Facebook Doesn’t Work

For this week’s post, I would like to pause from my regular series and unpeel a couple of misconceptions in our response to our country’s moral judgments these last couple of weeks.  I will not be long.  I just want to give some perspective that will help us not just cope but also move forward with vision and purpose.

 

King & Country

 

First of all, the world has not come to an end.  Even if it had, God is still on the throne and we ultimately serve the King of kings – Christ our Lord.  Though I love my country and would even die defending it, the gospel is not dependent on the survival of the American way.

 

Truly Suffer

 

Secondly, we are the first generation of Christians in a long while who have known nothing of what it means to truly suffer for our faith.  If it comes – and I say “if” because we do not know what will happen in the future – then we will understand better, as did Paul and the first century believers, the truth “to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

 

‘New Set of Missional Skills’

 

Third, we need to step back and evaluate the effectiveness of our current strategies, or lack thereof.  Spending our time bashing others or in pompous ranting is not going to fix the problem.  Politics is not the answer, though we can and should engage there.  Writing a bold or clever Facebook status is not engaging the culture.  Besides, Facebook is a bubble of people who mostly agree with us anyway.  Pride will not win the day and humility will not always be received [though humility must characterize us].  Al Mohler put it best in his most recent article (“Waiting for the Other Shoe”): “We will have to learn an entire new set of missional skills as we seek to remain faithful to Christ in this fast-changing culture.”  We must never change in our gospel conviction, but, even so, we must remember that we no longer hold the title ‘moral majority’.  Those days are gone and we must learn how we engage in this changed arena in the middle of which we now find ourselves standing.

 

The Primary Cause

 

Fourthly, there are a couple of fundamental things that we must understand in order to engage any people or culture.  One being man is dead in his trespasses and sin [Ephesians 2].  Because of this, he is doing what is natural.  Apart from the grace of God, we would be making the same decisions and heralding the same banners.  Also, it is important to note that once man destroys God the Father as the primary cause, there ceases to be a true moral compass [Genesis 1 & 2].  We have to return to engaging with the basic understanding of a primary cause.

 

Little Homes & Porches

 

Now in saying all of this, I do not claim to have discovered the “new set of missional skills”.  However, I do know it is time to get on our knees and beseech the Lord for wisdom [James 1].  I will be bold and say we must be willing to get our hands dirty.  This means we must engage life-to-life with those who think in terms so perverted we may wonder what have we gotten ourselves into.  We have to engage the culture on all fronts.  We will have to leave the confines and comforts of our little homes and porches.  We will have to be as the first century believers who counted not their lives dear to themselves.

 

Daniel Cavanaugh