The Gospel of Culture Wars
Evangelical Christianity in the US has been embroiled in concerns of culture wars. We have struggled internally over forms of music and styles of worship. We have focused externally on the ills of homosexuality, single mothers, abortion, addictions, and the end of a period in which Christianity had a dominant voice in the public sphere. We decry the end of programmed prayer in public schools, blue laws that kept certain businesses from opening on Sundays or Sunday mornings, and a sense of lost entitlement to various government structures aiding in the propagation of the gospel. We cling to public structures and slogans of faith like “In God We Trust” or the inclusion of “under God” in the national Pledge of Allegiance. Along the way, however, we seem to have substituted these issues for what Jesus actually preached.
If anything, Jesus spoke against a religious structure that held a degree of political power within Judaism. He spoke against their prohibitions around the keeping of the Sabbath, similar in many ways to our heritage of blue laws. He spoke against public prayer as calling attention to self rather than a prayer that expressed reliance upon God. He spoke against voices intent on keeping the sinful populace in its place on the margins of Jewish society. He spoke against those who wielded power in a way that increased the burdens of the vulnerable.
If there was a culture war in First Century Palestine, Jesus was leading the charge against the positions of the religious elite. He called the faith community to leave their halls of power and concerns of control to make their way into the community they were keeping marginalized under a cloud of condemnation.
Jesus did not speak from a perspective emphasizing the racial purity of God's chosen people. He spoke from a perspective seeking the inclusion of those remaining outside the boundaries of acceptability. Rather than tightening the boundaries of inclusion, Jesus opened them wide.
When he addressed cultural issues, it was not with a sense of condemnation. It was rather from a desire to welcome the excluded back into the fellowship of God's redeemed. That was the point of the parables of the lost sheep, coin, and son. What was lost and cut off from the community could be restored with no holds barred. The errant one could and should be welcomed back with loving arms to a feast in honor of the return.
Jesus' priorities in ministry were far different from the public pronouncements we have heard from so many pulpits. He preached no health and prosperity gospel. He preached no gospel of a return to some golden age of yore. He preached no message of anger and attack upon those who did not measure up to God's perfect will. Instead, he preached reconciliation to all who would listen. He preached grace and good news specifically to those we are more wont to cast aside.
The good news was directed to the poor and insignificant. Healing was offered freely to those with no resources. Forgiveness was lavished upon people who did not even request it. It was a message seen by the powerful and the religious elite as a threat to established and ordered society. They saw Jesus breaking with their traditions of worship and cried foul at his abandonment of their traditions concerning God's instructions to Moses. They were afraid Jesus was going to turn God against the nation and send some new calamity upon them for failing to meet God's demands.
The establishment preached a message of protecting the status quo of religious power. Jesus came along as a threat to that position and place. Jewish culture was very religious, but Jesus called his followers to something very different.
He called them to care for the poor and consider them as receiving God's kingdom. He called them to comfort those who mourned. He taught them to consider the meek as those to inherit God's earth. He taught him to work to satisfy those who hungered and thirsted for righteousness. He called them to be like those who sought to give mercy. He taught them to focus on questions of heart purity. He taught them to be peacemakers and to rejoice in persecution for following these same priorities.
None of these emphases are those underlying our culture wars. We are generally focused on telling those around us how wrong-headed they are. We are interested in declaring that we are the true people of God and all others are headed for destruction. We are invested in making sure that political power falls in line with oppressing those actions we find disgusting, offensive, or which would otherwise decrease our esteem and influence in the public sphere.
Jesus was not interested in such emphases. He preached love, compassion, reconciliation, and mercy. He deigned to touch lepers, speak to Samaritan women, and seek out foreigners he could point out as embodying the kind of faith God prizes. He ministered to those the religious considered sinners and reprobates. He ate with people who were unacceptable. He confronted the excesses of religious opinion that oppressed the poor and marginalized.
In fact, in the Magnificat and again in Jesus' auto-description of the purpose of his ministry, Jesus points to a theme of social reversal. His was a message of the upheaval of society in which the poor, lame, blind, widows, orphans, and otherwise oppressed came out on top, while the wealthy and powerful were left to fend for themselves. If anything, this is where our culture wars face down Jesus most defiantly. We are so much more consumed with our own welfare that we have created a barrier to keep us away from the very people to which Jesus calls us to live beside.
Like the “No Trespassing” signs I have seen erected on manicured church lawns, we managed to send the world the message that God does not really love them, at least not the way we are loved. Rather than preaching according to the way Jesus preached and live the way Jesus lived, we have hunkered down in our foxholes and then cried out in despair that our churches are dying. While we want to blame it on a culture removed from the tenets of the gospel, it might be that we are the very ones who began that shift away from God in Christ Jesus.
If we are truly concerned to bring the world around us back to God as revealed in Christ Jesus, we need to drop our focus on culture wars and start living the good news as Jesus actually preached and lived it. Rather than condemning women for prostituting themselves, we need to start talking with them to understand why they would settle for such a life and address why men take advantage of them. Instead of condemning people for seeking abortions, we need to accept them and discover what kind of support they are lacking to carry a fetus to term. Instead of closing our hearts to refugees, we need to listen to their stories and assist them in getting their lives back together in a strange land.
The gospel, after all, is not good news until we allow it to flow through us as something other than a battle cry of condemnation. After all, when we focus on culture wars, we are distracted from doing what we are charged to do: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” It's time we did the same and followed after God's love. That is how Jesus taught us to change the world, after all.
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