Follow me on this, I
will lay out my objections and then what I think you're intending
When you say Christians
can't expect the unbeliever to live a Christian life so we ought not tell them
to live morally, you are saying Christ has no authority over their lives. Intended
or not you are saying he has no place in the public sphere and is not their
king. they are judged by the same standard as we are and can benefit from
honoring God, moreover Christ is God not just in the church or over it's people
but over all sphere's of life and over all people. Essentially without meaning to you are caving
to the culture's definition and narrative.
God is not in the public sphere, self-autonomy is everything and leave
us to do what we want. It's the assumption of freedom of religion as simply
freedom of worship,yet that's the problem. All of our lives and all of creation
is to worship God in honoring him always in all things. Saying otherwise or
placing a limit on how Christian's can influence society in their witness to
honor God (short of engineering perfection) which transforms the culture is not
honoring to God as the arbiter of all truth and the lord of all Creation.
That surrender has led to the death of Christendom
and the society's decline. We are called
to be the salt of the earth. Don't
engineer perfection, you can't. Do what you're
called, and honor God with your voice in all areas of life, saying we can't
tell others to honor God is really abbhorent.
In worrying about making us look bad, you leave people in their sin and leave
soceity to suffer. In trying to be kind,
you leave people without a witness and society without a restraint. You can’t watch someone in their depravity
and throw your hands up “oh well, let them go” anymore than you can see a loved
one digging a knife into their wrists and leave them be because “they don’t
think their life is important.
What are you reacting
out against? Is this you're objection to
the turn or burn mentalityAmerican Christianity? It need not be so. The Prophets of the Old Testament certainly
did not, and neither did Christ or the Early Church. We can't conflate poor
evangelism that degrades without pointing to God's grace with what is really a
Godly influence on soceity and part of God's
call on us to be the salt of the earth.
Take even Jonah in the OT for example who spoke out to a pagan empire,
and the other prophets who certainly spoke concerning them.
Where we agree and
where the solution is: Evangelism is to be in relationship without neglecting the
Grace of God. This does not negate the
duty of Christians to influence society or mean Godly influence isn’t
evangelism.
Central tenets to think on
1.
God is the
source of all authority and moral law
2.
the Government
has moral authority and is instituted by God
3.
Therefore Civil
Authority must honor God in it's law or practice, or be judged accordingly.
4.
People saved or
unsaved live under God's law and face consequences in this life and the next.
5.
You have
influence you can use to the end of increasing the honoring of his authority by
the government and private individuals
6. do it.
From those of seen, and
this may not fit you I’ve noticed two things.
You are confusing
persons with opinions when you make it personal, this is postmodernism
Or
You are saying the
culture can expect or make us act like secular humanists and can do what you
are telling us not to while we can’t ask them to live according to Christian
moral principles.
Christian’s aren’t
somehow the bullies, moreover we are even the minority now. Applying a double standard like those
mentioned is anything but helpful.
The culture has a
consensus by which is legislates, ours is secular humanism. You are not acting
as a Christian when you tell Christians to stop advocating social causes or
telling nonbelievers not to sin. You are
acting as a secular humanist and absorbing the sinful character of our culture.
The Church always spoke out politically. Everytime they said Jesus is lord not Caesar, or when they refused and discouraged worship of idols. Rome was only concerned with politically unity, and Gods were considered local. To refuse to worship the God’s where you were was considered treason since the God’s were so identified with the state. Rome saw refusal to worship the God’s as “atheism”, a political charge of treason. It was believed this failure on the part of Christians would cause the wrath of the God’s to fall on them. So evangelizing in and of itself was politically charged.
So if you refuse to vote or speak out your Christianity to the culture, you aren’t living as a Christian. You are living as a secular humanist.
Abraham Kuyper spoke well on the issue. There are different spheres (in one sense) But
"There is not one square inch in the whole domain of Human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all does not cry out MINE!"
"There is not one square inch in the whole domain of Human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all does not cry out MINE!"
Think of it as an interlocking puzzle. Without Christ in all as lord of all you are missing a piece and unable to see the full picture.
No comments:
Post a Comment