Written by Harry J. Monroe, Jr. |
Thursday, February 16, 2023
Over the last 50 years, the evangelical churches have largely taken one of two reactive approaches to the secularization of American society. One has involved a “seeker sensitive” mentality that emphasized the use of marketing techniques to present a vision of church that would be palatable to the felt needs of our unchurched neighbors. While for decades those promoting these church growth techniques claimed that only the methods, not the message, changed, almost anyone surveying the course of this history can see that they modified the message itself in significant ways, too often creating the result of a “Christless Christianity.” The other evangelical approach was a more politically oriented one making a strange case for “taking back America.”

Christian media outlets are awash with the news that Jesus will have a Super Bowl ad this year. The ad furthers a campaign designed to let America know that Jesus “gets us.” In order to get across that message, its designers created a modified version of qualities emphasizing those aspects of Jesus’ life that most of our secular neighbors would find agreeable. He was a migrant who suffered poverty and other forms of privation while also enduring racism. That he bore such griefs means that he empathizes with all of us who carry similar loads. Thus, he gets us. There is no mention of allegedly controversial notions that he was the Son of God or died bearing the punishment of people’s sins.
Reports indicate that those bankrolling this cause have committed $1 billion over 3 years. When people whom I would on many things agree with have shown their sincerity by giving so benevolently of their treasure, one can have no pleasure in disagreeing with them, but here goes:
It won’t work. And, if it does work, it will be a bad thing.
Promoters of the campaign, particularly as it regards placement of an ad during America’s seminal religious event (the Super Bowl), embrace hope in the presentation of a likable Jesus to a culture that is sprinting away from organized religious belief. It would seem relevant that in the New Testament the apostles faced a similarly hostile crowd and presented Christ’s claims in an entirely different fashion. Peter announced in the temple precinct in Jerusalem that God raised the One whom they had crucified. Paul told the Corinthian Christians that their leaders had “crucified the Lord of glory,” and the author of Hebrews, addressing a crisis resulting from a generation of Christians looking to abandon the faith, asserted that God had spoken by the Son, who had created, sustains, and been appointed the heir of all things. Thus, the biblical preachers and writers responded to unbelief by boldly proclaiming the claims of the one being rejected.
Modern evangelicals are riding down a well worn historic path of soft selling a Socinian Savior who can supposedly be believed in by modern Americans.
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McLuhan’s darker pessimistic side gave him reservations about where our great global hookup was taking us. In his mind there were two possible destinations: Christ, or chaos. Toward the end of his life he contemplated how the Apocalypse might reckon with our new lightspeed visual technologies where new tribal chieftains would replace democratic-oriented politicians. 

The doctrine of last things certainly has to reckon with all these things.[1]
The above quote comes from an interesting little paragraph in Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics, “the concluding high point” of four centuries of Dutch Reformed reflection.[2] By “these things,” Bavinck means the technological developments in communication up into the early 20th century. He writes,
“The inventions of the past century—for the purpose of mutual contact, the exercise of community, hearing and seeing things at a great distance—have shrunk distances to a minimum; and it is likely that they are a mere beginning and prophecy of what will be discovered in the centuries ahead.”[3]
The new communication technologies during Bavinck’s life time (1854-1921) included telegraphy, the “wireless,” the telephone, the radio, and cinematography. As early as 1900 enthusiasts were even discussing the possibilities of something called “television.” That Bavinck relates the importance of these inventions to the coming apostacy, the Apocalypse, and the Parousia is . . . well, interesting. Humans have harnessed electricity to see and hear from afar; might this play some part in understanding John’s unique descriptions in his vision (e.g. the image of the beast)?
Bavinck contrasts these all-at-once technologies with the glorious appearance of Christ, an occurrence that includes a series of events: the resurrection of the dead, a meeting in the air, the defeat of Christ’s enemies, and the Judgment. Bavinck says all of this cannot possibly take place in one moment, but will probably happen within a 12-hour or 24-hour time span.[4]
Of course, one is hard pressed to believe that television is required to fulfill the prophecy that every eye shall see Him (Rev. 1:7). Yet while Jesus does not need television (despite what some televangelists might believe), the Beast of Revelation might make good use of it. For that matter, the antichrist might even benefit from the kind of surveillance technologies now being used in places like China.
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The primary means of transforming culture is through the family. Families focused on the three things suggested here will be strong, and our civilization will reflect this standard. We didn’t get to this point in time overnight, and we won’t get out of it overnight. It will take time. In the meantime, the most important thing we can do is be faithful to Biblical truth. 

In 1962, the famous saying, “what comes around goes around,” first appeared in the book Burn, killer, burn. The book is a semi-autobiographical novel about a death row inmate sentenced to 199 years in prison. Later, after being paroled, the former inmate would find himself back in prison having harassed a family member.
Everything we experience is subject to cycles. Creation is ordered around the earth’s four seasons. Life itself is full of a range of joys and sorrows with each passing year. As each new year passes, and with a renewed commitment to losing weight, the time clock begins all over again.egins all over again.
There’s another cycle for those paying attention, and grievance culture’s primary means of promoting this cycle is through the use of media narrative. While it’s challenging to prove nefarious intent, the practice of this emerging cycle is notable.
On the one end, you have the battle to “end racism,” as if that’s possible. This battle grabs headline attention for a season, as every story is about race. This cycle is directly attached to a two-to-four-year election cycle. In a broader sense, however, you can go back to riots of the 90s and those seeking justice for Rodney King. Thirty years later, we have the BLM riots for the justice of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and George Floyd.
On the other end, you have the battle for acceptance for a myriad of LGBTQ rights. In the 90s, you had the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies in the military and the battles for acceptance of same-sex unions. Twenty-five years later, we had the Obergefell decision and same-sex marriage.
What goes around indeed seems to be coming around.
The New Intersection—Transgender Way
As these two groups, Blacks and gays, engage in a battle for the culture’s attention, a new player within the intersectional LGBTQ coalition has emerged—the transgender.
With the entrance of the “T” of the LGBTQ agenda, things have become more confusing. With this new group, previously supported arguments have fallen apart. For example, most gay and lesbian rights advocates promoted being “born that way.” In other words, gay sexuality was not a choice but rather something they were born with. Some went so far as to say, “God made me this way.”
Now, transgender advocates reject the “we are born that way” argument. This new position denies being born a certain way, rejecting any social gender norm. Instead, they favor a purposely ambiguous and arbitrary non-standard existence—whatever that means.
We’ve gone from “gay being the new Black” in the early 2000s to transgender identity removing every clearly defined boundary regarding gender in 2022. Furthermore, anyone daring to address issues of gender in this current cultural milieu will quickly be Mirandized into silence.
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