Everyday Grace

Steven Slater.  In one day he goes from an obscure Jet Blue flight attendant to working class hero, all over a meltdown he has after taking abuse from a passenger for one too many times.  At work we discussed the incident in great detail and the consensus was clear, there are many, many times when each of us feels the same way.

In this era when complaints about rude and/or poor customer service legitimately abound there is a little-reported other side of the story.  Rude customers are appearing in ever-increasing numbers.  Sometimes the comment is one quick cutting remark, sometimes longer and more abusive.  When a customer launches into a verbal tirade we are all trained to simply take it, to not argue, to not defend ourselves.  Customer service rules the day.

Most commonly the complaints we get are not about us, we are simply the target over an issue with store policy, high prices or something else.  Last night I heard a three minute tirade over why we did not carry the brand of sliced beets the customer wanted.  Sometimes the tirades are hard to understand, so out of proportion are they to the incident that causes them.  For me these are times to say a silent prayer for grace to take it and not return fire; for grace to pray for the one who is abusive; and for grace to not dwell on it in my next customer interaction.

The important thing for us to understand as Christians is that, in any retail situation, probably that the store clerk, the waitress, or the service person you are meeting is not that far removed from being verbally abused by a customer to some extent.  What this presents to us is an opportunity to be distinctly different as we act with grace.

It starts with reminding ourselves that this person, either the clerk or the customer depending on which side of the transaction you are on, is someone whom Christ loves and died for.  It doesn’t matter how they are acting at that moment in time, he or she is loved by Christ.  It then goes to understanding that, as Christ died for them personally we should treat them personally.  Here are some suggestions:

-        Find something to say to them that is distinctly personal, not generic.  Most wear name tags, go ahead and use their name in the greeting.

-        Make eye contact.  You’d be amazed how often this is not done.

-        Express the hope that their day is going well.

-        If you overheard another customer being snippy, express sympathy.

-        End with something that indicates you are a believer.  Saying have a blessed day is much better than the generic nice day.  Even a God bless you today will be noticed.

-        If it is a place you go regularly, try and see the same people over and over.  In this way, that place you go to becomes your mission field.

I have no idea what was going through Mr. Slater’s mind that day.  But I wonder what would have happened if somewhere along the way he had received some grace words from someone on the flight.

The title of this post was shamelessly stolen from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the late German pastor who proclaimed the need for repentance and discipleship to go hand-in-hand with received grace.  Bonhoeffer, who died opposing the evils of the Third Reich, has inspired me and thousands of others.

Sadly, Bonhoeffer’s timeless challenge has often been co-opted by those who insist that, after salvation by grace, we need to return to a works-based “standing” in Christ.  It is a shame that, after his death in a concentration camp, which moved the camp doctor to say “In the 50 years I have worked as a doctor I have never seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”, that this is just one of the perversions of his thoughts and teaching.

Bonhoeffer is right in the critical assertion that grace is not cheap.  As Paul says, we “have been bought with a price”, the staggering reality of Jesus, the son of God, dying on the cross in our place.  In grasping this reality there is not the slightest chance that we can think ourselves “worth it.”  Our only option is to be awed into a humble love.  It is the lack of this awe and humility that troubled Bonhoeffer. 

But there is yet another way in which grace is not cheap.  Extending grace to another always comes at a cost.   It is this cost that separates grace from “being nice.”  I can be nice to my neighbor because he is nice, or I want him to be nice, to me.  I extend grace to my neighbor when my kindness comes with no expectation of his return “niceness” or perhaps even in the face of his hostility. 

We extend grace to those who have done nothing for us and perhaps even have harmed us.  We extend grace when we forgive those who have truly wronged us.  We extend grace when we forsake a revenge that every fiber of our humanity cries for.  We extend grace when we reach out to those who have no capacity, or no desire, to reciprocate. 

Niceness will always get us smiles and high regard.  The world will always approve of a “nice guy.”  Grace, however, will get us incredulous stares of disbelief.  Grace is so radical that often the world doubts it is real and questions our motives, sure we have a hidden agenda.  Grace forever lives with doubt and disbelief.   Grace is mocked and scorned and those who extend it experience this regularly.

Grace will never submit itself to being a “tool” we use in evangelism.  It must be given freely, with no expectations and no strings.  But grace will open more doors to witness than all the methodologies and outreaches the world has ever known.

Grace, once extended, often leads to places we never dreamed of or wanted.  It led Bonhoeffer to years in a concentration camp and a death by hanging.  While it is doubtful we will ever trod a path like that, we will be reminded that grace is costly, it can never be cheap to those who extend it.

Yet grace is addictive.  No “high” the earth can offer compares to the reality of being an ambassador of grace.  And, every so often, in the extension of grace to another, we will see the light of amazed comprehension go on in the eyes of a grace-recipient.  You can almost hear their thoughts.  “This person is doing this solely for my sake.”  Which, if you recall, is precisely the reality that struck each of us at the point of salvation – that Jesus died because He loved us.

No, grace is surely not cheap.  And the only way we can truly show that we understand this is to be a grace ambassador.

Have you ever had the experience of walking into a mall looking for a particular store and not being sure of where it was?  If so, you probably went to the mall directory map just inside the entrance and looked up the store finding, for instance, that it was store #112.  You then locate that store on the map.  But one more piece of information is still needed.  To get where you are going you have to find out where you are, so you search for the “You are here” sign, usually a small arrow pointing to the appropriate place on the map.  You can now chart your course.

Frankly, in all our lives, we always need to start at the “You are here” sign.  And yet, what seems so obvious at the mall is much harder in life.  How much time do we spend regretting how we got to where we are now?  The guilt of past sins haunt us, the repercussions of those sins still afflict us, the sadness of how past events have shaped us is always with us, the bitterness of past injustices pain us.  They all point to the same thing, a longing not to be “here” and a wish that things had been different.

I recently was talking to a young man who had just gotten a divorce.  It was incredibly difficult to turn the discussion from the past to the future.  He kept focusing, with both remorse and bitterness, on what had happened.  But, like it or not, he had no opportunity to go back and change the past, he could only start at the “You are here” sign and decide how to respond to life now.

We Christians, owing to our familiarity with the goodness of God, seem always to have a deeper awareness how others, and even more so ourselves, fall short of that goodness.  As such we are more prone to regretting being “here” than many others.  And that regret is an easy target for Satan.  If he can get us dwelling on the past, he wins.  If guilt, bitterness or just regret over the way things are consumes us, he wins.  Actually, even if past glories are our focus, he wins.  This is why Paul, speaking of both good and bad, proclaims his intent to be “forgetting those things that are behind.”

Who needs grace in your life to do that?  Perhaps there is a relative or friend who needs assurance that the past is the past and you want them to start at the “You are here” sign.  Perhaps you need to give yourself the grace to do it.  Parents need to be sure that wayward children experience not punishment for things of the past but discipline to be sure such things are not repeated.  And grace is the difference between punishment and discipline.  The list goes on and on.

Read of Jesus’ confrontations with those who had sin issues and you will always see His focus is the future, He always started at the “You are here” sign; He always looked forward.  The woman caught in adultery was challenged to “go and sin no more” and not scolded for those sins.  Nicodemus, depending on his works, was told he needed to be “born again.”  Even those who had started on the right path of faith were pointed, with encouragement, to continued faith.  If  you have time, read all of His confrontations and see this for yourself.

Today, even as you read this, there is a great big “You are here” sign pointing at you, here and now.  What is the next step you need to take to get to the goal?

In a recent post I talked about John Piper’s new book “Jesus, the only way to God” and raised the issue of his use of the term “confrontational” as he emphasized the need to make clear that Jesus, and Jesus alone, is the way to God.  While I agree with his premise I was concerned that his use of the term confrontational would send a wrong message; that we are to be aggressive, in-your-face evangelists.  This raises a question, however.  How can I present Jesus as the only way and not be confrontational?

The basic issue is pluralism, the assertion that all belief systems are equally valid.  This idea has become so common in our society that, if you have not heard it expressed, then it is likely you aren’t talking to people about Jesus.  If you present the Gospel to someone you are all but certain to hear, either casually or angrily, the comeback that (s)he believes that all religions are OK, you just need to choose for yourself.  Just how do we respond?

Let me begin with a statement that you may find disappointing – I don’t know.  By this I mean that, while it is fine to learn and practice certain methods for presenting Christ, you will quickly find that everyone needs to be addressed individually and that no “method” is sure to work.  I learned this fact years ago after going through an Evangelism Explosion course.  No matter how hard I tried to follow the script I just could not get the other person to say their lines in the way I was taught they would.  Then one day it dawned on me – if God makes us all unique, isn’t it foolish to expect that we’d all respond the same to one type of approach?

So if the method is not the key, what is?  Let’s start with identifying the problem.  When someone presents a pluralistic idea, they start from what they believe to be an accepted assertion, that all thinking people feel the same way.  It is natural for them to assume this because they have heard it, in one shape or another, their whole lives.  It has become part of their world view.

As a result, when you challenge or confront that assertion, it jars them emotionally.    It is akin to saying, when they assert that they ought to say thank you when someone does something nice for them, saying “No, you don’t need to do that.”  The default setting for such a response is to assume that you are rude, boorish and mean-spirited.  Added to this is the reality that when you say this you are, in effect, saying that they are wrong and you are right.  Nobody likes to be in that position.

So is there any way out?  It is not easy but let me give you what I think is the key.  Humility.  It is not about you, it is about Jesus.  Keep the focus on Jesus, His uniqueness, who He is, and His sacrifice.  You are not setting your opinion against theirs, you are merely stating that the more you examined it, the more you were overpowered by Jesus.  If you think about it, there are dozens of ways to emphasize your humility as you point to Jesus.  Speak of your amazement, your awe, your emotions as you began to see Him for who He is and what He has done.

We don’t need to say that we are right and they are wrong.  We need to point them to Jesus.  The reality is clear, Jesus is unique.  Down through the years various people have been called “great.”  There was Alexander the great, Napoleon the great, etc.  Nobody ever called Jesus “Jesus the great.”  Why?  Because He is so much more than merely great.  He is “Jesus the only.”

I’ve been reading a book lately by the unusual title of “Christians are hate-filled hypocrites and other lies you’ve been told” by a gentleman named Bradley Wright.  His purpose in writing this was to counter the flow of dire predictions about the state of evangelicalism today.  The author takes a look at the various propositions that people have made about the evangelical church and does an admirable job in presenting alternate ways to understand the data and statistics so that the future is less alarming.

One good thing about the book is that it reminds us that, when peering into the future, we need to be cautious about authoritative pronouncements.  He places a different interpretation on data that others look at.  I see his analysis more as a “glass half full” effort as opposed to a “glass half empty” view.  For example, in countering the criticism of some that Christians are largely uneducated he says this:

“Nationwide, 27% of all adults have graduated from college… Evangelicals are somewhat below the national average. The religious unaffiliated are just slightly above average in levels of college education.”

 Ok, that doesn’t sound too bad, does it?  Here is the data quoted:  The college graduation rate, nationwide, is 27%.  Among evangelicals it is 20% and among the religiously unaffiliated it is 29%.  Now if we took that data using the “glass half empty” model we might say this:

“On a per-capita basis, the religiously unaffiliated graduate from college at a rate 45% higher than Evangelicals.”

 Both summaries are right, they are just two different ways of stating the same data.  Wright’s book is full of this sort of “happy option” way of looking at things.  This is not altogether wrong and it serves a point, there is no cause for gloominess and defeat even as we struggle with the realities around us.  In this I applaud him.

 But here is my complaint in an otherwise good book.  And it is right in the title.  What does he call the views of those who differ with him?  Lies.  In other words, those who have expressed concern are liars.  This is exactly the attitude that gives Christians a bad reputation (even though he says we don’t have one).  We are too quick to call people who disagree with us liars.  They are not simply wrong, they are lying. 

 This is particularly bothersome as, almost to a man, the concerns being expressed about our future are made by honest Christians sincerely dedicated to the church and to reform, our own denominational president among them.  These are not gloom-and-doom types seeking the demise of Christianity; they are our best and brightest calling us to renewal.

 I’ve looked at some of this data myself and I can see the struggles we face.  I am thankful for those who are sounding the alarm.  But more importantly, I reject out of hand the calling of those brave men and women liars.  A lie is stating what you know to be false as the truth and they are not even slightly guilty of this.  This is particularly egregious as most of these brothers and sisters, some of whom he quotes by name, made these predictions as part of a call to transformation, seeking nothing but the good of the faith.

 How are we often so quick to throw about terms such as “lies” in these matters?  It is an infection of the spirit of the age.  Political liberals and conservatives, not content to think the other side is wrong, accuses them of evil intent.  Those who advocate or deny global warming insist the other side is knowingly lying.  And we pick these terms and feelings up and throw them at each other in such situations as this or others like tongues, healings, end times etc.

 But grace calls us to be distinctly different.  We are called to have sincere and cordial discussions with brothers in Christ who differ.  We are even called to turn the other cheek when mean-spirited unbelievers mock us.  Our grace in such discussions gives us a unique opportunity.  By acting in a gracious way it gives people pause to wonder why we have not returned tit for tat.  And this gives us the opportunity to express the love of Christ.

Peggy has a cousin who, in a relatively short period of time, lost her husband to cancer and later her mother to an illness that appeared suddenly, caused her to suffer a few months, and eventually took her life.  Our hearts go out to her and it is hard to grasp how such grief and suffering can come to one person.  We struggle to find words of comfort and answers to the question “Why did God let this happen?”

So why did God let it happen?  Great theologians throughout the ages have written heartfelt answers to that question.  Not being a great theologian, this is not going to be one of those answers.  These are just personal thoughts on a difficult subject.

Let’s start with the obvious.  Suffering sucks.  Nobody wants to suffer, nobody in their right mind seeks it out.  God does not desire that we suffer.  Yet suffering exists.  Frankly, the world as we know it could not exist without suffering.  If God simply removed all suffering, or even all suffering only from those who call themselves Christians, we would, in the end, not be human.  We would simply be robot-like characters in a “forever happy” story with no free will.

Yet the appeal of a “gospel” of avoidance of suffering is a constant allure.  And some build theologies around that allure.  They whip out selected Scripture passages to build our faith and to trust God for miracles.  The message is simple.  If we could only stretch our faith a bit more this suffering stuff wouldn’t have to happen.

Now I am a believer in asking God to cure illness, end suffering, and restore wholeness and I freely admit that, at times He does.  But I truly believe that a single-minded focus on deliverance from suffering blinds us to a reality that may, in fact, be better.  In deliverance from suffering we can sense God’s goodness.  But in the midst of suffering we can sense with clarity something even better, God’s nearness.  (Psalm 73:28)  If we follow Christ because of the promise of a pain-free life are we truly followers at all?  Is it not better to feel His nearness even as we suffer?

There is a remarkable little verse, or part of a verse, in the 23^rd Psalm that expresses clearly what I feel God wants us to experience.  Let me put it this way…imagine your life as something of a “Lord of the Rings” quest.  You, like Frodo, are on a perilous journey through great dangers.  Jesus is your companion, guide and protector on this quest.  He is with you always.  Suddenly, in the most dangerous part of the journey the enemy appears…orcs, trolls and black riders galore.  You are surrounded, there seems to be no escape.  You cry “Lord, get me out of here!”

And Jesus, after looking around at the enemy, turns to you with a grin and says….”Let’s eat lunch!”  This is pretty much what Psalm 23:5a says.  “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”  Your heart races.  Isn’t it natural to respond “This is the valley of the shadow of death.  Let’s get out of here first and then eat when we get to the green pastures.”?

But God wants to be with us here and now, right in the midst of suffering, not just in some future time of ease.  In the comfort of His nearness in our pain we can experience Christ in a way that no happy time can give us.  Suffering isn’t better than ease, but nearness to Christ makes the difference between them as nothing by comparison. 

Why would I want a Christ who merely obeys my orders and makes my life happy on my terms when I can have a Christ who beckons me to sit at ease with Him no matter my circumstances?  Why would I want a Christ who is my deliverance genie when I can have a Christ whose face I can touch and feel the tears of His grief in my sorrows?  Why would I want a Christ who only transports me to green pastures when I can have a Christ who is with me on every step of my life journey

“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men – robbers, evildoers and adulterers – or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’  But the tax collector stood at a distance.  He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said ‘God have mercy on me a sinner.’”  Luke 18:10-13

There is a Pharisee alive and well in me.  I don’t want him there, I’ve tried to kick him out, tried to shut him up but, darn it, he just won’t go away.  As is often the case in the stories about Jesus, in the passage above He turns an accepted religious concept of His day on its head.  Frankly, if asked, most people of the day would have agreed with the Pharisee that was “more righteous” than the tax collector. 

This is an uncomfortable passage where, were it transposed to the present day, I fear that those of us in the Church would be more like the Pharisee than the tax collector.  Yes, we will admit we are saved by grace, but salvation here is not the issue.  The question is whether they were living righteously on a day-by-day basis.  In this the Pharisee clearly thinks he is and the tax collector does not.  Yet it is the latter that experiences grace.  Yes, we say, we are sinners but at least we are more righteous than some of the scoundrels out there.  I’d love it if there were such a thing as “more righteous” but I can’t find Scriptural evidence that righteousness is graded on a curve. 

When Jerry Bridges says we must “preach the Gospel to ourselves everyday” he is not urging us to do this as some sort of rah-rah pep talk to make us witness more, he means we, already saved by grace, still should be aware of our need for grace for our sins each day.  The Pharisee in me is still in there and will pop out at any time.  And I am more like the Pharisee in the text above, or like the elder brother in the prodigal son story, than I’d like to admit.

But it gets worse.  What if I was more like the younger brother?  That would keep me safe, wouldn’t it?  Perhaps.  But the desire to think you are better than another is inherent in our sin-filled nature.  And you know the joke of the matter?  One of the easiest ways to think that thought is to recognize real sin in others.  Think for a minute of the end of the story above.  What if the tax collector, hearing the praise from Jesus, takes it to heart?  How far a leap is it to say “I am sure glad I am not a self-righteous hypocrite like that Pharisee.”?   And as soon as that thought would go through his mind, he would be just such a hypocrite.

Those of us who preach grace live this tension daily.  As soon as the warnings about legalism leave our lips we stand at the edge of falling into the exact same sin.  So great is our sinfulness that it is all but inevitable we will do some comparative judging of each other.  The good news is not that we get gradually better, gradually less in need of grace day-by-day.  It is that God’s grace is always available, and always “grace that is greater than all my sin.”

Yes, there is a Pharisee in me and no matter how many times I try, he won’t go away.  My determination to kill him off can’t do the job.  But, thank God, His grace is greater.

The title above is stolen directly from the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” baseball scandal which, if you are a student of baseball history, you know was the plea of a boy admirer to “Shoeless” Joe Jackson.  The John in my theft of this line is John Piper.

 I have long admired John Piper and it is a great privilege that I was once able to meet him, in an elevator of all places, and have a memorable talk with him.  So much do I admire him that I have his name flagged on my computer to alert me to anything he has said or published.  I, therefore, was alerted on Saturday to his new book, “Jesus: The only way to God.  Must you hear the Gospel to be saved?”

 The book’s title did not surprise me.  I could expect Piper to write, with eloquence, a ringing endorsement of Jesus as the only way and truth.  And so it seems he has.  Yet the second line in the promotion of the book sent a shiver down my spine.  It reads:  “If there was ever a time when the evangelical world at large was too confrontational in its evangelism, those days are gone.”  My eyes went wide and my mind ground to a halt.

 Now, I haven’t read this book (I have ordered it) so I don’t know exactly what he means by that.  Other things said in the promotion imply that he means that we cannot bend one iota to the prevailing idea in our world that there are many paths to God; we must stand on Christ alone and make no compromise in this stance.  If that is indeed what he means, I am in 100% agreement.

 However, the phrase “confrontational evangelism” has historically had a different meaning.  It refers to an evangelism methodology that, in essence, says we are to force a confrontation with an unbeliever, usually one with whom we have no relationship, where they have virtually no alternative but to hear us out in a formulaic presentation of the Gospel.  Examples of confrontational evangelism include knocking on strangers doors, stopping people on their way out of a store or subway car, and street preaching in front of a target like a bar or nightclub.  Piper’s line therefore can easily be read as an endorsement of this methodology.  If that is his intent, which I pray is not, I fear I must disagree.

 Proponents of confrontational evangelism say two things about it.  One, we should not worry about offending people, since the Gospel is an offense and, two, it works, people get saved.  So we should, they say, just go ahead and make them listen. 

 Let’s deal with the second one first.  Yes, at times people do get saved.  As I have always said, the curious thing about evangelism is that everything works but nothing is sure to work.  I have heard tales of people coming to the Lord through the most preposterous set of circumstances and the most bizarre methods of evangelism.  It pleases God greatly to bring people to Himself by various ways.  But there is no “surefire” method.  Nothing you do is sure to bring results, a fact that teachers of various methodologies often overlook.  God seems to want us to know that He brings people to Himself and that our efforts, while blessed, are not the key.

 But what about offending people?  Should we, as they say, not worry about that?  Should we just stick our nose in people’s faces and say what we want and not care if they get upset?  First and foremost there is this, and I am going to highlight it because I feel this very strongly:  Are we 100% sure that it is the Gospel that is offending them and not us?  I have personally seen confrontational evangelists be as offensive as anyone I have ever met and then give themselves a free pass on the offense they cause using “the Gospel is an offense” as an excuse.  If I choose confrontational evangelism the burden is on me to be sure my manner and approach not become the offending issue.  Let the Gospel offend on its own, don’t feel called to make sure people get offended.

 But there is a second concern I have.  In the last five years I’ve been blessed to move freely among blue-collar unbelievers; to speak to them and listen to them.  And there is an overwhelming consistency in some of the stories I hear.  Almost all, since this is the Bible belt after all, have been in touched by Christian witness.  Praise God.  But…the vast majority came away convinced of one thing, that Christians are obnoxious haters.  And, as you dig deeper, you find that all too often this opinion comes from an effort at confrontational evangelism gone bad.

 So I ask myself this – Yes, confrontational evangelism sometimes works.  But I am willing to leave the vast majority of contacts angry and further from God to get the one or two?  And, if not, is there a better way?  I believe there is.  Be watching this space for more on a concept I am calling organic evangelism.

It occurs to me that in some ways Christianity is the most difficult of religions.  We have within our faith the concept of discipleship.  Indeed, if the Great Commission is to be believed, it is the cornerstone of our faith and witness.  Each and every believer should be a disciple, growing in the faith.  What is more, the exact steps we take to become better disciples are not all that clear.

In other religions this is not so.  When we lived in Sri Lanka we saw the dominant religion, Buddhism, up close.  There was no concept at all that ordinary Buddhists were to be engaged in continual study and growth.  That was for the monks.  If you were a “lay” Buddhist, you had a short list of things to do and not do and that was it.  Islam is similar.  There is a list of things you need to do and another you can’t do.  You could teach a course on being a good Muslim in an afternoon.

We, however, have a more difficult path.  And while there is plenty of Scripture to study we are often left to ponder the application of the concepts of Christian growth and discipleship.  With that in mind, here are some questions that have been rolling around in my brain of late on our faith.  If you’ve got some good answers, let me know.

1. Have I grown spiritually in the last five or ten years and, more importantly, how do I measure that growth?
2. If we are called Christians, or “little Christs” and desire to be “Christlike” why is the life of Christ so seldom a topic in sermons and Bible studies?
3. Is church as we practice it today what Jesus had in mind when He came to build His church?
4. Why is it that most Christians become less effective at reaching people for Christ the longer they have been saved and how can I avoid that?
5. If God places a high value on detailed Biblical scholarship why is it that so many of those He saves are illiterate?
6. Paul frequently pairs actions and attitudes (“speaking the truth in love”, “godliness with contentment” etc.).  How concerned am I that my attitudes are what they should be even as I am doing “the right things”?
7. Since the 21^st century church places a very high value on the family why is it that neither Jesus nor Paul had much to say about the family?

These are just a few.  And I frankly admit that, as I ponder these things, I usually come up with more questions than answers.  However, there is a silver lining to the need to be engaged in discipleship and growth on a regular basis.  I truly believe that God really doesn’t care all that much about the quality of our scholarship.  He’s not sitting up there in heaven grading our theological prowess.  His desire is to be in our thoughts because through this He blesses us and through this we can have the joy of realizing that we are always in His.

I’m sure you have heard the term.  Coined first by right-of-center political types and since picked up by many evangelicals, it has the theme that all the values we have and the things we stand for are under attack in The U.S. and that it is urgent we fight back with zeal.  We are at war, so they say, and we must defend our values or they will disappear.  Some go so far as to say that America will “lose the blessing of God” based an assumption that America is divinely ordained in some special way to “stand for righteousness.”  It has reached a point where, in some circles, being an avowed Christian gives an implied sign that you are a “culture warrior.”

I have decided that I am a conscientious objector in the culture wars.  As with conscientious objectors down through the years, this may subject me to a certain amount of scorn and perhaps even the accusation that I am not truly evangelical.  For this reason I felt the need to give reasons why I have taken this stance.

1. There is no evidence in Scripture that either Jesus or Paul, who lived in cultures far more hostile to the Gospel then ours, practiced, encouraged or endorsed cultural warfare.  I cannot come up with a reasonable explanation why this tactic is needed now.
2. The theory behind cultural warfare is that political action is needed to produce or restore righteousness in our land.  Not only do I see no biblical support for this, it seems to be opposite the assertions of Jesus that righteousness flows from the inside out.
3. It teaches us to fear, dislike, and oppose those who differ with us.  As these emotions are expressed, sometimes to the point of ridicule, they produce actions exactly opposite what I believe we are called to demonstrate.  The mandate we have is to love others and to sacrifice for them, not to beat them.
4. It leads us to a lack of wisdom in choosing our battles and tactics in the real issue, the spiritual warfare we are really engaged in and the battle for lost souls.

There is one other issue that concerns me as well.  In the fractured media of today almost everyone gets news and information from a source they already agree with.  We, therefore, assume that these sources accurately reflect the real situation on the ground.  This is simply not true.

I’ve commented before how many people on “the other side” rarely actually know a Christian.  Well, we rarely know “the other side” too.  When we get to know abortion advocates, homosexuals, and political leftists on a one-on-one basis we can come to see them with a great deal more compassion and sympathy.  We can end up no longer repelled by their evilness but rather brokenhearted by their lostness.  And frankly, given the choice, that is where I’d rather be.