Creating a Healthy Society

“False ideas are the greatest obstacle to the reception of the gospel.  We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.” (What is Christianity?: J. Gresham Machen, pg. 162) 

The Church is first and foremost a theological and missional institution, not a political or social one. What that means is that we work in the realm of truth and lies about God, His world, and His plan for humanity (theological). For us to be the salt and light that Jesus commanded us to be, we must know what the Word of God says about an issue so that we can “determine to do something about it” (missional), both individually and corporately as God’s Church! We must be committed to:

(1) Shaping Ideas & Worldview: Today the significant worldviews of our American culture can fit loosely into three categories. (1) Naturalism: Science is god. The only knowledge that is viable and authoritative is that which can be gained through hard science. (2) Postmodernism (or whatever new term is currently being used): Self is god. Knowledge is not about objective truth and reason but the subjective creation of one’s own consciousness. (3) Theism: God is God. All true knowledge comes from the authority of the Creator who has revealed Himself in time and space through His Son and in the Bible. Unless Christians winsomely battle those “false ideas”, the “collective thought of the nation” will move further from the truth, and the health of our society will decrease as the gospel is regarded as nothing more “than a harmless delusion”.   

(2) Shaping Morality & The Common Good: Unless Christians winsomely battle the “promised pluralism”, the secular dogmas will increasingly shape our culture’s concept of liberty and justice for all. Christians do not insert themselves in the public square to force Biblical morality and make converts. Rather they engage in politics “for the purpose of resisting what they believe are understandings of the human person that are contrary to human dignity and thus the common good.” (Politics for Christians: Francis J. Beckwith, pg. 143)

* Over the next weeks I will be sharing excerpts from a “Gospel & Culture: Politics” paper I wrote to help us better understand how to “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17).