Allen Jackson - Culture Builders - Part 2
At the very end of creation, God created human beings. He created us male and female in the language of Genesis 1. As Christ followers, I’m going to submit to you that we have a biblical mandate to be culture builders. We can’t simply ask for the blessing of heaven to make our lives convenient, and then seek to avoid the responsibility of our faith. It’s not biblical. The scriptural justification for culture building starts with Genesis. At the dawn of creation, the earth is unformed, it’s empty, dark, and chaotic. Then in a series of steps, God establishes the basic creational distinctives, «light and dark», «above the expanse, below the expanse», «sea and land», and so on.
You know the story. But then God changes his strategy right there in that first chapter. Until the sixth day, God has done the work of creation directly. But then he creates the first human beings, and he orders them to carry on where he leaves off. They are to reflect his image and to have dominion. From then on, the development of creation will be primarily social and cultural. It will be the work of humans as they obey God’s command to fill and subdue the earth. Jesus said it in a different way, he said we’re to be salt and light. God’s command is the culmination of creation. The curtain has risen on the stage, and the director gives the characters their opening cue in the drama of history.
Through the creation itself, is very good, but the task of exploring and developing its powers and potentials, the task of building civilization, God turns over to his image bearers. «Well I just want to go to heaven». It’s because we’ve been given an incomplete gospel. The same command is still binding on us today. The fall introduced sin and evil into human history, but it didn’t erase the cultural mandate. The generation since Adam and Eve still bear children and have families. We still spread across the earth. We still tend animals and plant fields. We still construct cities and governments. We still make music and works of art. When we are redeemed, we’re not only freed from the sinful motivations that drive us, but we’re also restored to fulfill our original purpose, empowered to do what we were created to do, to build societies and to create culture.
And in so doing, we restore the created order. If you wanted to render the church impotent, you might convince them they shouldn’t talk about current events, that we should withdraw from culture and study history and talk about what God used to do. It’s my contention that the Lord’s cultural commission is inseparable from the great commission. Now, I understand in some settings, that’s a bit jarring for many Christians, who through much of the 20th century, shunned the notion of reforming culture. We associate it with a liberal social gospel. The only task of the church many fundamentalists and evangelicals have believed and loudly declared, is to save as many lost souls as possible from a world that’s literally going to hell. Not saying that doesn’t have a role of significance, but this implicit denial of a Christian worldview is unbiblical.
It’s the reason we’ve lost so much of our influence in the world. Salvation does not consist only or simply of freedom from sin. Salvation also means being restored to the task we were given in the beginning, the job of creating culture. Jesus, after all, taught us to pray, «Your kingdom come and your will be done on earth». Christians are saved, not only from something, sin, but also to something, Christ’s lordship over all of our lives. The Christian life begins with spiritual restoration, which God works through the preaching of his Word, through prayer, sacraments, worship, and the exercise of spiritual gifts within the church. But this is the indispensable beginning, for only the redeemed person is filled with God’s Spirit and can genuinely know and fulfill God’s plan.
But then we’re meant to proceed to the restoration of all God’s creation, which includes: private and public virtue, individual and family life, education and community work, politics and law, science and medicine, literature, art, music. The redemptive goal permeates everything we do. There’s no invisible dividing line between sacred and secular. We’ve drawn that for our own personal convenience, so we could be ungodly when it was profitable and then step back into church and say praise the Lord. We’re going to bring all things under the lordship of Christ: in the home, in the school, and the workshop, and the corporate boardroom, on the movie screen, in the concert studio, in the city council, the Legislative chamber.
The biblical presentation of this, the word’s big, but it’s simple. You’ll understand that it’s transcendent truth. Good old plain Tennessee language, there is right and wrong. Everything is not subjective. The point has to be pressed, because most people today operate on a fact value distinction, believing that science uncovers facts which they believe to be reliable and true. While morality and religion are based on values, which they believe to be subjective and relative to the individual. And here’s where the church has taken some serious missteps. Christians have often mirrored this secular attitude. We tend to be confident about God’s laws for nature, such as gravity or motion or heredity.
But we seem far less confident about God’s laws for the family, for education, or for the state. Yet a truly Christian worldview draws no such distinction. It insists that God’s laws govern all of creation. And just as we have to learn to live in accord with the law of gravity, so we have to learn to live in accord with God’s norms for society. We’ve been reluctant on this point. We’ve lacked the courage to bring our biblical values into the public square, so we’ve taken them out of corporate settings, we’ve taken them out of public education. If our nation really is to ever regain strength, it will be because the church has the courage to bring our biblical worldview back into play.
See, we choose truth or we choose the consequences of rejecting it. And here’s the good news and the wonder of creation, God has given us the choice. We don’t just operate on instinct, we have choices. There are a lot of factors that feed our choices: our emotions, our thoughts, our circumstances; but we have a choice and our choices, don’t misunderstand, make a difference. How do we redeem a culture? How do we rise to the opportunity before us at the start of this new millennia? Well, I would suggest to you the answer is simple. We have echoed it very often. It’s from the inside out; from the individual, to the family, to the community, and then outward and ever widening circles. That empowers every one of us.
Now I understand the most difficult place to bring that worldview to bears in our family, it has implications. We all understand. We must begin by understanding what it means to live Christian worldview principles in our own behavior and our own choices. Unless we do, we’ll interpret the biblical commands according to the spirit of the age, and we’ll be conformed to the world rather than to God’s Word. Again, this is not a new issue. It follows us right through the Hebrew Bible, right into the challenges of the gospels and the letters to the churches of the New Testament. This is not a 21st century problem that’s unique to us because it’s the end of the age. It represents the challenge of human character and what it means to be transformed through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, to become culture builders. It’s a message we haven’t heard frequently enough.
There’s a warning in Romans 12:2, I gave you the passage. I gave it to you in two translations; the first is from The Message, but I know some of you don’t like The Message, so I’m going to give it to you in a more traditional translation, but we’ll read both, «Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you».
And maybe the more familiar words from the New International Version, it says, «Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind». Definitions will help here, «Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world». To conform is to adapt to the standards of, «Do not adapt to the standards of this world». Don’t allow them to dictate to you what success is, failure is, what fashion is, what moral or immoral is, «Do not conform to the standards of this world, but be transformed». To transform is to change in potential, «but be changed in potential by the renewing of your mind». See, one of the tremendous benefits of your daily reading of Scripture, is it begins to help you become familiar with the character of God. It’ll begin to change your thoughts.
If we want to transform our pagan culture, we must start with ourselves understanding what Christian worldview means for our own moral and lifestyle choices. I would submit to you this is more important today than ever, because individual moral choices determine the health of the entire society. The top down approach, while it may be encouraging, it’s not sustainable unless there’s a greater change at the grassroots level. An attitude has emerged which suggests that my personal life is no one else’s business. «I’m free to make whatever choices I may desire».
That is an epidemic. However, this goes right along with that notion, someone else is responsible, if not obligated to help resolve the consequences of my choices. We’re watching an uncovering of hundreds of billions of dollars that have been spent to try to resolve the ills that have come from our pagan behaviors. Sexual behavior is a prime example. The scripture is pretty clear, God created sex. It was his idea. It didn’t begin in some smut-based pornography place. Sex was God’s idea. He put it in a context, in marriage. He said, in that context, it’s holy and beautiful. Beyond that, we’re warned that sexual involvement is destructive.
Sexual relationships outside of marriage are responsible for the spread of a great deal of harm: sexually transmitted diseases for most abortions, for fatherless homes, for chronic welfare dependency. With the social wreckage that we have watched now for decades, has it caused our educators to teach young people to refrain from sex outside of marriage? Not so much. And when the inevitable consequence followed, these same educators pressed for government solutions to bandage over the negative effects. To avoid STDs, the government supplied condoms in the schools. When homosexual promiscuity led to fatal diseases, the government was blamed and shamed into picking up the tab for more research.
When sex led to pregnancy, the government was expected to pay for abortions or supply welfare support to fatherless families. And in the face of all of these things, the church has said very little, because our behavior has differed very little from the secular culture. This is not new, folks. This has been growing for a long time. It was the 60's when this new concept of public morality really seemed to take hold. It was stated in the words of a sociologist to Christopher Jenks. He was discussing fatherless families and he argued this, that if people truly prefer a family consisting of a mother, children, and a series of transient males, and it’s hardly the federal government’s proper business to try to alter this choice, he went on to say that the government ought to invent ways of providing such families with the same physical and psychic necessities of life available to other kinds of families.
And we watched what was at one time so like an idea that was an outlier, become the normal of how we see culture these days. That ideology has become widespread and crystal clear. The government must not seek to help shape the nation’s moral climate or to discourage irresponsible behavior. Instead, it’s job is to invent ways to compensate for any disadvantages created by the bad choices people make. And the attitude isn’t confined to government, the church has joined in on that chorus. Churches avoid conversations about sin and its consequences. It’s been more fashionable to speak about grace and mercy and diversity. I would submit to you that the question remaining is more about courage and convictions. We make the sacrifices in order to be a part of a cultural transformation.
Are we willing to make the sacrifices necessary to be a part of a cultural transformation? Or will we choose the path of least resistance and economic expediency. There’s a current political debate which is raging, you may have noticed. And the primary discussions are about economic choices which are available. I would suggest that for the Christ follower, there are weightier issues to wrestle with. You’re familiar with the list. You don’t need me to highlight them any longer. We’ve talked about them a great deal; abortion, terminating the lives of children because they’re inconvenient; partial birth abortion, a heinous behavior. We’re told ultimately its about choice. I agree we have many choices in life.
When we choose to have sexual intercourse, the choice has been made. The redefinition of marriage and family. God gave us those definitions. He hasn’t given us the authority to override them. Greed, fraud, and stealing right now, is painfully uncomfortable, the degree to which that’s been normalized and celebrated, to the point that people who are exposing it are shouted down. Their lives are being threatened, «Stop telling us about our bad behavior. We don’t want to know». Some would say there’s no historical evidence that a culture can be transformed, that my individual choice is unimportant. That’s the answer I hear most frequently from Christians, «Well, I’m just one voice. I’m just a small person with a southern accent and nobody cares about what I think».
Well, I would disagree most vehemently. Our own national history resonates with the courage of generations of men and women who have made enormous sacrifices, so that we might enjoy the freedom and liberty which define us today. The question that’s on the table is what will be said of this generation? What will we do? We want to pretend that our economic well-being is the obvious choice for first priority. I want to thank God, and for decades and for centuries, there have been men and women who had more courage than that. And I pray that when history looks back upon us, it will be said of this generation that we chose to be culture builders for a biblical worldview. For the skeptics to say nobody would sacrifice, there are so many ways to approach that. I chose one that reflects a bit of our local history.
We have a battlefield in our community from a war that ripped our nation apart over the heinous practice of slavery, a practice for which far too long the church was silent. And as abhorrent as that has been and as grateful as I am for every place the church found the courage to tell the truth, I would remind all of us that on our watch we’ve lost 60 million children, and for the most part the church has been silent.
But the casualties in the civil war, for those who would say we’ve never done anything, in Antietam, there were 23,000 casualties. In Chattanooga, there were 12,000. At Chickamauga, there were 35,000. At Fort Donaldson, there were 17,000. In Gettysburg, there were 40,000. In Manassas, 22,000. In Shiloh, 24,000. Stones River, in this county, there were 24,000 casualties. I’ve read the reports. It said that the river was pink from the blood of those fallen. At Vicksburg, there was over 19,000. The Civil War cost more than 600,000 lives. Don’t tell me there haven’t been courageous generations that stood up and said we have to make a difference. I’m not encouraging violence.
I’m asking you to reflect upon your faith and to reject the notion of a personal salvation that is void of a responsibility to our families, our communities, and our culture. I’ll close with the passage from Psalms, it says, «If my people would but listen to me, if Israel would follow my ways,» again, for this, what we’re facing is not something new. See, when we don’t want to pick up the assignment, we act, «Well, this is extraordinary». Nobody’s ever seen anything quite as dark as this. And somehow in that, we were giving an excuse to ourselves that the cost is too high, the price is too great. «Can’t I just go on Spring Break now»?
And the psalmist is reminding us. God said, «if my people would listen to me, if Israel would just follow my ways, how quickly would I subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes! Those who hate the LORD would cringe before him, and their punishment would last forever. But you would be fed with the finest of wheat; with honey from the rock I would satisfy you».
Don’t watch the news and feel despair. Watch the news and be filled with hope. Every time you hear the truth told at the public square, determine that you will tell it more persistently in your sphere of influence. Every time you see something that you can celebrate is right or godly or holy, be more determined to let that be reflected in your life and in your choices. We are not powerless; we are citizens of the kingdom of Almighty God. We are on assignment. We will talk about the values that shape us as a community of faith, but before we get to that, we have to understand our role in this world. Or else we will devolve into a selfish, self-absorbed group of people, with a me first mentality, and we will miss our opportunities in the kingdom of God.
God help us, we do not intend to do that. I want to pray, if you’ll stand with me, that we’ll have understanding hearts and the wisdom to recognize the Spirit of God. You know, they say the World War II generation was the greatest generation. I don’t know what they’ll say about us. But it’d certainly be a point to celebrate if they called us a Godly generation, or that we were transformed by our faith. I could think of a lot of things to be said. Most of them are not leading the discussion right now. Let’s pray:
Father, thank you for your Word, for its truth and authority. I thank you for your people. Lord, our desire is to be pleasing to you. Forgive us, Father, for our indifference. If we’ve been distracted, Father, or confused, or for whatever reason, Lord, we come tonight and ask that you would give us understanding hearts. May the fear of God be more real to us than the fear of any person. Holy Spirit, give us a desire to be pleasing to Almighty God. Give us an awareness of spiritual things beyond anything we’ve known up to this point. Open our eyes and unstop our ears. Bring insight and understanding to our hearts. Teach us to encourage one another, to strengthen one another, to help one another. And give us the boldness to speak your truth. And we thank you for outcomes, for lives transformed, for families transformed, that the power of God will be on display in our generation in an unprecedented way. Let your kingdom come and your will be done on the earth as it is in heaven. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. May your kingdom come, in Jesus’s name, amen.