But this is something different than the ‘culture wars’ which have taken place in North America over the last few decades. Those conflicts have proven divisive.
Jesus followers have something better to offer. They can give people a path to wholeness and healing, a path greatly needed in the current state of our civilization.
Depression, substance abuse, domestic violence, and even suicide are the symptoms of a directionlessness which plagues many Americans. They’ve lost, or never had, a larger conceptual framework in which to view their lives.
Some of them are trapped in a prison of subjectivity, captive to the emotion of the moment. Others have been desperately wounded, but lack the knowledge to describe their wounds or to seek healing.
Writing in the New York Times in June 2015, David Brooks describes how society can benefit from the Jesus followers in its midst:
We live in a society plagued by formlessness and radical flux, in which bonds, social structures and commitments are strained and frayed. Millions of kids live in stressed and fluid living arrangements. Many communities have suffered a loss of social capital. Many young people grow up in a sexual and social environment rendered barbaric because there are no common norms. Many adults hunger for meaning and goodness, but lack a spiritual vocabulary to think things through.
Followers of Jesus are equipped to communicate about the brokenness of the world and the brokenness of each individual human. To be human is to be flawed, and therefore to need help: to need forgiveness.
The news that such forgiveness is freely, joyously, given by God is the core of the message of Jesus. People can’t, and don’t need to, earn God’s mercy. God offers forgiveness without humans having earned or merited it. This is the meaning of the word ‘grace’ - “let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.”
This favor, which God so freely dispenses on humans, places life into a new perspective, and gives fresh motives and fresh energy to people in their daily lives. That’s good news.
By stepping back from the nastier combat in the ‘culture wars,’ Jesus followers wouldn’t necessarily compromise their integrity. They wouldn’t be stepping back from their convictions, but merely from the aggressive promulgation of those convictions through media, politics, and legislation.
The ‘culture wars’ might - surprisingly - continue without the Jesus followers. There are many Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, Buddhists, and others who are working, and will work, to defend human life from the moment of conception, or to defend the normal concepts of marriage and family.
Somebody else can manage the culture war for a while. Jesus followers may have more important work to do.
