The man who is content to sit ignorantly by his own fireside, wrapped up in his own private affairs, and has no public eye for what is going on in the Church and the world, is a miserable patriot, and a poor style of Christian. Next to our Bibles and our own hearts, our Lord would have us study our own times. – J. C Ryle
Idolatry, Folly, and the Natural Mind
The ignorant firesides of privatized Christians are a sad reality that no era of the church has been entirely without. Truly Christian action in the world requires Christians to think carefully about culture, yet this sort of thinking is relatively sparse today. Today’s Western church is generally either paralyzed by a pietistic retreatism and cultural disengagement or misled by unthinking enthusiasts. The latter—”influencers,” agitators, and activists—are loud and sweeping in opinion, and, as the alleged victims of past generations, they are ready to act as judge, jury, and executioner. Like revolutionaries with metaphorical guillotines, they go about trying to liberate the triangle of its three sides. Invariably making haste to dispense with careful thought and get on with ‘changing the world,’ they head off to get a selfie conquering Mount Everest without knowing where it is on the map. They are ready to sternly excoriate the pastor for his privilege, alleged phobias, and participation in the patriarchy before listening to his sermons or being able to find Zephaniah between the binding, never mind quote from the minor mouthpiece of divine revelation.
Consequently, it is not an easy task to persuade believers to adopt a particular sort of careful thinking, a studying of the times in service to Christ. It is harder still to showcase and woo people to the kind of Christian thought which is unconcerned with emulating the self-justifying ideologies so popular in our woke culture. And yet, this is the very Christian thought that is radically transformational—it cuts so rightly to the root of the human selfhood and by extension moves out like ripples on a lake to touch all of life with the blessing of God.
The self-justifying ideology that dominates society today, marked by shameless moral posturing, is particularly challenging because it is a form of stupidity less self-aware than outright evil, and this particular form respects no one. It seems immune to reasoning and inconvenient truth. Intellectuals, scholars, political elites, and journalists are often more afflicted with this brand of stupidity than ordinary working people who are practically forced to consume their vacuous messages in various media. This stupidity arises not from a lack of intellectual capacity but from a herd mentality formed around powerful propaganda—a collective stupidity. It is the abstraction Kierkegaard railed against as public opinion:
The public is a kind of colossal something, an abstract void and vacuum that is all and nothing . . . the most dangerous of all powers and the most meaningless . . . Now everyone can have an opinion, but there must be a lumping together numerically in order to have it. Twenty-five signatures to the silliest notion is an opinion.[1]
1. Søren Kierkegaard, Two Ages—The Age of Revolution and the Present Age: A Literary Review, paperback, vol. 14 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 93, 106.
The collective folly that emerges is a sociological phenomenon that undermines basic human capabilities, depriving people of their inner independence—their ability to think, assess, and decide for themselves as God’s image-bearers. In this context, people willingly renounce their independence to conform to prevailing ideologies. In the early 1940s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, while imprisoned, reflected on how educated Germans fell into collective ideological stupidity. His observations are startlingly reflective of our current cultural moment:
The fact that stupid people are often stubborn should not hide the fact that they are not independent. When talking to him, one feels that one is not dealing with him personally, but with catchphrases, slogans, etc. that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell; he is blinded; he is abused in his own being. Having become an instrument without an independent will, the fool will also be capable of all evil, and at the same time, unable to recognize it as evil . . . But it is also quite clear here that it is not an act of instruction, but only an act of liberation that can overcome stupidity . . . The Bible states that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. Thus, the inner liberation of man begins by living responsibly before God. Only then may stupidity be overcome.[2]
2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Von der Dummheit”: Widerstand und Ergebung. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft, (Muenchen: Christian Kaiser Verlag, 1951), 17–20.
Transforming the Mind
The need of the hour in the West is the liberating reality of Jesus Christ and the recovery of the Christian mind—the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16)—that leads to distinctly Christian activity. Merely political and sociological arguments will not suffice because collective folly is an abstraction, a slogan which one cannot simply reason people out of. Liberation must come from the outside, which involves the recovery of an inner independence in confrontation with the truth.
So, what is the Christian mind? And where do we begin in the study of our time? From the standpoint of scriptural revelation, truly Christian thinking must be concerned first and foremost with Jesus Christ, being His disciple, and having His Word dwell and abide in us by His Spirit. But submitting oneself as a humble follower does not come easily to anyone. Humanity is always inclined toward autonomy, preferring to live the illusion that we can legislate for ourselves, like kings without a country. Being a professing Christian does not entirely remove the inclination to strike out alone and follow our own desires. We’re still tempted to live by our own priorities and to set aside the awesome and all-consuming call to be a disciple of Christ; to come and die in order to truly live. Yet this is precisely what Christ calls us to. Being a ‘living sacrifice’ (Rom. 12:1) sounds excruciating and involves a transformation of the mind, which implies the pain and suffering of rejection by a world conformed, in the final analysis, to a very different spirit. But the divine midwife insists this is the only way. We must be reborn, transformed and given a new heart, a new mind.
As Christians, we may claim to follow Christ, but developing a truly Christian mindset for relating to and studying our times involves regularly questioning if we have followed Him far enough. It is easy to follow Christ only as far as is convenient. If we are unwilling to stand under Christ’s Lordship in all areas of life, we miss the significance of God’s full act in history.
The entire work of Christ in all His offices must become contemporaneous with us to truly transform our minds. It is insufficient to appreciate Christ’s service at the Last Supper if we refuse to see Him exalted in heavenly places, standing at God’s right hand. We must certainly see Him as priest on the road to Calvary, but also recognize Him as the resurrected Lord on the road to Emmaus to truly follow Christ and renew our minds.
A Worldly Christianity?
In a hostile context, the temptation is to follow Christ only as far as culture permits. When storms rise, we are called to step out of the boat and walk on the Word despite the world’s antagonism. We must remain attentive to God’s Word over the clamor of idolatry, for if an ungodly culture determines how far we follow Christ, we cannot follow Him at all. The world might permit us to stand near the cross of one who in their eyes was a ‘martyr,’ but they will not permit us to ascend to the seat of total authority with the ruler of kings and thereby claim his lordship over all.
The consequence of heeding only what culture permits is first an unwillingness, then an inability, to speak the whole counsel of God. As priest and prophet, Christ was hated. He warned that His followers would face the same, so we cannot follow our prophet or share in His sufferings if we refuse to prophesy his words. Many contemporary “priests” prefer Balaam’s error to preserve their living rather than stand with Elijah against Baal. Modern church leaders frequently court culture, ingratiating themselves with the powerful and influential. They deceive themselves that their goal is peaceful unity when it is actually revolt. They are avidly committed to half-measures, presenting only partial truths. As John Owen once wrote, “Truth may be lost by weakness as well as by wickedness: if we have not a full apprehension of the truth, and that upon its own proper grounds and principles, we shall never be able to defend it.”[3]
3. “The Duty of a Pastor,” in Sermons to the Church, The Works of John Owen 9, ed. William H. Goold (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1991), 453.
Can’t We All Just Get Along?
The moment God’s people call a truce with the spirit of the world, they set aside the Christian mind and overturn true Christianity. The kingdom of God is in this world but not of it; its power and authority come from a transcendent source. In history, the church is always militant, not yet fully triumphant. The struggle continues until the King comes. We are called to victory, but not peaceful collaboration. The loyalty of Christ’s soldiers is proven where the battle is fiercest, so deserting the frontline whilst denying cowardice is self-deception.
When God’s people say ‘peace, peace,’ when there is no peace, and when they sign a treaty with a rebel world, they pretend to be the heavenly church triumphant, as if their struggle against lawlessness and spiritual darkness is complete—but before the consummation of Christ. Declaring an armistice with sin or striking a deal with the godless state is not a victory, nor is it faithfulness to God’s kingdom. When the church proudly acquiesces to blessing homosexual relationships, winks at divorce and abortion, or meekly surrenders Christ’s authority over public worship, assembly, and sacraments to the state, like many Christian leaders during the Covid-19 debacle, defeats are being dressed up like conquests. It is a tragic irony that those who come into direct conflict with the world by rightly preaching righteousness and hope for history through following Christ to the uttermost are charged with ‘triumphalism,’ whilst popular collaborators who claim neutrality with the world and make a compact of surrender or privatization to the applause of culture are thought pious and realistic. In reality, they are the triumphalists—seeking to bring a false eschaton by denaturing the faith, abstracting it from the affairs of daily life, and coating what remains in honey to avoid any bitter taste in society’s mouth—for a church no longer at war is a church triumphant—or at least one that is falsely acting this way.
Conclusion
This compromised situation is one Christians should be ashamed of, as today’s unthinking Christianity, harmonized with the world, humiliates itself. Like an old man decked out in the fashions of youth, it becomes an object of ridicule. Accommodating the Christian mind to society’s whims reduces the priceless bread of life to play dough, molded to superficial preferences. Worse, those willing to sit quietly by in pious self-satisfaction amidst a failing church and culture, refusing to either understand or respond with faith and courage to the times in which they live. These are traitors to the cause of the king. Our age requires men of Issachar, not cowards who bring counsels of despair and then head home because they saw giants in Jericho.
What kind of Christian will you be?
