Imagine for a moment that you were transported back in time to an ancient land where the people believed that illness was caused by evil goblins living in your stomach. How would you even begin to convince those people to adopt health practices based on the germ theory of disease?
You: One of the things that could keep you from getting sick is washing your hands before you eat.
Ancient Tribesman: Does washing the hands drown the evil goblins?
You: Well, no
Ancient Tribesman: Does it frighten them away?
You: No, see, there are no goblins.
Ancient Tribesman: Because they flee the magic of the hand washing ceremony?
You: No, there are no goblins at all. You get sick because of these tiny creatures that get into your body and make you sick.
Ancient Tribesman: You mean the goblins?
Christians in America face a similar kind of situation. We find ourselves living in a land where people don’t understand anything we say. They don’t even understand any possible reason why we would say what we say.
It’s hard to come to grips with this, because it seems like just a minute ago TV shows could drop casual references to Noah’s ark or the battle of Jerhico or the feeding of the five thousand, and everybody would know what they were talking about. Biblical moral principles were widely accepted as good just because they were from the Bible. Whether or not you think America qualified as a “Christian nation,” an understanding and at least some minimal appreciation of Christianity was baked into the cultural pie.
Not anymore. The general public’s ignorance of the Bible is matched only by their disdain for it. Not only are Biblical principles not accepted at face value, a moral standard is more likely to be rejected once people find out it’s from the Bible.
And it’s not like Biblical truth has been replaced by any other coherent philosophy. This great, yawning void in the zeitgeist has been filled with a slurry of neo-Freudian crankery, spiritual-ish bumper sticker slogans, and euphemistically celebrated mental illnesses.
Take for example the concept of “justice,” the definition of which has been commonly understood in Western civilization from the time Moses descended from Mt. Sinai up until about twenty minutes ago. Now the word “justice” doesn’t even exist by itself anymore. It only serves as something like a verbal cake plate, paired with words like “social,” “trans,” and “undocumented resident” to prop up concepts that are mostly just overdecorated indulgences. People can talk all day–passionately–about social justice without having any idea what justice is. And trying to explain it to them just makes them look at you like a time traveler trying to deny the obvious existence of stomach goblins.
There are plenty of other examples of foundational principles that have been lost to the re-paganization of Western culture. We used to understand the meaning and value of repentance. Remember when politicians who were caught in a scandal used to resign in disgrace? Seriously, that was a thing that actually happened. Those were the days. Sincere or not, repentance was still understood as a necessary step in the redemption from sin. But now repentance has gone the way of the hoop skirt and full service gas stations. You’re more likely to get a parade in celebration of sin than repentance of it.
These and so many Christian principles have been so thoroughly abandoned by the world that we have no common language left. No shared values, nor even a shared understanding about what is valuable. How does a Christian even begin to speak into a culture like that?
They say that the first rule of getting out of holes is to stop digging, but the rule before that one is, if you see somebody else digging a hole, don’t fall in it yourself. If we want to change the culture, we can’t get sucked into the assumptions of the culture. This is why woke mainline denominations are dying: they’re just redundant. Everything they’re saying is already being said by every movie, TV show, book, and TED talk, probably in a much more entertaining way.
So it’s worthwhile to regularly spend some time reminding each other that we’re not the crazy ones. Study God’s word together with other believers and see that His ways are different from man’s ways, and “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” (1 Cor. 1:27) Steep in the truth until it gets all the way down into your bones, and you know with an unshakable faith that reality belongs to God. He created it, He controls every atom of it, and He does not read public opinion polls.
Then, carry that confidence out into our very confused worth and let it shine forth in every interaction. Unfortunately, there’s no magic argument that’s going to instantly flip a generation’s worldview right side up. But by boldly living like we actually believe the things we claim to believe, we can provide a firm, steady push in the right direction.
