Overcoming a Splintering Culture | True Worldview Ep. 17

Human beings have always been divided. It’s because of human sin of course. But people are more divided than ever in our culture, and there are a multitude of forces contributing to that situation. Things like hate groups, race-baiters, those who have embraced critical theory in one form or another, and sadly, those who are merely influenced by such groups because they have no critical thinking skills of their own. They are part of the herd and they simply follow.

One of the dynamics that contributes not only to the herd but also to its enlargement and proliferation throughout our culture is the rise of numerous social media platforms. There’s an interesting paradox in that context. One would think that social media would allow persons of all stripes to interact with one another in a productive exchange of ideas. However, just the opposite has occurred. Certainly, people who identify in particular ways connect with others who identify in those same ways, yet they do not interact with news, persons, or ideas outside of their own group. The result is an increasing division in our culture and animosity toward those who are not part of our group. Our culture is splintering in ways it’s not done so before and the result can only be described as cataclysmic.

There’s a sense in which the splintering aided by the instantaneous and widespread connectivity of social media culture demonstrates the power of social media itself. Not only can individuals connect easily but groups can organize effortlessly as well. Too often, they organize for evil.

But, there is good news. Social media technology is one of those cultural goods that Christians can redeem. It’s one of those social goods that we can utilize for the advance of the gospel if we would only see its power and organize for the cause of Christ as opposed to merely utilizing those platforms for personal connection with others, or in far too many cases, for narcissistic self-aggrandizement. We need to be reminded t’s not about us; it’s about Christ and his kingdom. It’s about others.

No one would deny that there are Christian ministries utilizing social media in an effective way for the gospel. But we need to get this right at an individual level as well as a para-church level. Somehow, someway individual Christians need to see the power of social media, organize, and take personal responsibility for unified gospel proliferation. May we begin to think more and more along these lines, and may God grant us wisdom to engage. In the end, it’s the gospel that overcomes, and we want to be part of that.

Christians Creating Culture | True Worldview Ep. 15

It’s not uncommon to hear Christians talk about cultural engagement. Our understanding of such a dynamic usually resides in the arena of what are called culture wars. There’s something harmful in the culture, and we go to work to combat it. Abortion would be a good example; we war against it, as well we should. At the same time, we should also recognize that cultural engagement is not only about what we’re against.

The question of how we believers should relate to culture, the culture in which God has placed us – for a reason – is not new. In his seminal work Christ and Culture, H. Richard Niebuhr highlighted five possibilities. The first he called “Christ against Culture,” illustrated in the abortion issue above. Generally speaking, in this view, Christians live in opposition to culture. The second view is “Christ of Culture.” Here, Christians submit their understanding of Christ to the values and attitudes of culture. Third is “Christ above Culture,” a view in which both the Lord and culture are taken seriously. However, a compartmentalization routinely takes place. Faith is often divorced from everyday life. Niebuhr called the fourth view “Christ and Culture in Paradox.” Here, the kingdom and the culture exist along side one another, and Christians seek to be faithful to their respective roles. One must submit to both without sinning against God. Fifth, “Christ is the Transformer of Culture.” Here, cultural realities, goods, and structures can be restored or redeemed by Christ. All areas of life are submitted to Christ and transformed for His glory.

Certainly, one may see truth in each of these positions. And surely, we all agree that Christ is indeed the transformer of culture, as He transforms persons who then play their part in the dominion mandate (subdue the earth), the cultural mandate (salt and light), and the Great Commission (make disciples). And yet, culture is not static. It’s not static when we transform it. Neither is it static when we add to it. Yes, we’re born into an existing culture, but it’s an ever-changing culture, not just through transformation, but through the creation of new culture.

God has called us to be culture engagers and culture transformers, but He’s also called us to be culture makers. Building on work by Ken Meyers, Andy Crouch unfolded this concept in his book — cleverly entitled – Culture Making. Cultural goods that are bad should be eliminated or transformed. Those that are good should be preserved. But Christians should also strive to create new cultural goods that glorify God and benefit others for the sake of the gospel. We image forth God in that endeavor, as we do in others. We put His creatorship on display. Cultivation yes, but also creativity is part of the dominion mandate. Creativity is also part of the cultural mandate and even the Great Commission. In one sense, new creatures in Christ are new cultural goods just as new objects, new methods, and new modes are new cultural goods as well. 

It’s good to help a man who’s been beaten and left on the side of the road as did the Good Samaritan. It’s also good to build hospitals as certain Christians have done. And it’s good to serve in the name of Christ in those hospitals. These are seminal thoughts as we seek to take every thought captive in obedience to Christ.

Kingdomizing: Discipling Whole Cultures | True Worldview Ep. 14

Here’s a word about the Great Commission and full-orbed discipleship. We’ve certainly deepened our understanding of the Lord’s command over time -- it’s not a command to merely go, but to make disciples as we go; it’s not a command about discipling geo-political states, but the myriad people-groups that make up the world -- things like that. But Darrow Miller takes another step forward. He talks about discipling whole nations. It’s not that we’re to disciple people out of every people group, though we are, but there’s more to it. Disciple-making spreads as new disciples are made; it spreads throughout entire cultures. Beyond that, disciple-making is not merely about evangelism, teaching doctrine, and teaching to obey, it’s also about inculcating a thorough-going biblical worldview in the hearts and minds of Jesus’ disciples.

We can apply these principles to numerous life-situations, not the least of which is missions and relief. Missionaries and relief workers have a heart for God and people; they work hard at spreading the gospel and helping others. However, by way of example, sometimes they adopt less than biblical worldviews to help impoverished persons. Evolution says there’s nothing more than the physical world and the limited resources it contains. When Christian relief workers blame a lack of resources for generational poverty and sometimes write whole countries off, they buy into such a worldview. They buy into the same worldview as those calling for population control or the Elon Musk’s of the world desperately seeking a way to move to Mars when our planet is used up.

Others adopt a Marxist approach to aid rooted in wealth redistribution or Critical Theory. Woke Culture has slipped into the church as calls for a re-ordering of the social structure reverberate throughout the evangelical world.

Then there are those missionaries who want to save souls and merely feed the hungry along the way. They give them fish, a good thing, but they’re not interested in training them to catch fish. Why bother with such when Jesus is coming soon? Certainly, we recognize dispensational underpinnings here. At the same time, there’s a sense in which, at a worldview level, a sort of neo-animistic understanding has taken hold. If evolution says ultimate reality is only physical, animism says that ultimate reality is only spiritual. An animistic influence is at work when we downplay the importance of this world’s connection to the kingdom and focus solely on Heaven.

God’s word presents a different vision. Contra evolution, God has given us resources of which we’re unaware at the present time. He’s also given us minds for creativity and innovation. Subduing the earth takes on new meaning in light of that reality, particularly when it’s connected to the Great Commission. Contra Marxism, that reality also militates against evil redistribution and/or revolution schemes that contradict biblical principles including the goodness and necessity of work; biblical justice as opposed to so-called social justice; as well as compassion and mercy to name a few. Contra animism, this world and its people are important to God, the kingdom is to be brought to bear in the here and now, and certain cultural goods will last into eternity. Therefore, as Miller says, our goal is nothing short of a radical reorientation of a person’s life. As this reorientation spreads, whole cultures are discipled. I would describe it as the creation of a kingdom citizen who has kingdom understanding and kingdom goals and engages in, to borrow another word from Miller, kingdomizing activities. We’re talking about people who take seriously the words of our Lord when He taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.”

Truth Transforms Culture | True Worldview Ep. 13

Most Christians agree that lies enslave and truths transform. At the same time, many believers fail to grasp the significance of such a reality. Darrow Miller points out that lies not only enslave individuals spiritually, mentally, and socially, but those same lies enslave entire cultures in the same ways. For most, it’s probably a new concept to think at such a macro level. The implication is that entire cultures could be set free from certain things if enough persons understood and were committed to the truth God has revealed.

The Lord Jesus said the truth will set us free. The primary emphasis there, of course, is the fact that Christians are set free from enslavement to sin, Satan, and death. Beyond that, their minds are set free. By virtue of the Word and Spirit, Christians uniquely have an ability to see what’s real. They understand the reality of God, His world, our problem, and His solution. But they understand more than that as well. By way of example, there are certain intellectual and/or spiritual commitments that enslave entire cultures in poverty, instability, and hopelessness among other equally devastating dynamics. When it comes to the issue of poverty, only the truth of God will enable persons and indeed entire cultures to overcome their impoverished state. Too many are enslaved by Satan’s lie that poverty is the result of a lack of resources or infrastructure. God’s reality is otherwise. He has given us minds to overcome seeming limitations with innovation, development, and so much more.

But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, it all starts with the gospel. Individuals are transformed when they come to know Christ. They then begin to learn the truths of who God is, what He’s about, who we are, and what we’re about. Others move beyond the basics of the faith and are discipled in a greater way. They learn to take the truths of Scripture and apply them to their hearts. They shed old, destructive habit patterns and adopt new, life-giving habit patterns rooted in God‘s reality. But we need to go even further and help others do the same. We must help persons grasp a full-orbed, biblical worldview to combat the multitude of lies Satan throws our way through a host of cultural avenues. We must carry the Great Commission to its full conclusion. We must not only make disciples from all the nations, but as Miller would say, we must disciple entire nations. It is that dynamic that takes the implications of the gospel and the inaugurated kingdom to its fullest extent, as it should: thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.

Join Christi and Paul as they discuss these issues and more.

Let Men be Free: Religious Freedom Reminder | True Worldview Ep. 12

Like so many, President Trump is a bad man who sometimes does good things. While some of those good things put the lie to certain false accusations against him, my thoughts here don’t center on the President but on religious freedom, a good thing, and the fact that the President has done some good things in that arena. Recently, he addressed the annual Values Voter Summit where he said, “We believe that every American has the right to live by the dictates of their conscience and the teachings of their faith. We believe in the right to free exercise of religion.”

There are certain things that Christians need to be reminded of and think thoughtfully about on a regular basis. When we fail to do so, we forget not only the importance of those things but also the ground for them. We ignore them until they’re threatened, when they should never have been threatened at all. And perhaps they wouldn’t have been threatened had we been diligent. One of those massively important things is religious freedom.

Religious freedom is vital for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the reality that all other freedoms rest upon it. Without religious freedom, the freedom of speech goes out the window. Without free speech, it’s easy to see that certain political ideas would be banned along with the books, magazines, radio stations, or web sites espousing them. Next, it wouldn’t be long before certain common businesses would be banned. And we could go on.

The President further said that “our shared values are under assault like never before,” and he’s right. People need to be reminded that certain rights come from God, not the government. If murder is wrong, then there is an implied right to life. If stealing is wrong, there is an implied right to property. We could add more. The point is that government doesn’t grant rights but merely recognizes them. That’s why Americans have long held that certain of our rights are inalienable. Our government can’t take them away because the government didn’t grant them; God did. Religious freedom is an inalienable right given by God to all persons. That doesn’t mean that all paths lead to God. They don’t. There is only one way to God and salvation: faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But it does mean that God has given all human beings liberty of conscience, whether they’re right or wrong. As John Leland, the Baptist preacher instrumental in the adoption of the Bill of Rights declared, "Every man must give account of himself to God, and therefore every man ought to be at liberty to serve God in a way that he can best reconcile to his conscience. If government can answer for individuals at the day of judgment, let men be controlled by it in religious matters; otherwise, let men be free."

Join Christi and Paul as they discuss these issues and more on True Worldview.

Racism, Privilege, and Power | True Worldview Ep. 11

So, here’s just a little something extra on racism, privilege, and power. Critical Theory is all the rage today; it sounds so compassionate, so equitable, and so plausible. Oppressor groups have indeed oppressed oppressed groups. Of course, the leap from that fact to the notion that all persons in majority groups are racist -- or whatever evil du jour -- simply because they are members of the majority group is, in a word, oppressive.

It’s fair to say that God hates racism, and therefore Christians should too. All persons are created in the image of God and have essential worth, dignity, and honor. Slavery, hatred, making fun of, and numerous other forms of demeaning persons because of their race or orientation is not only an attack on those persons, but an attack on God Himself. I trust you see the logic. An attack on a human being is an attack on the image of God in that human being, and therefore is, in some sense, an attack on God.

But here’s the rub: just because someone calls something racist doesn’t mean it’s so. I actually went to a Hispanic Appreciation Dance at a local college and danced to a number of Hispanic tunes. Not one of the Hispanics there accused me of cultural appropriation. They seemed to appreciate the fact that I was at the appreciation dance to appreciate them. Yet, despite the sensibleness of all that mutual appreciation, there are those who would disagree. But let’s not kid ourselves; the world sees and defines all kinds of things differently than God does. While God grants the liberty to a same-sex couple to call themselves married, they in fact are not married regardless of what they, the culture, or the state says. God is the one who defines marriage. And God is the one who defines racism, not the academy.

Indeed, there are those who are privileged for one reason or another. God is ultimately in charge of that. And with privilege often comes power. It’s our responsibility to use that privilege and power the way God would have us to. He’s our authority, not the culture. Our mandate is to glorify God and do good unto others. If we do that, we might get accused of cultural appropriation from time to time, but in God’s estimation, we’ll be serving in a way that’s culturally appropriate.

Woke Culture: The Rise of Critical Theory | True Worldview Ep. 10

It’s a new normal in American culture: a culture in which seismic upheavals in terms of worldview and resulting legislation are wreaking havoc. A major segment of academia, a large segment of political pundits, and a growing segment of the population now believe in some sense that white persons are racist simply because they are white. More specifically, because they are the beneficiaries of white privilege, they are racist by necessity whether they realize it or not. As Stephanie Wildman declared, “all whites are racist in this [systemic] use of the term because we benefit from systemic white privilege.”

As with all things, there’s a worldview behind this new normal. In popular parlance it’s referred to as Cultural Marxism, while in academic circles it’s referred to Critical Theory. Neil Shenvi defines Critical Theory as “an ideology that divides the world into oppressed groups and oppressor groups and seeks to liberate the oppressed.” He points out that “it is currently the reigning theoretical paradigm in academic disciplines like gender studies, critical pedagogy, critical race theory, anthropology, and queer theory, and forms the ideological foundation for large segments of the secular social justice movement.” The oppressed as well as the oppressors must come to see the so-called truth of the situation. They must be “woke.”

Certainly, racism is wrong. But is one a racist simply by virtue of being white or anything else for that matter? The testimony of scripture is no. God is the one who made us who we are.

Accordingly, a primary need for Christians is to think at a worldview level. These issues are not mere differing political opinions. They’re issues rooted in a worldview diametrically opposed to Christ and his gospel. These are in fact gospel issues in a sense. Certainly it is the gospel that saves, but the gospel has implications for civil society and God’s program for humanity. God’s kingdom is brought to bear when persons come to know Him, but it’s also brought to bear when those who know Him influence society for His glory and the good of those in that society. It’s part and parcel of being salt and light, and It’s time for Christians, not to become woke, but to be awakened for the task.

Join Christi and Paul as they discuss these issues and more on today’s episode of True Worldview.

Cultural Engagement in Music: Consumerism vs. Creativity | True Worldview Ep. 9

Christi and Paul move beyond their reflections on the coming deaths of nearly every Rock legend to contrast their music with pop music today. They touch on consumerism vs. creativity as competing forces behind music production, which leads to some thoughts concerning biblical, cultural engagement rooted in the beauty of God and our call to image Him.

The Coming Death of Just about Every Rock & Roll Legend | True Worldview Ep. 8

Icons dies over time, but we're about to be confronted with the deaths of thirty or so Rock & Roll legends -- likely in the next ten years. Such things cause us to think about our own mortality, the fleeting nature of life, and what it all means. Of course, the defiance and rebellion that characterizes Rock culture is thought provoking too. "The Who" belting out "I hope I die before I get old" comes to mind. Join Christi and Paul as they discuss these issues and more.

The Religion of Our Culture | True Worldview Ep. 7

On today’s episode Christi and Paul talk about the religion of our culture. There’s a common idea that one can come to a subject from a position of neutrality; that we can leave religious issues at the door and simply talk in terms of science, or the latest political “truth” of our day. But every idea has a worldview behind it. Listen in as Christi and Paul debunk the idea of neutrality and highlight certain cultural religious elements along the way.

Racism, Culture, and the Transcendence of the Gospel | True Worldview Ep. 6

Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, came under fire recently after a photo emerged of him wearing blackface to a party when he was 29. Christi and Paul tackle this head on and ask questions like "What is racism?" They discuss the political climate of the Civil Rights Movement vs. when the photo was taken and compare it all to our current culture. How should Christians respond? Listen in for more.