Christ and Culture Revisited

by D.A. Carson

Experience confirms the witness of Scripture: we cannot long sin against God without sinning against God’s image-bearers, and if in measure we do love God, we will love those who bear his image (an insight that 1 John repeatedly substantiates).

although it is first and foremost defiance of God, there is no sin that does not touch the lives of others.

Sin is so warping that it corrodes every facet of our being, our wills and affections, our view of others and thus our relationships, our bodies and our minds. Sinners incur guilt, yet they need more than forgiveness and reconciliation to God (though never less), since the results of sin are so pervasive: they also need regeneration and transformation.

God still sends his sun and rain upon the just and the unjust; he still guides the surgeon’s hand and gives strength to the person who picks up the garbage; the sunset still takes our breath away, while a baby’s smile steals our hearts. Acts of kindness and self-sacrifice surface among every race and class of human beings, not because we are simple mixtures of good and evil, but because even in the midst of our deep rebellion God restrains us and displays his glory and goodness.

Henri Blocher

much-quoted words of C. S. Lewis, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

In the Western world, these various directions are frequently responses to four huge cultural forces: the seduction of secularization, the mystique of democracy, the worship of freedom, and the lust for power.

Winston Churchill: democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other kinds.

the sale of porn in North America now outstrips income from the sale of alcohol, illegal drugs, and cigarettes combined.

The irony, then, is that as citizens espouse increasingly diverse visions of what it means to be free, governments (including the courts) step in to resolve the divergences and end up making people less free.

We cannot embrace unrestrained secularism; democracy is not God; freedom can be another word for rebellion; the lust for power, as universal as it is, must be viewed with more than a little suspicion. This means that Christian communities honestly seeking to live under the Word of God will inevitably generate cultures that, to say the least, will in some sense counter or confront the values of the dominant culture. But to say the least is not enough. Christians thus shaped by Scripture envision a church that not only counters alternative cultures but also seeks sacrificially to serve the good of others — the city, the nation, common humanity, not least the poor. Salt does not confront; it enhances. Believers must be the best possible citizens (cf. Jeremiah 29:7; cf. also 1 Peter 1:1; James 1:1), and that means that Christians, who are taking their cue (and thus their worldview) from outside the dominant culture, not only shape and form a Christian culture recognizably different from that in which it is embedded but also become deeply committed to enhancing the whole.

Much more so than in any other Western democracy, America has developed the fine art of individual whining.

You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society.41