A new book by American evangelical writer Aaron Renn looks at similar themes: Life in the Negative World (Zondervan, 2024). He uses differing terminology as he also looks at these three periods: -the positive world (1964-1994)-the neutral world (1994-2014) -the negative world (2014-present) (pp. 6-7). One can quibble about the dating, but the three periods correspond to what I mentioned above: a generally pro-Christian world; a world somewhat indifferent to the faith; and a period which is mainly hostile to it. He says of the present period: “For the first time in the history of our country, orthodox Christianity is viewed negatively by secular society, especially by its elite domains.” (xv)

If you are an older person raised in the West – as I am – you will have lived through three different periods: Christian, post-Christian, and anti-Christian. You would have been born in a largely Christian period, in which most folks – even if they were not actually Christian themselves – shared and believed in biblical truths and values. Even the institutions such as education, the media, politics, and business more or less reflected the Christian worldview.
Then you moved to the next phase where Christianity began to have less and less influence and clout in society. Sure, most folks still paid lip service to Christianity, but it increasingly played less of an important role in the lives of more and more people.
And then we have life in the West today where Christians have become the new counterculture. Much of society and its institutions have declared war on the church and the people of God. Hostility to Christians is now found everywhere and is simply getting worse.
But here is a major problem for believers today – at least older ones. Many of us still might think that we are back in the first, or at least, second period. So we think the sorts of things we did back then will work just fine today. But not necessarily. We can no longer find a Christian consensus. We can no longer count on institutions to back us up.
If we go to a large shop or grocery store it will more than likely be filled with pro-homosexual material or celebrate Islamic holy days – but not Christian ones. Governments will increasingly be enacting legislation and laws which are hostile to Christianity, be it forcing Christian schools to hire non-Christian staff, forcing workers to affirm all sorts of immoral lifestyles, or making workers attend various DEI and woke training (propaganda) sessions – and that just for starters.
The mainstream media of course is now almost entirely at odds with biblical Christianity, never missing an opportunity to attack the faith while promoting every other worldview and lifestyle. Popular culture largely sneers at and mocks Christian concerns while promoting diabolical agendas. The list goes on…
Of course the secularisation and de-Christianisation of the West started much earlier than when you and I were born. It has been happening for a number of centuries now. But ideas take a while to filter down into everyday culture, and now we are feeling the impact of modernism, the Enlightenment, and related intellectual movements.
A new book by American evangelical writer Aaron Renn looks at similar themes: Life in the Negative World (Zondervan, 2024). He uses differing terminology as he also looks at these three periods:
-the positive world (1964-1994)-the neutral world (1994-2014)-the negative world (2014-present) (pp. 6-7)
One can quibble about the dating, but the three periods correspond to what I mentioned above: a generally pro-Christian world; a world somewhat indifferent to the faith; and a period which is mainly hostile to it. He says of the present period: “For the first time in the history of our country, orthodox Christianity is viewed negatively by secular society, especially by its elite domains.” (xv)
The whole point then is to ask ourselves: how do we do mission and represent God in such a changed – and changing – situation? How do we be salt and light in this new arrangement? How can we stay true to our Lord in this increasingly hostile environment?
Like any biblical believer would insist, Renn does not think we can or should change the message. But we may need to change the method and the means of presenting this unchanging message to a changing culture.
Of course many Christians have thought about such matters of late. And Renn admits to having no easy and clear answers here. But he does call us to think and pray much more carefully about how we are to proceed in the days ahead. He looks briefly at some of the causes for the changes in the West, but then – and more importantly – suggests ways to respond.
He has three sections of the book looking at three areas that we need to respond in: the personal, the institutional, and the missional.
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Written by Fred G. Zaspel |
Monday, June 19, 2023
Because of the sinfulness of the human heart the old covenant could not bring about the righteousness it commanded, so God promised a new covenant that would provide both obedience from the heart and forgiveness for sin. What the law could not accomplish, God has accomplished in us through Christ. Led by his Spirit we have a new freedom from sin and a new enablement in overcoming it (Rom. 8:1–15). 

Having examined J. Gresham Machen’s arguments in chapter two of Christianity and Liberalism, we now turn to reflect on the implications this seminal work has for our own time. While the old modernism is considered dead today, its effects remain. This matter of doctrinal indifferentism in particular has come to characterize much of professed Christianity, even evangelical Christianity. Popular contemporary Christian songs as well as preaching passionately plead that “just Jesus,” or perhaps “the cross,” is all that is important, not doctrines and not our interpretations.[1] The rhetoric has a certain attraction, and it conveys the happy sentiment that our fellowship is, after all, in the Lord Jesus Christ. But the plea is muddle-headed, for as soon as we ask, “Who is Jesus?” or “Why does he matter?” or “Why is the cross important?” we are into Christian doctrine—the very thing said to be unnecessary. Apart from doctrine and clear biblical interpretation, both Jesus and his cross have lost meaning.
Often this indifference to doctrine is just laziness, an aversion to thinking. But the problem goes deeper than ignorance and muddled thinking. The consequences of doctrinal indifference are severe, and much is lost. 
Christian Essentials
The fundamental claim of Christianity is that it is a revelation from God. God has revealed himself and his saving purpose, and this revelation is written for us in Scripture. This revelation—this message—is true, and it is every Christian’s responsibility to propagate this truth to others. This “gospel” is to make its way throughout the entire world not by the sword but by word and witness, both spoken and written. Christianity has, first and foremost, a message to be proclaimed, and God’s kingdom makes its saving advance to the nations by this message. 
Machen sums up his argument in chapter two in these terms exactly. He cites the words of the risen Jesus, who said just before his ascension, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). This commission of Jesus to his followers shapes the character of Christianity as founded on a message. “Christianity is based, then, upon an account of something that happened, and the Christian worker is primarily a witness.” From the beginning Christianity has been “a campaign of witnessing,”[2] and the first Christians understood themselves as entrusted with a message. The book of Acts records for us the first stages of this witnessing campaign, and the New Testament epistles are given to the same purpose—the proclamation and exposition of this message.
The Christian obligation to “contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) reflects this conviction perhaps more pointedly, even polemically. The Lord Jesus is God’s supreme self-revelation (John 1:1; Heb. 1:1–3; cf. Matt. 17:5; John 7:16; 14:24), and he entrusted this revelation to his apostles (John 14:24–26; 16:12–15; 17:4–8) who by his Spirit received “all truth” (John 16:13; cf. 15:26–27). The word of the apostles is the message from Christ that the world must receive and believe (John 17:8, 18, 20). The apostles, in turn, claim that their message from the Lord Jesus (e.g., 1 Cor. 14:37; 2 Thess. 2:15; 3:6; 1 Pet. 1:12; cf. Eph. 2:20) has been entrusted to the church “once for all” to be proclaimed, preserved, and defended at all costs (cf. 1 Tim. 3:15; 6:20; 2 Tim. 2:2; Jude 3). In short, Christianity is characterized as essentially a doctrinal religion. And its ministers are therefore commanded to devote themselves “to teaching” (1 Tim. 4:13), to “keep a close watch on . . . the teaching” (1 Tim. 4:16), and to give diligence to “rightly handle the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).  
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You will never obtain anything in this world more valuable than what you lose by forfeiting your soul. Yet, like a madman who has escaped from the asylum, we scour the middle of the freeway looking for lost pennies. What are these compared with our very lives? What are a few gold coins compared to our souls? The world and all its desires are dust, rotten trash, a loathsome disease compared to riches you already possess by virtue of being a creature with a soul.

One great feature of modernity, from Satan’s standpoint, is the sheer rejection of the soul. We live in a world stupefied by the material. Ask ten people on the street about their souls — if they don’t wonder aloud, “What does this babbler wish to say?” (Acts 17:18), they will tell you that if they do have a soul, they have not thought much about it. Even ancient pagan philosophers wrote dense treatises on the soul, but the mass of men today live as though they are soulless. And yet these same people investigate the silliest things under the sun. If anything is worth thought, is it not your soul? “Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22).
Yet perhaps this treacherous thoughtlessness is not so novel. John Bunyan (1628–1688) could plaster this over our age as well as his:
[The soul] is neglected to amazement, and that by the most of men; yea, who is there of the many thousands that sit daily under the sound of the gospel that are concerned, heartily concerned, about the salvation of their souls? — that is, concerned, I say, as the nature of the thing requireth. If ever a lamentation was fit to be taken up in this age about, for, or concerning anything, it is about, for, and concerning the horrid neglect that everywhere puts forth itself with reference to salvation. (The Greatness of the Soul, 105)
Hell is being filled not so much with a shaking fist as with a shrug. How little thought, how little attention, how little time or effort is paid to eternity. Many a sinner today thinks thoughts of his everlasting soul as deep as his belly button. His neglect offends both God and his own well-being — he suicides the immortal part of him by his thoughtlessness. If Jesus’s question was needed then, it is needed all the more now. Dip it in fire, carve it in granite, engrave it upon the conscience: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?” (Mark 8:36–37).
Three Lessons on the Soul
Do not pass on from his question. Answer it. What does it profit you to amass all this world has to offer you — if the genie emerged to grant your deepest wishes — if in the receiving you let slip your soul? Too many live for the world and whisper, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God will say to him on that dark day of judgment, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you” (Luke 12:19–20). If your soul be lost, all is lost, for you are lost.
Adrift in a naturalistic and atheistic West, you may need help considering the immaterial and immortal self. Satan the destroyer blinds man to the glory of Christ, but also to the glory of souls. Many do not know Jesus and do not want to know Jesus because they do not know what a soul is and what it means for it to be lost. Dear reader, do you know what it is to possess a soul? Do you know what it is to lose it? Consider then your own soul’s importance through three comparisons.
1. Your soul is greater than safety.
We need to study this before we are tested on it: your soul is worth any suffering to keep.
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