Capturing the Low Ground: Wade Bradshaw

An article by Wade Bradshaw on what apologetics looks like in present-day culture. I appreciate reading Bradshaw because he has a trait that seems to be common with people who have spent a long time at L'abri, they have they finger on the pulse of contemporary culture, the questions that people are really asking, and how to apply the Bible's answer to them.

Here is an example from the article:

"Until fairly recently, in culture, we shared something, whether you were Christian or not, and that was the belief that the church occupied the high moral ground, and that its task was to call people out of the mire of sin. If you were a non-Christian you just were not interested in the offer (being called out of the mire of sin) but you knew that if you were interested in being good and learning about God and being more like Him, you would go to church. The church said, 'Come to us. We are the ones who know God's moral will. We occupy the high moral ground.' Most everybody understood it.

Today, nothing could be further from the truth. The understanding of our culture increasingly is that the Christian God is seen as primitive, old-fashioned and immoral. The terrible thing is that non-Christians will say that to you but, increasingly, as I speak to Christians who are going to church, they have this nagging sense that they may be in agreement with them - that God is primitive, immoral and old-fashioned. In other words, that the church no longer occupies the moral high ground. We have a very offensive message. The gospel has always been offensive but this is in a new way. Can you see that as you are talking, or your church is talking, to the culture this explains a lot of bizarre conversations you may have had. It is as if I was talking about something, and I was trying to call them up to what is clearly good and true and right and they kept acting like I was trying to call them down to something. How did that happen? Can you see if the church does not understand this dynamic, that we are proclaiming these people to be sinners in need of reconciliation with the real God and they are thinking, whether clearly or not, 'if there were a God why would I go to yours? Because I already consider myself morally superior to your God.'"