her a brief response, but assured her that a much longer piece would be needed to give this topic due justice. So what follows is an expanded version of what I had said to her. It was not entirely clear if she was saying that this is how Eastern folks tend to think (which is certainly the case), or whether she was saying that she as a Christian believed this as well. This then is my response.
God is a God of truth. And truth implies that there can be the absence or antithesis of truth – that is, falsehood. Lies and truth are not two sides of the same coin, of yin and yang. They are in fact polar opposites. God does not lie nor can he lie. And falsehood and truth can never cohere or live together in some sort of peaceful harmony.
Moreover, the laws of logic, including the law of non-contradiction, are NOT theories invented by Aristotle. He, along with others, may have helped to ‘discover’ and codify these laws (for which we can all be grateful), but he did not create them. In the same way Isaac Newton did not create the law of gravity; he simply discovered it.
The laws of logic have to do with the nature of truth, and our God is a perfectly true God, so he too is logical, and he does not contradict or repudiate himself. So these basic truths of thought and rationality are rooted in the very nature of God. They exist in God and he has revealed these truths to us. That God cannot lie or contradict himself is consistent with who he is. He is a God of truth, and we too are created to live this way – to live in truth and to confront falsehood.
Read More
Related Posts: -
The Second Coming as Foretold in the Book of Acts
When I say that the second coming occurred during the same time described in the book of Acts, I am sure to provoke a few knee-jerk reactions. Today, we have been conditioned to believe the second coming happens in the future when Jesus raptures away the Church from the world. This event, as the left behind novels describe it, will leave the pagan world to sort through millions of piles of clothing, surgical implants, and dentures from the vaporized saints Jesus took away to heaven in their birthday suits. This is not what the Bible teaches and can only be described as an insane and laughable reading of the text.
A Metaphor for NT Eschatology
When constructing an eschatology of the New Testament, you will need to do so in layers, kind of like a house begins with a proper foundation, then successive levels get added, one on top of the next, until finally you can put the chimney and shingles on and live in it.
The Foundation: Old Testament Eschatology
In that sense, the foundation of New Testament eschatology, the critical understanding that lies under the surface of the New Testament text, is the manifold witness of the Old Testament. If we do not get our eschatological underpinnings from the men of old, or if we do not understand what they were saying rightly, we could waste a lot of energy and effort constructing an eschatological edifice that will not stand. And while many Old Testament passages have been appealed to in our study so far, a fuller Old Testament eschatology is still forthcoming.
As a reminder, however, of what we have covered so far, the eschaton (the final age of man) was already defined by God in the first age of man. God defined man’s purpose in creation as filling the world with joyful working worshippers (Genesis 1:28). While the first man fell in that task, the rest of the Old Testament is about how a coming man will succeed and have that global Kingdom. While more could be said, that is the point of eschatology in the Old Testament.
The First Floor: The Eschatology of Jesus
On top of that foundation, however, is the next level of New Testament eschatology developed by Jesus within the Gospels. There, you may have been surprised to learn that Jesus’ teaching on the topic did not concern events long into the future but events that would take place soon after His ascension. This is demonstrated most perfectly in Christ’s Olivet discourse (Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21) and the chapters leading up to it (Matthew 21-23), where Jesus predicts 2 significant events will happen. The first will be that great woes will fall upon the Jewish people for not correctly stewarding the Old Covenant’s mysteries. The apostate Jews will be removed from their station to make way for Jesus’ new bride, the Church, which is made up of Jews and Gentiles who follow Christ.
The second cataclysmic event Jesus prophesied was the end of the Old Covenant order. This means with His coming, the Jerusalem temple would be destroyed, the Levitical priesthood would be severed, the sacrificial system ended, the festivals repealed, and everything existing within the Old Covenant that served as a type and shadow for the coming of Jesus would be moved from the mantle to the museum. All of this would be done to make way for Jesus’ end-time Kingdom, manifesting on earth through the Church as He reigns over it at the right hand of God in heaven. This Kingdom, unlike the one of old, would conquer the world that Adam lost and, through the true and better Adam, deliver back to God a world that is finally and fully filled with worshippers. Jesus predicted this Kingdom would be taken away from the apostate Jews and given to the bride of Christ (Matthew 21:43). He indicated that these earth-shattering events would happen within a single generation (Matthew 24:34). And all throughout that forty-year window of time, as the downfall of the Old Kingdom and the rise of the New is happening, Jesus would provide incredible evidentiary signs and wonders to showcase the truthfulness of His claims.
In previous episodes and blogs, we outlined those Olivet signs and wonders and demonstrated how they do not prove a future eschaton but confirm to His disciples what He said. Again, these were near-term events that actually happened in the disciple’s lifetime and would have been a source of incredible comfort and assurance to them as they walked through these events. The signs Jesus gave them to be on the lookout for were the rise of false messiahs in Judah, the uptick in wars and rumors of wars in the ordinarily peaceful Roman Empire (Pax Romana), a marked increase in large earthquakes and famines, a blistering period of persecutions that Jesus called “tribulations,” “signs of the times” (which included a moral collapse of the Judean people, a period of great evangelism throughout the Roman world, and a great apostasy from increased tortures and persecution), an abomination of desolation in the Jerusalem temple before it was destroyed, a period of great tribulations for the Christians just before Jerusalem was destroyed, a judgment coming of Christ to bring God’s wrath upon the apostate city and temple through the Roman armies (Part 1 and Part 2), and apocalyptic signs and wonders in the heavens to confirm what Jesus was saying. These teachings from Christ in the Gospels encapsulate the first level of New Testament Eschatology that is built upon the witness of Moses and the Prophets.
The Second Floor: The Eschatology of Acts
After constructing a foundation for eschatology from the Old Testament and the first story that was given to us by Christ in the Gospels, we have now made our way up the staircase to the second story of our end-times building, which is provided by Luke in the book of Acts. While many do not think of Acts as an eschatological book, it is the only book in the New Testament that details the earliest days of the Christian Church. And in that sense, it is critical to confirm whether we have understood the Old Testament passages and Jesus rightly.
Think about it like this, a derelict builder may construct a shoddy foundation, with a piss-poor, jerry-rigged first floor, without too many people noticing. The building stands, its flaws can be covered up a bit, and many uninformed consumers will jump on the discounted price, being none-the-wiser. But, the higher a building goes, the more exacerbated foundation-level issues will become. An inconspicuous error on the ground floor of a building, every cockeyed brick or wonky beam, will become a catastrophe on a higher level (as anyone who has ever played Jinga can attest). In this way, the higher floors confirm a foundation’s trustworthiness and faithfulness. This is precisely what the book of Acts does for the eschatology we have been teaching. It proves that we have understood the Old Testament correctly and that Jesus’ prophecies were coming true in the time frame that He has given.
For instance, when it comes to Acts confirming the eschatology of the Old Testament, the book gives several fascinating details. It begins with Jesus going up to heaven with the clouds, fulfilling Daniel 7. Jesus also tells His disciples that He has all authority in fulfillment of Psalm 2 and that His disciples are to take His Kingdom to the ends of the earth, fulfilling Daniel 2, Isaiah 9, and Zechariah 7. We also saw how the coming of the Holy Spirit mirrored God’s coming on Sinai, how speaking in tongues reverses the curse of Babel, and how prophecies like Joel 2 were fulfilled before the onlooking Jerusalem crowd’s eyes at Pentecost. This is a brief sketch, but it does demonstrate how the book confirms a near-term first-century inauguration of the final eschaton.
In the same way, the book of Acts confirms many of the details that Jesus prophesied in the Olivet Discourse and the Gospels.
Read More
Related Posts: -
How Do Our Kids Stay Christian?
Worship of God in the church is an act of faith. Worship and faith belong to children, and when these characterize their lives, starting at the smallest age, it is theirs for life. Worship of God in the church is not something that you graduate into once you mature, but the place where God forms the spiritual habits of even his littlest saints.
How do our kids stay Christian? Some version of this question has animated both scholarly and pastoral discussion over the last several years, especially as the great dechurching marches on unabated. This is not merely an academic question, but one that has kept younger parents anxious as they watch more and more of their peers turn away from the faith.
Of course, it is the Holy Spirit sovereignly acting as he wills that keeps people abiding in Christ. And of course, God who ordains the salvation of his children has also ordained the regular means of bringing about that salvation, specifically the word, sacraments, and prayer. But how should the church approach those gifts in regards to the discipleship of its children? And what steps can the church take to maintain its children’s faithfulness as they grow into adulthood?
Several recent works have provided invaluable insight into this dilemma, the most important of which is Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion to the Next Generation (2021) by Amy Adamczyk and Christian Smith. Adamczyk and Smith looked at the religious landscape of North America over the last few decades and came to a simple conclusion: the communities that were most effective at handing down their religion were those that prioritized faith in the family home.
That might not sound earth-shattering, but it corroborated decades of sociological research showing that things like Sunday School, youth group, VBS, Christian camps, confirmation, and youth conferences are either minimally consequential to the maintenance of a child’s faith or in some cases actually counterproductive. Sociologists of religion have known for some time that these programs, while they feel nice, are led by earnest people, and have some anecdotal success stories, are ineffective for passing along the Christian faith. The British educational reformer Charlotte Mason commented in Parents and Children (1897) that Sunday School, then a recent innovation, was a necessary evil. Sunday School was created for parents who were unable to do their “first duty” of instructing their children in the faith and needed a substitute to step into that role for them. The church embracing this model led to decline in faith transmission.
Lyman Stone at the Institute for Family Studies recently demonstrated that secularization begins at home. This was also shown in a 2017 Lifeway study, by Stephen Bullivant in Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America (2023), and by Jim Davis and Michael Graham in The Great Dechurching (2023). If kids born to Christian parents are to grow up Christian, they need to be raised as Christians by their parents. All of these books and resources provide parenting guidance. But where does this leave the church?
If secularization begins at home and parental investment is the primary indicator of a child’s future faith, what should the church do? How should it prioritize its resources, especially when many churches heavily invest in programs that, frankly, are ineffective in producing disciples?
Authoritative Parenting
Parents are far-and-away the greatest influence on children’s faith development and retention. Churches should overwhelmingly prioritize in their strategies and resource-allocation (i.e. staffing, programs, volunteer focus) reaching and discipling parents to raise godly children. This is, after all, what parenting fundamentally is: fathers and mothers teaching their children to grow in maturity as they imitate their parents who, in turn, are imitating Jesus.
It’s critical that parents teach the Bible and catechize their children in the articles of the faith, of course, but alone this is insufficient. Christianity is taught, not caught, but how it is taught affects whether kids hold onto it. Parents who successfully inculcate steadfast faith and love of God joyfully demonstrate the importance of their own faith on a daily basis.
Is the faith of parents sincere? Do they value and talk about their faith? Does it visibly inform their decisions? Does faith characterize their regular, daily behavior and conversations, or is it compartmentalized to worship services and being around church people? Do they acknowledge their shortcomings without hypocrisy? Do parents clearly love God? Do they delight in Jesus?
Adamczyk and Smith found parents whose faith is the warp and woof of their lives are the parents who pass along that faith. After all, that concept of a life of faith is what God commands in the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9): The words of God will be on your heart, and you shall diligently teach them to your kids, talking about them around the house, when you’re in the car, when you’re getting ready for the day and preparing to go to bed. When kids truly believe that faith matters for their parents, they believe it should matter to them.
The danger for children is parents who believe and either don’t expect anything of their kids on the one hand, or are tyrannical and overbearing about it on the other. Adamczyk and Smith discovered that an authoritative parenting style is most effective at raising children to faithful maturity. This approach maintains high expectations for kids, but in a home and parental relationship that can be honestly described as “warm” rather than rule or discipline-oriented. Being loosie-goosey (they’ll figure out and make faith their own) or overbearing are equally damaging to a child’s faith. As Anthony Bradley is fond of pointing out, kids don’t rebel against joy.
This is what Davis and Graham found in The Great Dechurching. The kids who held onto their faith were able to have conversations with their parents about faith that were sincere (the parents knew their faith and believed it) and humble (the parents were confident, not self-focused, defensive, or belligerent about the kids’ questions and hesitations about the faith). Parents don’t need to be geniuses or theologians, but should know what they believe, believe it, and be confidently humble.
The church can prioritize childhood discipleship first by encouraging parents to take the airplane-oxygen mask approach. Are parents being taught the faith so that they may have something to believe in themselves? Are parents being encouraged to be diligent in their own discipleship? Are they being given tools to teach and catechize their own children? Are they showing their kids that faith and worship matter into adulthood, not just as concepts, but as committed practices?
Second, is the church providing not only content to parents, but models? Throughout the New Testament the leaders of the church are exhorted to model following Jesus to their congregations. Parenting style is a non-negotiable requirement on pastoral and elder job descriptions. Are the leaders of the church modeling sincere, confident, and humble discussions of the faith? A joyous approach to kids? If the pastors and elders of the church are not doing this, the parents in the church will struggle to as well. Leaders need to model to parents, especially to fathers, warmth, firmness, joy, and patience and take proactive steps to teach that.
Third, is the church encouraging the formation of community and friendships among the adults of the church? Doing this helps ensure that faith is seen as a joyous (friendship!) part of life, not a burden. It provides a community to help encourage one another (keep that oxygen mask on) and communicates to kids that their parents take their own discipleship seriously. If parents take their own discipleship seriously, their kids will as well.
Read More
Related Posts: