Richard's Thoughts on the "Culture Wars"

This is an excerpt from a commentary by Richard Mouw. His column is called, "The Evangelical Mind." (If you think that's an oxymoron you should check out his columns.)

We [Christians] have often acted like our only options are either to give up on the larger society or to try to take it over. There is another alternative: to recognize that in our increasingly pluralistic culture we are called to make our way in—to borrow wonderful phrase from the Mennonites—"the time of God’s patience."

God is not calling us to win the cultural wars. What is required is that we remain faithful to our deepest convictions while also showing, as the Apostle puts it, "gentleness and respect" toward those who challenge us to make a case for what we believe (I Peter 3: 15). Obviously, when it comes to matters of public policy we must also ask others to respect our convictions as well—especially our right to raise our children in the fear of the Lord without having the deck stacked against us by educators and the shapers of popular culture.

But we must resign ourselves to the fact that it will never be easy for us to make our way through the dangerous landscapes of contemporary life. Things are bad these days. Indeed, there are many parallels between our own time and the days when the early church was surrounded by an overtly hostile culture.

But that is also good news in a way: it was under conditions of severe persecution that the early Christian flourished and grew strong in the faith—-a pattern that has been repeated in more recent times in situations where the church has survived under oppressive conditions.
The truth of the matter is that the New Testament does not give much hope to Christians who expect to be well-treated by the dominant culture. Readers of David Limbaugh’s book would do well to remember that Jesus seemed to take the fact of continuing persecution of his followers for granted. "Blessed are you," he told his disciples, "when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you becaue of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you" (Matthew 5: 11).