Foundations In Times Like These - Christianity Today

Ministry in the mid-seventeenth century was tough, particularly if you were an Anglican priest.

The Cromwellian revolution, having toppled the reign of Charles I, proceeded to divest the monarchy of its power and influence. Since the king was the head of the state church, Anglicanism got caught in the fury of the overthrow.

In the midst of this turmoil, a tribute was written to the local pastor of the Harold Church in the village of Staunton, England. It remains today on the wall of the church and reads, “In the year 1653, when all things sacred were throughout the nation destroyed or profaned, this church was built to the glory of God by Sir Robert Shirley whose singular praise it was to have done the best of things in the worst of times.”

As bad as our times may seem, they are not the worst of times. No one is throwing us to lions or burning us on lampposts. But these are challenging days for those committed to engaging this culture with the claims of Christ. If we want it said of us that we have done the “best of things” in our times, we must understand the nature of these times and know what to do.

In the larger picture, only one thing has changed: God has been moved from public prominence to the privacy of an individual’s conscience. This marginalization of the Divine has left our culture void of a moral center and, as Francis Schaeffer said, with no “true truth” to provide the basis for consensus and moral authority.

With God out of view, relativism and pluralism filled the void and there are no longer absolutes to guide and define behavior. In his analysis of this new world without limits, Carl Henry observes, “Our generation is lost to the truth of God, to the reality of divine revelation, to the content of God’s will, to the power of his redemption, and to the authority of His Word. For this loss it is paying dearly in a swift relapse to paganism. The savages are stirring again; you can hear them rumbling and rustling in the tempo of our times” (Twilight of a Great Civilization: The Drift Toward Neopaganism, p. 20).

We could try to ignore the shift if it weren’t so threatening to the church. Throughout history one of Satan’s successful ploys has been to enculturate God’s people. It was often the undoing of Israel and provided grounds for God’s censure of the Corinthian and Laodicean churches. When the church becomes little more than an echo of the values of a fallen society, it loses the distinctiveness that gives it power (1 Peter 2:12). In the terms of John 17, we have been called out of this world to go back in with the claims of Christ.

A menu of seductions “Viva la difference” must be the church’s rally cry. Our challenge is to lead and teach in such a way that our distinctives are evident, balanced, and biblical.

To live out the critical difference between the church and the world demands that we understand our culture and that we can articulate the essentials of living Christianly in pagan times. We must strive for the honor credited to the men of Issachar: that they understood their times and knew what to do (1 Chron. 12:32).

While understanding our times, it is important that we don’t cower before the culture. We are not victims of our times. Our times only offer a menu of seductions. Compelling as they are, we are still people of choice.

Equal caution must be taken that we don’t paint all of culture as dark and dangerous. By God’s amazing grace, aspects of our fallen world still enrich and inspire the mind and heart. Music, literature, and other arts are often beautiful expressions of the creative richness of the image of God within mankind.

Given these cautions, what can we do to understand our times and protect and propel our ministries toward the best of things?

Develop a Christ-centered worldview. Read those gifted in discerning cultural trends in the light of biblical truth, such as Gene Vieth on postmodernism, Ravi Zacharias, D.A. Carson, and from the last generation, Francis Schaeffer. Becoming a student of generational nuances is equally important as we seek to empower builders, boomers, busters, etc., to get past their own worlds and get a grip on Kingdom living.

But the most effective tool in discerning our times is understanding what Scripture teaches us about the fallenness of our world and the clear standards of scriptural righteousness by which we then measure all we observe, experience, and do.

Spin doctors Discernment begins by watching our world with healthy skepticism. Our environment is severely damaged by sin. John calls it the cosmos and pictures it as being managed by Satan, the “ruler of this world” (John 12:31, 16:11). Christ told the Pharisees that when Satan is in charge, you can expect both deceit and death to prevail because he was a murderer from the beginning and there is no truth in him (John 8:44).

As students of fallen times, we become aware that much of what we hear trumpeted as good and right may very well be wrong, regardless how wonderful the spin may be. We’re aware that the end game of the ruler is to create an environment where death is promoted and affirmed. Healthy skepticism is undergirded by the biblical warnings that there is a way that seems right, but its end is the way of death. From God’s point of view, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways” (Prov. 14:12, Isa. 55:8).

Skepticism is not enough, however. If all we have is applied suspicion, we are likely to spend our lives looking for opportunities to curse the darkness. But we are called to do more. We are called to understand the darkness in a way that enables us to let the light of Christ shine through us into the deepest darkness of the ruler’s night (Matt. 5:14-16).

Understanding the darkness means we recognize that our fallen world is fundamentally driven and defined not by sinful activity but by non-truth values that produce the wayward behavior. The believers in the Colossian church who had been “delivered from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of His beloved Son” were warned by Paul not to be taken captive by “the traditions of men according to the elementary principles of this world” (Col. 1:13, 2:8). The elementary principles are the false notions of the ruler—the underlying values that shape the thought and behavior of the cosmos.

Our task, then, is to resist the temptation to simply bemoan deviant behavior and instead identify the values that Satan uses to manage his system and captivate souls. Then after isolating the invalid values, identify the contrasting kingdom values that lead individuals from darkness to light.

In a pluralistic society, for instance, where everyone is entitled to his own truth claims and behavioral preferences, tolerance becomes the leading value. But measuring unconditional tolerance against Scripture invalidates its claim on life and liberty.

God’s Word teaches that in his grace and mercy God is not only willing to tolerate the sinner but to pursue him for His glory. Yet in the process, God cannot sacrifice His righteousness by tolerantly affirming the sin. Since He is true, then inevitably there are some things that are right and others that are wrong. His followers live to reflect the worth of the sinner and the weight of the sin in clear, yet compassionate ways.

Another unviable value in today’s world is living to bring selfish pleasure to ourselves. God, by contrast, has taught us that true personal pleasure comes not by living to please ourselves, but rather from living to please God and others. In a society that is driven by greed and personal gain, God calls us to the priority of generosity and sacrifice. In a world that values self as the center of existence, God advances the value of servanthood. In a world of unrestrained sensual pursuit, Scripture calls us to self-control.

The discerner’s secret Discerning our times grows not as much from the study of our culture, as important as that is, as from a deepening understanding of God. Getting a grip on him—the values that emanate from his character, his teaching about what is true, and his warnings about the schemes of our adversary—will make us insightful students of our times.

And as the values of the kingdom become the expression of our lifestyle, we’ll catch the attention of a deceived and dying world.

Douglas Coupland, author of the best-selling work Life After God, makes a startling confession: “Now here is my secret: I tell it to you with an openness of heart that I doubt I shall ever achieve again, so I pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words. My secret is that I need God—that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love” (p. 359).

His plea mirrors the hollow despair that this fallen world produces. Today’s task for Christians is to demonstrate the wonderful difference so that the Couplands of this world might find the hope that only Christ can give.

Joe Stowell, heard daily on the radio program, “Proclaim,” is president of Moody Bible Institute 820 N. LaSalle Chicago IL 60610