Culture and Change

Culture and Change

"Mature Christians and Christians in places of responsibility, must summon the courage to distinguish, under the Holy Spirit, between unchangeable biblical truth and the things which have merely become comfortable for us. Often one hears people speak of "the simple gospel only," when in reality they do not really care enough... to face what preaching the simple gospel may mean in a changing and complex situation."

-Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

I like this quote because implicit in it is the realization that there are both changeable and unchangeable parts in Christianity. Schaeffer saw that as the "changing and complex situation" we live in changed over time so too would Christianity have to change to fit it. Schaeffer wrote much about how he was afraid that Christianity did not see the changes in the world around it and so did not fully adjust itself to address those changes. In his mind this is a terrible thing because the Church continues to build up defenses on fronts at which there is no longer any battle raging, meanwhile other areas of the truth are under attack without anyone even seeing or fully understanding what is going on. But there is a danger here that it is clear that Schaeffer sees if you read the rest of the book, that is the danger of acting as though the church were a chameleon and is most truly fulfilling its calling when it fully blends in with its surroundings. As Christianity is in one sense changeable it is in another sense unchangeable. To embrace either one to the exclusion of the other is to risk either becoming irrelevant to the present culture or indistinguishable from it. In both cases the church loses the power to "preach the gospel in exactly the area where it is under attack," in which case "it has not preached the gospel at all." In the first scenario it loses that power because the culture has begun to ask different questions (and ask them desperately) than the church is holding out answers to. In the second scenario it loses its power because the church will begin speak with the voice of the culture, using all the same language but with the meaning of the words hollowed out to fit what the culture already values, and so it will be unable to awaken the world in any of the places where it sleepily walks toward slaughter.

So how does the church walk the line between the changeable and the unchangeable when "cliffs lie on either side," as Schaeffer said? He seems to say that the church must have the courage to look honestly at itself see those places where it is holding out a message that for any reason falls short of the full gospel. If that honest looks reveals something that needs to change, then the church must have the courage to make those changes. But in doing this it must avoid the danger of bowing to another master than God. The pitfall which is present if Christians begin to act as though the truth were entirely changeable is that something else becomes the master, something else begins to dictate what is true and how that truth must be lived out other than God’s revelation. The culture, however much it changes, must never hold supremacy. What our culture values at the time is not the grid by which we understand what scripture is saying or who God has revealed himself to be, the reverse is true. God’s revelation is the standard by which we judge what is true in culture and where culture has taken the truth and twisted it and begun to live by a different gospel.

At times parts of culture will agree with parts of Christianity, and at other times there will be sharp disagreement. The important thing is that we never make the mistake of marrying culture and Christianity in our minds and being more loyal to our own cultural biases than to the gospel. Yes, Christianity must be relevant to the culture that it exists in, but relevancy is not king; Christ is King. No cultural movement is the groom to which the church is promised, that place belongs to another and that is the promise the church must remain faithful to.

"God, use me!"

Have you ever stopped to think about the idea of praying for God to use you? This prayer is not an unusual one—in fact, Christians pray it all the time. The unusual thing is what we expect when we pray it (assuming that I’m not just speaking for myself on this one). Oftentimes we expect that God is going to provide us with this BIG thing. That he’s going to start working miracles through us, changing hearts and minds. However, this is rarely what happens. Usually what God brings us instead is a little opportunity to rejoice in some trying circumstance, or a little opportunity to love someone we know by representing Christ to him or her. When this happens, we get discouraged and upset that our “big thing” hasn’t come yet. However, the truth is that we are never promised a “big thing.” Instead, the Christian life (and the non-Christian life, for that matter) is made up of little things. Little opportunities to rely on God, little chances to display the character of Christ, little daily deaths as we humble ourselves when someone wrongs us or defames us or just pipes us off.

In John 12:24 Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” In this passage, Jesus was talking about himself, but it seems consistent with the whole of scripture that symbolically this is what must happen to us. We must “die to self.” Though this is a Christian cliché, it remains true. The question then becomes, What does it mean to die to self? The answer comes when we look at our view of God.

God is a personal God who is involved in all that we are part of daily. He is sovereign over all our circumstances and promises to “work all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to His purposes” (Romans 8:28). Therefore, we should face the daily responsibilities, the daily trials, the daily interactions as they are directly placed in our lives by God. We should invest, even if it’s just in a small way, in everyone we know. We should truly care about the individual—no matter who they are—and desire for them to see the glory of the grace of God.

The next time I sit down to pray the “God, use me” prayer, I hope that I can meditate on the truth of John 12:24 and think about the ways that I can die to myself and choose to be humble and accept my daily interactions, struggles, and responsibilities in light of the truth of God’s sovereignty.

Predestination in Perelandra

I read C. S. Lewis's Perelandra for the first time this summer, and enjoyed it immensely. Among the many quotable passages, I found the following particularly interesting (I won't provide any context so as not to be accused of spoiling anything for those who haven't read it):

The thing still seemed impossible. But gradually something happened to him which had happened to him only twice before in his life. It had happened once while he was trying to make up his mind to do a very dangerous job in the last war. It had happened again while he was screwing his resolution to go and see a certain man in London and make to him an excessively embarrassing confession which justice demanded. In both cases the thing had seemed a sheer impossibility: he had not thought but known that, being what he was, he was psychologically incapable of doing it; and then, without any apparent movement of the will, as objective and unemotional as the reading on a dial, there had arisen before him, with perfect certitude, the knowledge "about this time tomorrow you will have done the impossible." The same thing happened now. His fear, his shame, his love, all his arguments, were not altered in the least. The thing was neither more nor less dreadful than it had been before. The only difference was that he knew—almost as a historical proposition—that it was going to be done. He might beg, weep, or rebel—might curse or adore—sing like a martyr or blaspheme like a devil. It made not the slightest difference. The thing was going to be done. There was going to arrive, in the course of time, a moment at which he would have done it. The future act stood there, fixed and unaltered as if he had already performed it. It was a mere irrelevant detail that it happened to occupy the position we call future instead of that which we call past. The whole struggle was over, and yet there seemed to have been no moment of victory. You might say, if you liked, that the power of choice had been simply set aside and an inflexible destiny substituted for it. On the other hand, you might say that he had [been] delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged into unassailable freedom. Ransom could not, for the life of him, see any difference between these two statements. Predestination and freedom were apparently identical. He could no longer see any meaning in the many arguments he had heard on this subject.

First, this is a great answer to someone who has concerns about predestination, right? "Don't worry—predestination and freedom are identical!"

Seriously, though, this passage raises some interesting questions (the first two more closely related than the third):

1. Is there any sense in which predestination and freedom are identical? (Or at least not in conflict?)
   
2. If they are identical (or merely compatible), how often do they coexist? Only in certain situations, like Ransom's above? In every situation, whether we realize it or not?
3. If you go with option #2 in the passage above ("he had been delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged into unassailable freedom"), does that shed any light on the sinless state that Jesus was (and is) supposed to have maintained, or that we at some point are supposed to reach?

Discuss amongst yourselves. Or, better yet, post a comment!