Thursday, July 26, 2018
Counterculture
Acts 16:20,21
And they brought them to the magistrates, and said, “These men, being Jews, exceedingly trouble our city; and they teach customs which are not lawful for us, being Romans, to receive or observe.”
Many social movements today, and the judicial (and political) systems that give them new life and breadth, create a cultural climate that is hostile to Christianity in ways that we haven’t experienced in the western world for centuries. Some western Christians had even grown accustomed to thinking about their countries as “Christian countries.”
This was evident to me as a child, my formative years were spent in the Anglican church which was a part of our family heritage and tradition. Born as I was around the time of independence, I had an early sensitivity to things national and to rejecting things foreign, or at least British. It did not escape my attention that the Anglican Hymnal, Hyman Ancient and Modern, contained the anthem – God Save the Queen.
By the time I got to high school and rebelled against the family tradition, much to my mother’s great distress, I joined my older cousins at the Baptist church in the city. The Baptist churches in Guyana were established by missionaries of the American Southern Baptist Convention. And there, to my surprise, was included in the Baptist Hymnal, the anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner.
Now, don’t get me wrong, we never sang these anthems, not God Save the Queen not the Star-Spangled Banner, but their presence in a church hymnal testified to the way those churches saw the intertwining of their faith and their national identity. It was Christian to be American and the constitution was a Christian document, or so it seemed.
Today, however, there is great distress because new movements, or old movements with new power, have upended what was assumed to be settled matters in the constitution. To the great unsettlement of the evangelicals, the settled constitution seems to allow abortion, same-sex marriage, and a heap of other things that the church had struggled with historically.
In America, church leaders are now more involved in fighting for the constitution, or their view of it, than they are fighting for the spread of the Gospel. This is because they assume, wrongfully, that the culture is already Christian, and the new battlefield is the constitutional courts that are being assaulted by advocates of everything that is anti-Christian. This usually means that they also have to engage in a level of political involvement to affect the selection of judges and decisions of the courts.
Christianity, from its foundations, is a counter-culture movement. Even in Jerusalem Jesus challenged the culture, “For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men—the washing of pitchers and cups, and many other such things you do.” Mark 7:8. What’s happening now in the west is that all of the major denominations, and some independents, are embracing the new cultural movements and attempting to do with scripture what they did with the constitution. So, if the constitution supported same-sex marriage all along, then the Bible did too. Apparently, we just didn’t notice this all along.
It is no surprise then that, more often than not, the rates of the spread of the Gospel is higher in places where Christians understand that they are a counter-culture movement. Whether they are up against a political culture like in China, or religious cultures like in Islamic or Latin American or African regions and countries.
In our key verse today, a challenge was brought against Paul and his band of Christian missionaries. It wasn’t enough for people to just reject the Christian message as people do every day. They raised objections based on ethnic, cultural, and political grounds.
They recognised that transformed hearts cause the transformation of everything else. But, being unable to argue against heart transformation, they argued against the transformation of everything else.
Sin is not a cultural problem, or a social problem, or a political problem. Sin is a moral problem, sin is a problem of the condition of the heart. Transform the heart and the political, social, and cultural problems are fundamentally affected.
A popular tactic of culture advocates is to resort to movements and mobs. We see it in the news every day and Paul and his companions experienced it in Philippi, “Then the multitude rose up together against them; and the magistrates tore off their clothes and commanded them to be beaten with rods.” Acts 16:22.
The culture wars today are taking place on multiple fronts and we are all aware of the vigorous, and sometimes violent, advocacy taking place for every behaviour, practice and desire that has overtaken the hearts of men. We have returned to the days where the culture is hostile to the spread of the Gospel. While we won’t be beaten in the public square, we certainly will appear before magistrates and judges for preaching and teaching things which are not “lawful” for others to do, being who they are.
But that is a development that we are already witnessing. What is less obvious are the new cultural norms that are hardening as a result of new technologies that are so pervasive, yet the effects are so evasive.
In our culture today, especially in “freer” and more prosperous countries, everyone has at least one personal mobile digital device. We are still to understand how these devices, beneficial as they are, affect the culture in which we are seeking to minister.
Everyone is supposedly distracted, and it shows, but so many are easily attracted to things that whole new cultural and social movements get formed and we who are not a part didn’t even notice. Authentic Christianity is still counter-culture but this time the culture we’re up against is harder to define. If we don’t act quickly we may be before the magistrates and judges and not understand why.
Think on these things:
- What changes do you see in the culture around you?
- Are the changes that you see just a generation gap or are there real differences in what is acceptable and what is not?
- How is your church or ministry preparing to minister to people who are swept in the contemporary culture?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that with the help of the Holy Spirit we would, with knowledge and wisdom, effectively minister to people in the present and changing culture.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex