Jared, I think I can agree with every point and disagree with their application, all at the same time, depending on how the term “culture war” is being defined.
I have serious problems with a certain form of the culture war; at the same time, I don’t think you’re going to find many takers who will raise their hands on this sort of restatement:
- laws or policies can make someone a Christian
- illegalizing sin can create or recapture a people for Christ
- Christians should coerce others toward better behavior
You’ll get a hearty “amen” from me that each of the above ideas is contrary to the gospel. And of course I couldn’t agree more with your closing paragraph.
But what do you make of what Martin Luther King Jr. said here?
Now the other myth that gets around is the idea that legislation cannot really solve the problem and that it has no great role to play in this period of social change because you’ve got to change the heart and you can’t change the heart through legislation. You can’t legislate morals. The job must be done through education and religion.
Well, there’s half-truth involved here.
Certainly, if the problem is to be solved then in the final sense, hearts must be changed. Religion and education must play a great role in changing the heart.
But we must go on to say that while it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated.
It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless.
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important, also.
So there is a need for executive orders. There is a need for judicial decrees. There is a need for civil rights legislation on the local scale within states and on the national scale from the federal government. [emphasis added]
I think there’s a way, say, to be an activist on behalf of life without throwing the gospel under the bus or imagining that all Democrats are going to hell.
October 20th, 2009 | 8:44 pm | #1
Justin, agreed. As I said in my piece, put Roe v. Wade or gay marriage to a vote, and I fall in line.
I’ve written elsewhere on the social justice false dichotomy often proffered. (In case anyone is interested, here: http://searchwarp.com/swa380288.htm . The community for that site is, shall we say?, different, so the writing is more off the cuff.)
I know that almost no evangelical would agree that legislation makes someone Christian. But a frightening many act like it may, or at least act like it may make the nation “Christian again.”
October 20th, 2009 | 8:46 pm | #2
I agree that there is a lot of troubling stuff about there about “reclaiming America.” Gives me the willies.
I wonder if the divide is between those of us who would vote a certain way if it came to that, and those of us who feel called to publicly advocate that such a vote comes about in the first place.
October 20th, 2009 | 8:53 pm | #3
I know that I have never been able to post on this subject anywhere without someone accusing me of:
a) being a liberal
b) urging political dis-engagement
c) making stuff up
I am not (a), not doing (b), and if (c) is true, I’m like that dude in “Beautiful Mind” just imagining literally hundreds of people in my life (and on the interweb :-).
I am always pressed: “Does this mean not to vote?”
As with all matters of idolatry, it is about the heart.
Contra John Mark, the lady who spoke at the benefit banquet I attended last week was not made of straw.
October 20th, 2009 | 8:53 pm | #4
Right about “reclaiming America” . . .
Can we all agree that the “conservative Bible” is beyond . . . parody/wicked/weird?
October 20th, 2009 | 8:56 pm | #5
I hope that church in North Carolina or wherever that was buuuurns it.
October 20th, 2009 | 10:06 pm | #6
Because I am in 97% agreement with Jared, I’ll offer him a hand here as a fellow traveler who thinks the political road to redemption is wide and easy.
The question is definitely not, “ought there to be any laws?” Because we know factually that Rom 13 says that the government wields the sword as a minister of God to punish the evil-doer. Case closed: there ought to be laws.
The question is in fact: at what point does seeking to make laws subvert either our ability to credibly proclaim (it’s going to be a theme for me here, so live it or live with it) the Gospel or undermine our actual faith in God by making government an idol, or both?
See: the problem with the “culture war” is that is makes us size up a bunker and live in it rather than be the suicide squad we ought to be. I know that’s radical talk there, but follow me here: I am sure you educated guys have read Mathetes’ letter to Diognetus, right? That a letter from the 2nd or 3rd century explaining the Christian faith to a pagan who can’t get what’s happening. And what is evident in that letter is that the Christians being described are mature in doctrine and martyr in action. That is, they were ready to give up their lives in every way to demonstrate that what they believe is true.
Most of us and our friends who are culture warriors can’t be bothered to give up a night of TV to visit people we know who are in the hospital — let alone take in someone who is suffering from AIDS and give them solice and hospice.
And without going all Paul Washer on everyone here, my point is this: it is one thing to say, “there should be laws against violent crime (a la MLK)” and another to say “we need laws to defend marriage because the church certainly cannot.” Laws are God’s will for the common society — but when we want to get laws on the books to make people believe what we believe rather than pour our selves out even a little to show them that we believe what we believe, we’re just full of stuff which only vulgar saxon words can express.
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