A Time to Build

Obergefell has been weighing on me a lot recently.

Not so much the legalization of SSM, but the way it was done. I feel there is a difference. When they legalized no-fault divorce, I don’t think it was done as a repudiation of Christian morality. More as a sense of reality, as an option for bad marriages to be resolved much easier. We still believed in good marriages, but realized sometimes others needed to dissolve them. However Obergefell to me is saying “we want to create a new, post-Christian form of marriage” and that’s something different entirely.

I think this presages changes we will have to deal with. It feels to me like an invisible line has been crossed, one marking two sides.  The first side is the nominally Christian philosophy the USA had. Rod Dreher calls it Therapeutic Moralistic Deism, and while it has its own issues, it still took many parts of Christianity and made a culture out of it. The other side though rejects even the weak form of Christianity it used, and now is fully Post-Christian. What that means we aren’t sure yet, but something is forming, something that in time will be hostile to religious faith that refuses to be subjugated.

I think this means Christians will have to change.

I feel that the time for complaining about the church is over. There’s no more time just to talk; if the issues you decry are important enough, you must act to change them. If not, accept them and work on what you must change instead. There is no more luxury of sitting back and tearing down. If we are forced to flee to the church, we have to accept it. We cannot flee to something we judge, and I worry we will soon need to flee to it. I don’t mean literally, but the choice may be where we need to make a life around it, or get swallowed up by the world. Like we can’t weaken it when it needs to be strong, or we cut off the limb of the tree we sit on. When the rain is pouring, no time to point out we need a bigger cabin in the ark.

It’s time to build.

Like culture. There’s going to come a time where Christians have to make their own. It will grow harder and harder to like secular culture the more anti-Christian it gets, and it will get that way. When every cartoon has Korra’s lesbian ending, or every show paints us as evil people, there’s no way we’ll be able to enjoy them. And it will get that way, because when people find their new post-Christian society doesn’t work, they’ll look to indoctrinate harder and scapegoat harder. Who better than us?

So for me, it’s going to be about the building.

No point in arguing against homeschooling. While we were a part of society, it was an option, and one i believed to be inferior. But we are now not a part of that society, or are heading that way.
No point talking about Christian culture. We either build it, accept it, or don’t have it.
No more rants about worship music or little cultural tics Christians have. It’s not the time for that any more.
Yes, there are bad Christians. No, we are not allowed the luxury to care about them. We have to worry about ourselves now. You cannot let others be the excuse why you do not act. You can worry about others when you are safe, but now, the winds are hinting that soon, we will not be safe at all.

Yeah, this sounds alarmist. But I’m starting to feel very alarmist indeed.

I mean, what happens when we have a few generations of people whose only idea about Christianity is we are homophobic bigots? What happens when liberals decide the next oppressed group is polyamorists, and put the strength of the culture behind that? What comes next?

I don’t know.

I do know that its time to build. Lord give me the strength to.