If you want a Christian culture, forget American politics. That is as fruitful as drowning yourself under a waterfall. Instead, if you wish for Massachusetts, California, Washington, Nevada, Montana, and all the rest of these fifty states, to bow the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ, then put down your politics, lay down your mail-in ballots, and grab a shovel. We have work to do! 

Paddling Up the Niagara
The neurotic optimism accompanying the American quadrennial election cycle seems as cockamamie and asinine to me as a man attempting to ride his homemade rowboat up the Niagara Falls. With a horde of eager tourists staring on in pure bewilderment, picture the hapless virtuoso of absurdity, paddling with the finesse of a drunken lifeguard, flapping as frantically against the currents as a penguin in a cheer competition, nearing the aquatic torrent of a three thousand ton wall of falling water, thinking he could scale it with such misplaced bravado, only to be consumed by the avalanche of its fury.
Every four years, we are invited into the same cultural absurdity. Each election, we are presented with a new brand of idealogue who will bring about the “Change We Can Believe In,” who will “Make America Great Again,” and who will help us all “Build Back Better.” Yet, like the magnificent fool, paddling with a boundless reservoir of natural stupidity, change, American greatness, and cultural betterment never come.
The reason for this could not be any more obvious. We were not meant to rowboat against the currents to travel up waterfalls in the same way culture does not change from a top-down point of view. More simply, politics flow downstream of culture; culture is downstream of the family, and the definition of insanity would be for the American people to get trapped in an endless cycle of mindless optimism, thinking: “Well… This candidate will be different.”
But, if there is one thing the American people are good at; they are incomparably resilient. Against all evidence to the contrary, over and against everything we have seen and experienced, every political season, we dutifully don our little row boats once more, falling for the same old lines, expecting this time it will all be different. But it isn’t. Each time we come underneath the mountain of watery lies; however, all we have done is drown ourselves in blind political positivism once again. My hope in this article is for us to stop getting wet and to change our perspective.
Today, I would like to paint a different picture of how to make America great again. I want to posit real change that you and I can believe in. And I want to give us all a robust Christian plan for when America eventually crumbles, enabling us to truly build it back better. If all that sounds good and lovely, then onward, Christian soldiers!
Changing Our Perspective
When the faithful pull back the societal curtains to survey the smorgasbord of today’s cultural malaise, feelings of disgust, confusion, and shock inevitably rise to the fore. If this is not happening, then stop what you are doing and check your pulse. With that out of the way, it is normal for Christians to feel like aliens in this God-forsaken land. For many of us, and by “the many,” I mean those who were not born yesterday, we remember the good old days (just a few years ago) when girls could not have penises, when teenagers at least needed parental consent before they could murder their babies in utero, and where it was biologically impossible for men to have periods and to get pregnant. Apparently, the grown-ups are now in charge, and that “reality” is on full and morbid display.
Clinging to such antiquated “myths” and apparent “fables” these days will land you in the same company as “flat-earthers” and “science deniers,” whatever that means. And yet, the same body politic viewing us as “moral dinosaurs” are the same ilk beckoning us to participate in their futile system. A system that has produced both Democrats and Republicans (ad nasuem) that fill the highest levels of power but without any perceivable change we can believe in.
This is because top-down politics do not work. Politicians are not the makers of culture; they are the products of culture. We have corrupt leaders because we are an evil people and not the other way around.
We must understand that the problems ailing this society run much deeper than a ballot box. If we want to change the world, this nation included, we need a plan that runs much deeper than the superficial two-party system we have been offered. We must also realize that we live in a microwave culture that is no longer patient enough to wait for the brisket on the smoker. We want our change to happen yesterday and can barely stomach a solution that has to be worked out over decades. Yet, this is precisely how we got here, refusing to engage this rotting culture for a hundred years while it willingly marinates slowly in its own skubalon.
We need a bottom-up, Biblical approach with the long view in mind.
A Nine-Step Biblical Approach
Step 1: The Conversion of Sinners
While the cultural Marxists continue to goad us into joining the next half-baked revolution, Christians must plod along faithfully and locally, sharing the Gospel with anyone and everyone who will listen (Acts 1:8). We do not march into the halls of power and demand anything from our pagan overlords… At least not initially. We humbly labor wherever we are so that men and women will know Jesus, which is precisely the model we see in the book of Acts. Whenever the faithful are parachuted into a world where exactly no one else around them has a Biblical worldview, the first step is always to declare the Gospel. Some will reject that message. Others will be converted by that message. But, our job is to preach it boldly, lovingly, truthfully, forcefully, and joyfully.
If we want a Christian culture, we must begin with making Christians.
Step 2: The Discipling of Believers
After someone is converted, we do not notch our Big-Eva Billy Graham-sized belts, plastering our conversion numbers on an 8k gigascreen, so that an overstuffed room full of mega-church consumers can be entertained. Unlike Lady Gaga and many in evangelicalism, we are not in it for the “applause” of men but for the obedience of God. Instead of letting new converts slip through the proverbial cracks, ill-equipped and unprepared for the Christian life, we have been commanded to disciple them. This means baptizing new believers and their children into the local, visible church, and teaching them what it means to obey Jesus in every aspect of their life (Matthew 28:18-20).
If we want a Christian culture, we must teach believers how to live like Christians.
Excursus: The Benefit of One and Two
If the first two steps (mentioned above) were undertaken with any degree of regularity, we would not be in our current predicament.
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We can be thankful in trying circumstances because we are being pruned to bear more fruit. The Lord is removing the dross and refining the gold. We can be thankful in trying circumstances because they serve as a stage on which the deliverance and provision of God’s grace in Christ may be displayed in our lives.

Often, the most basic of God’s commands are the hardest for us to obey. We may ask ourselves whether or not we would have the faith to offer up a child to God—as Abraham did when he was called to offer up Isaac—while never really stopping to ask ourselves whether or not we have the faith to obey the most basic new covenant commands.
Take, for instance, Paul’s statement in 1 Thess. 5:18:
Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you all.
When we consider such a command, we must ask ourselves the following questions: Am I thankful in all circumstances? What about when times are difficult? What about when I have experienced some particular trial? The Lord commands us to “count it all joy when we fall into various trials” (see James 1:2). How can I be thankful and joyful in the midst of a painful trial? The answer, of course, is found in all that the Scriptures teach us about trials. Here are ten reasons Christians can be thankful in trying circumstances:

We can be thankful in trying circumstances because we deserve eternal judgment and whatever we are experiencing short of that is a mercy.
We can be thankful in tryingcircumstances precisely because we have already been redeemed by Christ, blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, and sealed with the Spirit until the possession of the eternal inheritance.

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The same word is used in Titus 1:3, “And at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior.” Paul’s emphasis on this metaphor shows its importance for understanding the nature of ministry as a stewardship. Modern readers have a grasp on the meaning in the English, but to truly understand the text one must examine what it meant to Timothy. 

There are many metaphors for the pastor in the New Testament. He is compared to a shepherd, farmer, soldier, and a workmen to note a few. One often overlooked metaphor is the pastor as steward. The New Testament uses metaphors because they are a powerful communication tool that illicit a visual response in the readers mind and make a simple connection to clarify and sharpen the thing to which they are compared. The image not only invokes information but emotion.
Although, there are many metaphors in the pastoral epistles, I would argue the controlling or dominating picture is the estate stewardship metaphor. Paul states his purpose and his occasion in 1 Timothy 3:14, “I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of truth.” Paul’s reason for writing is that he is concerned he may be delayed in coming to see Timothy and needs to make Timothy aware of what the church should be doing at Ephesus. The purpose of the letter is to stand in place of Paul himself to provide instruction how people are to behave in God’s house.
It is the introduction of this metaphor, the church as God’s household, that would strike the original reader. Modern households are anything but structured or uniformed, but first-century households conformed to strict rules according to the household code. Specifically, Paul is communicating specific instructions as one in authority to a subordinate.
The Apostle Paul was writing to Timothy to entrust a deposit that Timothy was then to steward according to the instructions of the letter. This stewardship language of “entrust” is used multiple times in Pauls’ epistles.
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