The Distraction of Culture War
I just returned home from Washington DC from a four-month assignment. The experience was personally fulfilling and professionally rewarding, but it’s good to be with family and friends again.
And so, another chapter closes.
What I learned over the last few months was another kind of solitude. With my trip to Germany, my focus on the Lord was more internal. But in DC I sought Him among the poor and marginalized. My heart grew for the homeless as I connected with them on a personal level. Of course, I met those who manipulated others in order to survive. But I also saw those who were sincerely grateful for a bottle of cold water I’d hand them on my way to work.
No doubt I’ll be processing those experiences for a long time.
I think our greatest struggle as believers is being distracted from our King.
We can grow to be incredibly close to the Lord in a very short time, but there’s a never-ending supply of things to be distracted by. Anything that draws too much of our time or attention can be a distraction. But there are a few distractions that have lodged so deeply into our culture to have become particularly resilient. One of those things is the effort going into ensuring our side’s ideas remain widely accepted and socially relevant.
Over the last 50 years, society has become increasingly hostile toward religious ethics and ideas. The reasons for this shift are complicated, but at their core is the question of which ideas and behaviors are considered good and right by society. What the majority agrees is good and right are supported and celebrated. What the majority sees as bad and wrong are marginalized and discarded. Of course, what is good and right is hotly debated. But overall, Christianity appears to be losing. This is happening not only in America, but also throughout Europe in countries that were once heavily influenced by Christianity.
In response to this shift, patriotic church leaders, politicians, and their allied media are attempting to mobilize believers. They tell us that America is not only becoming irrevocably secularized, but that our own freedoms of religion and speech are in jeopardy. They tell us that we must stop this hemorrhaging by investing our time and energy through elections and by engaging the nation’s judicial and legislative mechanisms.
For many, taking up the cause of maintaining our individual liberties and cultural relevance is an honorable pursuit.
But we need to be careful.
It’s possible to have such high regard for our political processes that we believe we can’t be faithful to God without them.
We can align our faith so closely to our founding institutions that we believe them inseparable.
When we do, we can become so absorbed in protecting our cultural foothold that it becomes a distraction to the separate and vastly more critical work of pursuing the Lord’s Eternal Purpose. We need to be reminded that such struggle is merely tangential to the real mission of embodying, demonstrating, and proclaiming the Kingdom. Unless we’re careful, our preoccupation with protecting America’s Christian identity can bleed tremendous bandwidth from the holy pursuit of Christ Himself.
Below are four things to consider as we weigh the value of our time on earth. I recognize that what I’m going to say may make some angry. Keep in mind that these words are written by a veteran who loves his country, who leans right politically, but recognizes that America has only ever been a means to an end for the Lord’s Eternal Purpose.
I ask that He would elevate our vision to see from His perspective, far and above the fog of culture war.
We Are Already Free
As much as we like to quote Charles Province on Veterans Day, it’s neither the minister nor the soldier who gave us our freedom of religion.
It was Jesus Christ, Son of the Eternal.
The freedom we have in Christ is a complete freedom that is un-revokable by Supreme Court ruling, Executive Order, or the worst circumstance. We walk in it every moment while awake or asleep.
In the post, the Supremacy of Jesus Christ, we learned that Jesus sets us free from far more than our sin. He sets us free from bondage to every authority save Himself. This includes religious expectations, adherence to the systems of this world, and the demands of an ever-shifting social conscience. For the Christ-follower, life is a process of realizing that we are bound by paper chains which are easily torn when we give up hope in lesser things and gaze deeply into the loving eyes of the Living Christ.
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
John 8:36 (ESV)
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
2 Corinthians 3:17 (ESV)
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Galatians 5:1 (ESV)
This freedom is so complete that the apostles had to remind the early church that they had to self-regulate their freedom to ensure it didn’t lead to slavery of other forms.
“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.
1 Corinthians 6:12 (ESV)
For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
Galatians 5:13 (ESV)
If we as Americans fear the loss of our religious freedom, it’s only because we’ve accepted a narrative that religious freedom is something any government can grant or deny. But make no mistake, our freedom in Christ supersedes all other freedoms that the world might grant. The liberty that America provides is merely a shadow of the ultimate freedom the Christ supplies us with in abundance.
Rather than waiting until we shore up the imperfect freedoms offered under our Constitution, we are free today to practice Christ. Just as Paul explained to the Galatians, the deeds of the Spirit haven’t been made illegal yet (Gal. 5:23).
One of the greatest things we can within the Body of Christ is to remind one another of this freedom which is vastly greater than the lesser freedoms this world offers.
Freedom or Comfort?
Let’s be honest. When we talk about “religious freedom”, what we’re really talking about is the comfort to exercise our religion: Comfort in prayer, fearlessness in worship, the serenity of our bible studies, etc.
I’ll grant you that if comfort is what should be most concerned about, then there’s no alternative but to appeal to our governments. While we are (for now) blessed to live in a land of relative comfort to practice our religion, the Lord is less concerned about our comfort than He is about building patience and longsuffering into His people. Our religious comfort is a temporary blessing that comes and goes in cycles. It should never be viewed as a “right” guaranteed by the Lord.
Being uncomfortable shouldn’t make us spiritually incapacitated. Scripture gives several examples of how the methods and tactics of following Christ may have to adjust depending on the environment. We see Jesus leaving the scene on several occasions when He sensed the crowds might bring Him to a premature end. We read Paul carefully advising slaves to be obey their master’s with respect and fear (Eph. 6:5) even though slavery is no longer a condition (Gal. 3:28).
From the standpoint of religious freedom, the only difference between America and a place like Iran or North Korea is the consequences of following Christ–how we follow, where we follow, and what happens when the enemies of Christ find out.
That’s a big difference, you might say.
I would agree. But let’s be absolutely clear that the comfort that the worst governments would deny cannot negate the irrevocable freedom that scripture says we now have. They’re two entirely separate things. Know that those who suffer under such regimes understand this better than we do. Yet they freely choose to continue suffering.
What We’ve Done with Our Liberty
“Mike, I hear what you’re saying. But wouldn’t it be harder to spread the gospel or serve the Lord in a country with without the religious freedoms we enjoy today? Shouldn’t we fight hard to keep what we have?”
That’s the conventional wisdom. But I’m not sure I agree. Your answer may depend on your spiritual perspective. To put it bluntly, is your hope built on the United States of America or on Christ’s promise of making all things new?
The church has always thrived under persecution. Why? Because under suffering, life gets real. Under suffering, people tend to focus on the things that matter. People become open to alternatives that the present world doesn’t offer. During times of persecution, the church has never prayed to ease hostility. Instead, she’s always prayed that the Body of Christ would thrive under it and that the Kingdom would grow.
Also, what have we done with the liberty that we’ve already been given?
We’ve lived without widespread religious persecution for almost 250 years. Certainly, great things have happened to advance the Kingdom under our religious protections. But it seems a substantial part of the church has used this period of grace by squandering it on things like self-actualization, wealth accumulation, a greater share of the American dream.
Comfort begets spiritual laziness. While I don’t relish the idea of persecution, the time may be approaching where He withdraws His hand so that the faithful would be driven back to our First Love. He did this with Israel. Who are we to think He wouldn’t do the same with us?
A Sinking Ship
History tells us that every representative republic has an expiration date. Even the great Republic of Rome lasted only 450 years before becoming a permanent dictatorship for reasons of human expediency. One day, sooner or later, the America (as we know it) will be no more.
Given the ideological trajectory of the U.S., I think many of the things we’ve taken for granted will disappear over the next couple of generations as society becomes increasingly open to scuttling our constitutional rights over the “greater good”. When it’s no longer politically advantageous to support the Christian cause, the political powers will eventually turn on us–to marginalize us, then to discard us. And as our religious freedoms erode, we’ll each have to decide whether we’ll continue following the true Christ or conform to one of many counterfeit Christs the world offers. (And if the world celebrates your Christ, you’re probably following the wrong Christ.)
America is a sinking ship. The leak is slow, but the damage can’t be undone. Spiritual entropy is a natural consequence of anything driven by spiritual rebellion. We only have so much time and energy. We can try to slow our sinking by frantically bailing water. But at what cost to our central mission? As American believers, we need to decide how much political energy should be spent on preserving our liberties versus how much of it should be spent focusing on the legitimate work the Lord has called us to do.
Here’s how I see it:
The culture war is energized and well-supplied. For every devout believer who seeks first the Kingdom, there are one hundred social conservatives fighting to retain America’s cultural identity. My contribution to their cause will not be missed.
But regarding the work of the Kingdom, Jesus reminds us:
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Matthew 9:38 (ESV)
Image credit: evmir1 with Deviant Art under Creative Commons License CC BY-ND 3.0