Church and Culture

The church in America has divided largely along two lines. On one side is the liberal, concerned about things like the environment, racial equality, sexism, etc. The other is the conservative side, more involved in matters like abortion, prayer in school, and family values. The problem with these two is that, while each considers themselves the high ground, each is culturally driven, not scripturally driven. They are civil religion. The problem with civil religion is that it tends to be civil, that is, inoffensive. It has no edge because it is politically oriented, not theologically oriented.

Today's church has begun gravitating toward its surrounding culture. Sin and hell are no longer issues. Our culture treats sin as a disease and looks for a cure among the therapists and counselors. Just as our society thrives on consumerism, our churches strive to "give the customer what he wants". We look for worship to be entertaining, for preaching to be interesting, for ministries to be fun. Instead of orienting our lives around a pursuit of God, we fit God in when we can, which is not often. Instead of giving God the serious thought, attention, study, and practice he deserves, we trivialize Him, relegating Him primarily to Sunday mornings. Instead of seeking God's will in our lives, we have become consumers of experiences, looking for that next big thing.

We have turned from a God we must obey to a God we can use. We have turned from a moral emphasis to a relational emphasis. We have no problem believing in a loving God, but avoid the God whose wrath is incurred by sin. We see God as our marketplace, put there for our pleasure.

We have compromised with our society. It's okay to believe as long as it doesn't interfere with life. Being a Christian is acceptable as long as we're not fanatics about it. Religion is a good thing - everyone ought to have it, whatever it might be. So we absorb the lies from television and radio without examining them. We approve divorce and understand "affairs". (From a TV movie, The Anatomy of an Affair: "Single people have affairs. Married people commit adultery.") The biblical standards are mobile, dependent on the circumstances. We have departed from absolute Truth and absolute Right and Wrong and have adhered to relativism. We look to the church for psychological wholeness, not personal holiness. We have committed spiritual adultery, marrying our world while calling ourselves the Bride of Christ. About that, James says, "Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." (James 4:4) In God's eyes, there is no room for compromise. David Wells puts it this way:

The fact is, of course, that the New Testament never promises anyone a life of psychological wholeness or offers a guarantee of the consumer's satisfaction with Christ. To the contrary, it offers the prospect of indignities, loss, damage, disease, and pain. The faithful in Scripture were scorned, beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked, and executed. The gospel offers no promises that contemporary believers will be spared these experiences, that they will be able to settle down to the sanitized comfort of an inner life freed of stresses, pains, and ambiguities; it simply promises that through Christ, God will walk with us in all the dark places of life, that he has the power and the will to invest his promises with reality, and that even the shadows are made to serve his glory and our best interests. A therapeutic culture will be inclined to view such promises as something of a disappointment; those who understand that reality is at heart moral because God is centrally holy will be satisfied that this is all they need to know. (David F. Wells, God in the Wasteland, pp. 114-115. (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1994))