It will take great courage to break the left’s cultural taboos and take the heat for it. A society conditioned by Newspeak will be scandalized by the thoughtcrime of plain-spoken truth. The man who says things outside the Overton window will take the first arrows. He may sacrifice his reputation on the altar of honesty but will inspire others to add their voices. The more they speak, their accumulated voices move the Overton window, which reduces the cost for each new voice that enters their ranks.

The Overton window can shift when a motivated minority of influential voices are committed to speaking boldly on issues they care about.
The Overton Window is named after political analyst Joseph Overton, who noticed that public approval or disapproval drives policy. It represents what is generally believed to be right or wrong. At one time, our shared morality was derived from the Bible, which also tells us what happens when people reject it. They get the book of Judges, where “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 21:25). In other words, biblical morality becomes mob morality. The social pressure to conform to mob morality is a big part of what many now call the Overton window.
The Overton window determines that some ideas are “mainstream” but other ideas are “extreme.” Ethics aren’t based on objective standards, it’s a popularity contest. And it’s fickle. Twenty years ago, supporting “gay marriage” was an extreme position, but it’s considered mainstream. The shift has been so dramatic that it’s considered extreme to oppose it. Social pressure is its animating force. Another example is mutilating the genitals of children. This was once a barbaric practice that only happened in third-world countries. Today, it’s done in the suburbs and covered by health insurance.
Labels are powerful. Most people want to be considered reasonable and moderate. No one wants to be an “extremist,” a “radical,” or an “alarmist.” Derogatory labels like these are effective tools in the hands of the thought police that cause people to feel shame for holding unfashionable views. Shame can drive public opinion, leading people to self-censor or adapt their views, lest they be cast into the outer darkness with the rest of the “deplorables.”
Moving the Overton Window
Since the Overton Window is a sociological phenomenon, no one directly controls it and everyone participates in it. That’s good news. Even better, it’s not a democracy. The majority doesn’t move the Overton window, the Overton window moves them. The window itself is moved by whoever has the courage and influence to move it in their direction. In recent weeks, we’ve seen how a motivated minority with a compelling message can make a difference.
For example, for over a year now, pearl-clutching and hang-wringing regime evangelicals have policed the Overton window with warnings about how “Christian Nationalism” will destroy our gospel witness in the public square. Pastor Doug Wilson, considered a chief proponent of Christian Nationalism (though he prefers to speak of “mere Christendom”), remains unmoved by the pressure to keep silent about Christ’s Lordship over government. 
Wilson’s affable demeanor combined with his reasonable articulation of biblical principles has earned him a significant following of ordinary Christians who are hungry for bold leadership. Wilson’s recent appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show was captioned in a tweet that said, “Pastor Doug Wilson is the Christian Nationalist they warned you about.” In less than 24 hours, this tweet gained over 4.6 million views. Wilson’s joyful courage is opening the Overton window to the right and forcing a needed debate about how Christian political engagement in the modern world. 
To give another example, Dusty Deevers was an obscure, Baptist pastor in Oklahoma who had the guts to defy the rhetorical overlords and move the window to the right. He advocated for Christian positions that are considered “controversial” because the Overton window deems them unacceptable. What were these controversial views? He believes abortion is murder and mothers who abort their children should be prosecuted as criminals, not treated as “second victims.” He also believes pornography is a social disaster that destroys marriages and increases sex addiction, human trafficking, and child exploitation.
Deevers had the nerve to campaign precisely on these issues and won a state senate seat. He then had the gall to keep his campaign promise by introducing legislation to outlaw pornography and abolish abortion in his state. Predictably, the outrage machine fired up, inviting derisive coverage from Rolling Stone and a mocking monologue from Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon.
This press coverage was an unexpected gift, however, because it forced a public debate that thrust his local message into a national debate. He exposed the harmful and well-documented effects of pornography. Videos of women smiling, dancing around, and celebrating their abortions gained a lot of traction. They aren’t victims. They are celebrating the murder of their own children. Some pro-life organizations were exposed for hypocritically lobbying against legislation that would abolish abortion. Deevers’ strategy to “go on the offense” highlighted wicked practices and exposed his detractors for defending them. His plain-spoken courage catapulted his long-shot candidacy to victory and gave his message national exposure that didn’t cost him a dime.
Since the Overton window can be pried open when a motivated minority of outspoken voices articulate an important message, what’s preventing us from doing it? This isn’t as impossible as it sounds.
Christians and the Overton Window
In public discourse, Christians easily fall into the trap of letting the Overton window “frame” how issues are presented. For example, every discussion of homosexuality must include some reference to how homosexuals were made in God’s image, though no discussion of any other sin requires such qualification.
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Written by Ryan M. McGraw |
Monday, August 19, 2024
A worldwide church is a clear indicator that the Seed of the woman has crushed the serpent’s head, which should encourage us to pray and persevere in a world that is hostile to Christ and his gospel. Second, Paul told the church in Rome that “the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Rom. 16:20). This statement takes Christ’s victory over Satan from the end of Genesis 3:15 and combines it with the separation of the woman’s seed and the serpent’s seed in the middle. Christ gained victory over sin, death, and Satan for his people, and his people share in his victory over Satan. Through sin, Satan was our “father,” and when we sinned we did his will instead of God’s (John 8:44). Friendship with the world, the flesh, and the devil is enmity with God (James 4:4).

The Covenant of Grace
Our friendships say a lot about who we are. For example, the righteous should choose their friends carefully, knowing that the ways of the wicked lead them astray (Prov. 12:26). Friendships can make or break people, shaping who we are and making us better or worse for the experience. We tend to become like our friends, and our friends become like us. The covenant of grace is about making enemies with sin and Satan, and restoring friendship with God and his people, making us ultimately like Christ, who laid down his life for his friends (John 15:13).
Most of the Bible is about the covenant of grace, and the covenant of grace is about Christ (the Son). Westminster Larger Catechism 31 says, “The covenant of grace was made with Christ as the second Adam, and in him with all the elect as his seed.”1 We need a better representative than Adam; we need new hearts, and we need to be like God. Put differently, we need Jesus to be our Savior, the Spirit to dwell in our hearts, and God to be our Father. Genesis 3:15 through Revelation 22 is a single story about how God does this great work. Genesis 3:15 gives us the basic ideas of the covenant of grace, serving as a gateway into the rest of the Bible, making it a key to seeing the breathtaking unity of Scripture. This may be both the most basic and most blessed verse on covenant theology in the Bible. To understand Genesis 3:15, we need to get oriented to who’s who.
The text says,
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
There are three contrasts in this text: the woman and the serpent, the Seed and the serpent, and the Seed and the seed.2 “Offspring” in the ESV and “seed” in my translation mean the same thing here. First, beginning where the problem started, Eve fell into sin by making friendship with the serpent and eating the forbidden fruit. God would put an end to this alliance by putting “enmity” between the serpent and her, breaking her friendship with sin and Satan. “Enmity,” like the word “enemy,” means the opposite of friendship. By sinning, Eve acted in enmity toward God, treating Satan as her friend, but God would break this relationship.
Second, skipping to the end for a moment, the serpent would crush the Seed’s heel, while the Seed would crush the serpent’s head. Translating the idea here can be tricky, but “bruise” is a bit weak. “Crush” ups the stakes a bit more appropriately. The Seed is singular, and he singularly suffers and undoes the curse of sin that the serpent brought on humanity. Since the serpent would crush the Seed’s heel but have his head crushed, the serpent gets the harsher outcome of the encounter. Third, in the middle of the verse the seed is also plural, pitting Satan’s (or the serpent’s) people against the woman’s people. This sets the pattern for the division of nations in Genesis, pitting the seed of the woman against the seed of the serpent. Just as the church is associated with Christ, so the world is associated with Satan. This is where the notorious ten chapters of genealogy in 1 Chronicles becomes relevant. Chronicles, and other places in the Bible, mark off the serpent’s seed from the woman’s seed, which marks the division between the world and the church. Though sacraments come later in the story, they will point to the Son saving the seed, following the outline established in this verse. So how does Genesis 3:15 put the covenant of grace in a nutshell? When God saves sinners, he ends our alliance with sin and Satan, like he did with Eve.
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Abraham Kuyper didn’t like the depraved Dutch political system, and so, he did something about it….He started a new political party. He united different groups. He started newspapers, a college, and eventually became the Prime Minister. We can learn a lot from seeing somebody not just being a theorist but an actual doer.

“Christians should be known for what they are for rather than what they are against” is about as bad as other folk-Christianity sayings like “God helps those who help themselves.”
Sometime I think “winsome” is a get-out-of-jail free card that releases the Christian. Folks like Luther and Kuyper were intense, often a little rude and a bit bombastic, but everyone knew exactly where they stood. Having drawn their lines in the sand they brought about actual change because there was a clear call to action. Indeed, we all need to draw lines. Without a clear target we will miss every-time.
Friendship with the world is enmity with God (and, though you might not be a spiritual “adulterer” fornicating with the spirit of the age and wokeism, many of us are guilty of “innocent flirting” by allowing the woke masses to rub up against us, and instead of holding up our wedding rings we instead offer up a little smile and giggle with passive-approval).
Abraham Kuyper didn’t like the depraved Dutch political system, and so, he did something about it. Not only did he do something about it, but he was pro active. He started a new political party. He united different groups. He started newspapers, a college, and eventually became the Prime Minister. Kuyper was very clear with his program, in fact, he wrote a book that outlined in detail his program. I share a selection from it here because:
1. We can learn a lot from seeing somebody not just being a theorist but an actual doer.
2. We see that his situation was not much unlike our own.
3. He didn’t cave to the myth or “winsome” and failed to repeat the tired old phrase “Christians should be known for what they are for rather than what they are against.”
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