What must the church learn from the last few decades of American politics? In what follows, I offer ten lessons. These lessons are in no specific order, and some of them overlap with each other. But I offer them from what I have observed since I first moved to the USA in 1982. I have lived through Aaron Renn’s three worlds.[1] Those who are called to be salt and light should take these lessons seriously as we seek to live in our present day for the glory of God and the good of the church.
1. Renn rightly proposes the Positive world until 1994 when Christianity was a general public asset, the neutral world from 1994 to 2014 where Christianity was neither generally a neutral asset, and the negative world from 2014 to the present when Christianity is generally viewed as a social liability. See Aaron Renn, Life in the Negative World . . .
1. The past decades revealed that the evangelical church was not biblically and theologically grounded and thus susceptible to cultural accommodation.
For many evangelicals, our interaction with politics revealed our susceptibility to cultural drift—being blown about by every wind of cultural change. No doubt, over the last decades we have witnessed many good movements arise—The Gospel Coalition, Together for the Gospel, etc.—all of which sought to ground the church biblically and theologically. But for some reason there was a disconnect between sound doctrine and its application to the political arena. Obviously, this was not true of everyone in these movements, but it is generally accurate.
For example, I arrived in 1999 at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) at the tail end of the Conservative Resurgence. From the 1980s to the mid-90s, the Southern Baptist Convention appointed conservative trustees to the seminaries. These new trustees hired conservative presidents who hired faculty that gladly affirmed the Baptist Faith and Message. In this way, the SBC witnessed a return to biblical orthodoxy. But how “conservative” was this resurgence in our churches? Beyond confessional affirmation, how deep did our biblical and theological convictions go?
My hypothesis is that the movement toward so-called conservatism occurred in our churches at a time when the nation was also experiencing a “conservative” resurgence politically. During this time in the 1990s, Ronald Regan was elected, and the Newt Gingrich revolution took over the House of Representatives. We also witnessed the rise of such groups as the Moral Majority, and pressure was successfully put on President Bill Clinton in 1996 to sign the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). In many ways, it was fashionable to be a conservative, and the winds of culture were moving in that direction.
However, as we entered the twenty-first century and Barack Obama became President, given his left-wing ideology, massive changes occurred in the culture. We went from DOMA (1996) to Obergefell (2015) and embraced homosexuality and transgenderism as a “civil right.” When Ferguson occurred and the Obama administration fueled the fires of “racism” (although it was later demonstrated that the media narrative was false), many leaders within the evangelical church were quick to jump on board with the prevailing racist narrative, regardless of the truth. As we witnessed an embrace of a non-biblical sexual ethic, especially from 2010 on, evangelical leadership turned from loving confrontation to being “winsome.”
For example, J. D. Greear, former president of the SBC, made the astounding claim that the Bible only “whispers” about sexual sin. Not accidentally, he spoke this when the culture was radically shifting on these issues. While he later backtracked his comments, his original statement represents the kind of interaction too many evangelicals had to the changing winds of the culture.
These same shifts also occurred in church methodology and human sexuality. On the one hand, in the 1980s we embraced the seeker-sensitive church methodology in order to reach “unchurched” people. In the 1990s, this morphed to the “emerging church” and then to “progressive Christianity”—a movement more indebted to postmodernism than biblical Christianity. On the other hand, as the culture embraced so-called gay “marriage” and transgenderism, we also witnessed the rise of the gay-affirming ministry Revoice, less criticism of the LGBTQ agenda, and an increased rejection of complementarianism. Within certain segments of evangelicalism, these shifts were evidence that the church was not standing against the “spirit of the age.” Why did this occur?
There are probably numerous reasons, but ultimately it’s due to the fact that our churches were not biblically and theologically grounded, especially in applying Scripture to every area of life. Instead of interpreting the culture in light of Scripture, we interpreted the Bible by the lens of culture. It’s not enough to sign doctrinal statements and claim allegiance to the Nicene Creed. We must also apply these doctrines to the world according to Scripture. For example, our doctrine of the imago dei has political implications for how we vote, what policy agendas we support, our stand against the LGBTQ agenda, and so on. In 2024, the Democrat party has made abortion and LGBTQ issues its central focus, yet we have so-called “Evangelicals” for Harris, who even couch their support as fidelity to Christ. It’s staggering how our doctrine is so disconnected from life and politics, and how this betrays biblical authority, theological fidelity, and true love for God and our neighbor.
Ideas have consequences. What we have witnessed is that if the church is not properly grounded in Scripture and sound theology, we will embrace false ideas that will have disastrous consequences in our lives and the larger society. The church must return to biblical fidelity and the courage to apply Scripture in all its breadth and depth to every area of life. Instead of being tossed back and forth by every wind of culture, we must return to biblical faithfulness. What is needed is the exposition of Scripture that is applied to the issues of life, including the political.
2. The past decades demonstrated that David Wells’ assessment of the impact of “secularization” on the evangelical church was correct.
Theologian David Wells wrote several profound books starting in the 1990s that sought to assess the culture’s impact on theology, and specifically the impact of “secularization” on our theological thinking. His thesis was that as a society becomes more “secular,” it doesn’t necessarily make everyone an atheist. Instead, religion is “privatized” and removed from the public square. In turn, this reinforces the unbiblical “sacred” and “secular” divide, thus making theology publicly irrelevant but privately engaging.
Wells’ tragic point was this: many evangelicals have embraced this very mindset. Evangelicals continued to gather in subcultures and talk to each other, but this didn’t translate to actual engagement with the world. And if we did engage the world, it was by leaving our doctrinal convictions behind. We had “Jesus in our hearts,” but we did not bring the intellectual challenge of the gospel to our lives, specifically in our politics. This is why many Christians failed to speak to the issues of the public square. We even embraced the idea that the public square was off limits for Christians!
How did this influence of secularization impact many pastors? For many, they refused to engage political issues. Pastors would apply Scripture to the “private” lives of their congregants but rarely did they apply the text to their political lives, nor did they give basic guidance on how to vote.
Not only was this practice foreign to our forefathers, but more significantly, it’s contrary to Scripture. Many of us love the Puritans, but we would be surprised to know what strong rebukes and admonitions they gave to their political leaders. But today many pastors are allergic to this. And this is all part of the privatization of religion that David Wells analyzed.
No doubt, we must distinguish what the Bible addresses and what it does not. Pastors are not called to the weeds of every policy issue and turn our gatherings into political campaigns. But when Scripture specifically addresses issues that apply to our “public” lives, pastors must apply Scripture to these matters.
For example, our doctrine of humans has implications for how we treat one another from womb to the tomb. This in turn has political implications for the issue of abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and so on. When we have political leaders who oppose God’s law and universal moral norms on these issues, pastors need to guide their people in these matters. But our doctrine of humans doesn’t just end here. A proper view of the imago dei impacts how we think of human sexuality, marriage, the family, work, welfare, private property, taxation, and so on. These issues are not merely “political,” but biblical, and not to help our people apply these basic biblical truths to the political realm is a failure to teach the whole counsel of God. Even if our society rejects God, all people are image-bearers and thus responsible to their Creator and Lord. All people live under God’s lordship, and Scripture speaks not only to our private but also our public lives. The secularization and privatizing of religion is organically related to the first point: the evangelical church has failed to be properly biblical and theological in every area of life.
3. The past decades showed that evangelicals took for granted the freedoms and liberties we enjoyed.
When Elizabeth Willing Powel once asked Ben Franklin at the birth of the United States: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin famously answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Over the last number of years, the evangelical interaction with American politics has shown that we have taken for granted the freedoms and liberties we’ve enjoyed. We assumed that these freedoms couldn’t be lost. Yet we didn’t realize that the freedom of speech and freedom of religion must be fought for in every generation, just as the gospel must be passed on to every generation.
In 1961, Ronald Reagan also reminded us that the keeping of our liberties is an ongoing fight with these memorable words:
Freedom . . . is never more than one generation away from extinction. We don’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way that they can inherit the freedom that we have known is for us to fight for it, to protect it, to defend it, and then hand it on to them with the well-thought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. If you and I don’t do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like.
For Christians, we must also never forget that the liberties we enjoy in this nation did not come from nowhere. They are not the result of secular-modern or postmodern thought. Instead, such freedoms as speech and religion are due to the influence of Christianity on this country and they cannot be preserved without the continuing influence of Christianity. This point is something too many evangelicals took for granted.
As we look back over the last few decades, it’s not an exaggeration to say that we didn’t do a great job reminding the church that we need to fight for the freedoms we enjoy. Possibly, the one exception was the pro-life movement, which was kickstarted post-1973 by people like Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop (later the U.S. Surgeon General under Reagan). After the Roe v. Wade decision, many evangelicals were (unbelievably!) silent, and even more tragically, some endorsed Roe, including some within the SBC. Until the mid-70s the stand against the murder of the unborn was basically a Roman Catholic issue until Schaeffer almost single-handedly galvanized evangelicals to stand for life. This resulted in the formation of crisis pregnancy centers that sought to care for women and rescue the unborn from death, and such organizations as the Moral Majority who sought to defend life on the political front. Eventually this concerted effort led to the overturning of Roe in 2022, which was a wonderful day in the history of this nation. But sadly, simultaneously with the overturning of Roe, we also discovered that the hearts of the people had changed—even among evangelicals—since a number of professing evangelicals lamented the Dobbs decision. This was another example of evangelicals more interested in accommodating to culture than standing for what is true, good, and just.
However, beyond the pro-life movement, there has been little organization to defend our basic freedoms in the larger society. For example, after DOMA in 1996, we allowed the culture to drift to such an extent that within nineteen years, gay so-called marriage and transgenderism were embraced in the society. Evangelicals should have known that this was going to happen, but we didn’t pay attention to the drift around us. Marriage was already under attack by the introduction of No-Fault Divorce laws in 1969, and the acceptance of homosexuality began with the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 1973 identifying it as normal, and then demanding gay marriage in 2010. The same pattern occurred for transgenderism when in 2008 the APA changed their view to see it as normal. When all of these societal shifts occurred, many evangelicals were oblivious to what was occurring around them, not realizing that if marriage is lost, so goes the foundation for society and all our freedoms with it.
In fact, as these cultural drifts occurred, many evangelicals not only stayed out of the political discussion, but they refused to vote. Vocal minorities who often show up to vote can have huge influence on our culture. Yet, many evangelicals tragically won’t even take the time to exercise their rights as citizens to preserve the freedoms that we enjoy. Such lethargy will only lead to the erosion of our freedoms and liberties—including the liberty to share the gospel freely.
The easiest way to stand up for our freedoms is to vote your Christian conscience, and to vote for those candidates who will best reflect what is good, right, and just. If we don’t vote, we are taking our freedoms for granted, and what we take for granted will soon disappear. Christians must resist a kind of fatalism that says “This world’s not my home. I’m just passing on through.” We are Christians and citizens, and as such, we have responsibilities to speak and act, ultimately for God’s glory and the good of our society. If we don’t stand up for what is right, who will?
4. The past decades taught us that evangelicals too easily bought into the idea that political leaders can “save” us.
This point is a balance to the previous point. Christians must stand for what is right, but we must also not think that our “salvation” comes from political leaders.
Let me lay my cards on the table. I can’t vote for the Democrat Party, given that they stand for the destruction of human life, marriage, the family, wealth, and basically all things biblical. Let’s be honest: a Party that rejects God’s natural/moral law is determined to destroy everything in society, and I can’t vote for a denial of God and harm to my neighbor. In my view, the Democrat party is a not an option for Christians.
But what about the Republicans (GOP)? As we think about political parties, we must first stand as Christians and not partisans. As a Christian, as I evaluate the GOP, I think it’s a disaster. Yet, there is still within it a direction that is not as anti-human as the Democrat Party. Further, the GOP still allows conservative Christians to influence their Party. So unless we’re going to start another Party, which presently is not viable, we have a binary choice. To sit out is not a responsible option since we lose the influence of our voice entirely. We need to make wise decisions, and for me, the only option is to vote GOP. Donald Trump is not my first choice, and I opposed him in the primaries, but as the candidate of the GOP, he’s the one I will vote for.
However, on the GOP side, there is a danger of elevating one person to “savior” status. Unfortunately, many Trump supporters have done this, and even too many evangelicals have jumped on this bandwagon. We have viewed our political leaders as messiah figures, which is very dangerous. Political leaders are all weak, fallible, and flawed. We need to vote, but as Christians we must not treat these political leaders as Messiahs. The Lord Jesus alone will save us, and we must not forget this.
Instead, with a proper view of our political leaders, Christians need to get involved in the political process and hold our leaders accountable. In fact, we saw this take place in the late summer of 2024. In Florida, Amendment Four is an immoral amendment that attempts to amend Florida’s Constitution to make abortion-on-demand constitutional until birth. Trump, who lives in Florida, refused to speak against it. But with influence from Christians and others, he eventually came out against it. Here we see how influence is still possible within the GOP, but no longer within the Democrat party, as they are determined to see the slaughter of babies until birth. Here is an example of how politicians won’t save us, but we still have a voice at the table to call political leaders and parties to stand for what is good, right, and just.
In the end, the hope for our nation is found in the gospel. The hope for our nation is found in Christians being true Christians, the church being the church, and then seeing the influence of the gospel on society as we then interact with it. We must not place our hope in any political candidate to “save” us.
5. The past decades revealed that evangelicals too often wanted power and prestige more than faithfulness, godliness, and unreserved commitment to the truth of God’s Word lived out in all of life.
We wanted a seat at the table, and often we sold our soul to get it. This point is something we have also learned from evangelical interaction with politics, and it’s true on the Evangelical Left and Right. On the one hand, the Evangelical Left sold their soul for a place at the table. When they get an op-ed piece in the New York Times or an interview with ABC News, it’s sad to see how they will not speak up on the key moral issues of our day. They will often address the issues that the mainstream media is happy to platform, but this only occurs if these evangelicals refuse to speak truth to power to the media themselves. Often what these evangelicals fail to realize is that the world is only interested in them if they play along and remain silent on what is right and good. Our seat at the table comes with a huge cost.
For example, think of Tim Keller. I appreciate much of his ministry and work. But when New York State legalized abortion until birth in 2019, Tim Keller wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times talking about racial issues—without the condemnation (or any mention!) of his State’s decision. How is this possible? How is this biblically faithful? One might object by saying that we don’t have to address abortion in every op-ed piece. No doubt, this is true. But when you are writing a piece at the exact same time when this murderous legislative action is occurring in your State, this is a failure to speak as a Christian in this crucial moment. This doesn’t mean that Keller is not pro-life. But it does reflect how his desire to get a seat at the table muted his faithfulness to speak out, which is precisely the problem.
We have also seen this occur with Russell Moore. When he was at SBTS he was a formidable complementarian, clear on moral issues, and a strong voice for what was good and just. But as he left and took over the helm of the ERLC, and then Christianity Today, his voice has become more muddled. It seems that he loves the accolades of New York Times and the left-wing media more than standing for biblical fidelity on life, marriage, complementarianism, etc. The same is true of people like David French, who has lost his voice in terms of biblical fidelity. All of this is an illustration of how the Evangelical Left has succumbed to the pursuit of power.
But this is also true on the Evangelical Right. I have had numerous discussions with Trump supporters who refuse to criticize him, even during the primaries. A number of evangelicals give their unilateral support for him, no matter what he says or does. But this is allowing political power to blind us.
As Christians, our first allegiance is to God and his word. We must be able to criticize both parties when they stand opposed to moral and natural law. We are not to be first GOP or Democrat, but Christians who speak the truth no matter what. Our commitment to the truth and our love for God demands nothing less.
6. The past decades continued to confirm Francis Schaeffer’s claim that the two values of our society are also the same values of many evangelicals.
Another lesson we ought to have learned from evangelicals’ interaction with politics comes from Francis Schaeffer. Years ago, Schaeffer argued that the post-World War II generation and their 1960s children were ironically the same in temperament. While outwardly they appeared to have differing interests and ethics, they both had the same two values: personal peace and affluence.
Schaeffer went on from this observation to draw this conclusion: if these are your two governing values, then you will give up all your freedoms to keep them. Thus, when the stock market crashes, we cry, “Government save us, because I want my money!” Or if someone warns you not to speak on a particular social issue due to repercussions, we say, “I don’t want to lose my job or go to jail. I want my personal peace.” The end result is that we do not speak up where we ought.
We make decisions, even in terms of political candidates, that are not governed by Scripture, but by those who will give us the ease we want. That’s the danger that Alexis de Tocqueville saw back in the 1830s when he visited America.[2] In his Democracy in America, he asked what would happen if in the American Experiment the people voted for individuals who would give them money and promises instead of something good for them. If that were to happen, the entire country would be lost—and that’s where we’re at today. So, if someone promises us $25,000 to get a new house, it doesn’t matter that it will destroy the housing market, we will vote for them to keep our personal peace and wealth!
2. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2 vols. (New York: Vintage Books, 1945).
Maintaining our personal peace and affluence also keeps us from speaking up, because being disagreeable might result in losing wealth, influence, or prestige. But the Christian must resist this temptation toward the apathy that comes from chasing these two values. We have to be able to say, “Well, that’s fine. I’ll lose my seat. I’ll lose my job. I’ll lose my wealth. My God will provide for me, and I will follow him and stand for what’s right, come what may.” We need a church that’s going to be committed to the truth and not committed to going with the flow.
7. In the past decades, we learned that without being firmly grounded in the Bible and theology, evangelicals were too easily manipulated by the political strategies of our age.
I’m an American citizen, but when I came to the United States in 1982, I was a Canadian. What struck me was how certain sore issues from America’s past were used for manipulation of the political process. Specifically, I am thinking of the race issue.
Canada didn’t have the same racial division as in America. When I came to America and then moved to Chicago, the racial division was so heated that I thought the city was going to blow apart. The rhetoric in Chicago politics was horrible, as people regularly charged others with being an “Uncle Tom” and so on. What dawned on me was how “racial” language was used for political advantage. If you simply labeled someone a “racist”—and if the label got enough traction—this ended discussion and the slandered person usually backed down—even if he was not actually a racist.
What shocked me even more was how this same political tactic was being used in our churches to silence people. As we moved into the Obama era, everything became charged with racism, including moral issues that had nothing to do with racism—homosexuality, transgenderism, etc. And even such economic issues such as the “gender gap” now become a “white male wage gap” charged with racism! But making everything “racist” is a conflation of issues. However, due to the painful history of America and slavery, what was a wound in the nation was now being exploited to silence all political opposition and to drive a specific political agenda. This was especially true of the Democrat party, which used the “racist” language to their advantage. Amazingly, the church went along with it.
For example, many people were thrilled about the possibility of Barack Obama being the first African American president of the United States. But if you raised questions about what he actually believed, and evaluated him by the standard of his ideology, you were considered a racist. In fact, I was dumbfounded in the fall of 2008 when a major evangelical leader in SBTS’s chapel spoke of his support for Barack Obama. This was shocking because Obama’s actual worldview stood antithetical to Scripture, to the moral law, and to all that government ought to uphold. As time went on, this was made clearer as Obama’s radical agenda undermined the sanctity of life, marriage, family, wealth, property, and so on. But Christians were incapable of evaluating him on the basis of Scripture, and instead they looked at him through the prism of race.
However, once we so easily cave due to the potential charge of “racism,” it’s quite easy to see why the political left weaponized the LGBTQ agenda and made it into a “racial” issue. An immoral sexual ethic suddenly became a civil rights issue? Once this occurred, evangelicals did not know what to do. Instead of speaking the truth through the slander of being called “racists,” we succumbed to the political tactics of the Left and we were driven to silence.
This also occurred in the SBC with the adoption of Resolution 9 in 2019, which held up critical race theory as a set of “analytical tools” for learning. So many evangelicals didn’t realize that this very system of viewing people primarily as oppressors or victims brings destruction and division wherever it takes root. Again, the problem was that we weren’t theologically grounded and confident in the truth. Instead, we were easily manipulated by political rhetoric and fearful of being called names.
8. The past decades showed many evangelicals were too easily silenced in the public square by those on the political left who charged us with “theonomy” or “Christian nationalism.”
Just as we were silenced in the public square by being afraid of being labelled “racists,” so we were silenced by those who charged us with “theonomy” or “Christian nationalism.”
For example, when evangelicals raised their voices against the Obergefell decision (that legalized so-called gay marriage), and when they argued that it needed to be overturned just like Roe, our opponents responded with, “You’re a Christian nationalist; you’re a theonomist!” And especially when “Christian nationalism” was also identified as “white” (and thus racist), what did evangelicals do? Broadly speaking, we took the bait, and remained silent in the public sphere. Also, we dismissed those who were given that label—whether they claimed it for themselves or not. Publicly, many evangelicals were more concerned with avoiding these labels—and avoiding those who were associated with these labels—than they were with fighting godless principles in the public square.
One can legitimately debate over the use of the term “Christian nationalism.” Personally, I don’t think the term is helpful. If it is broken down and we argue that nation-states are better than global governments, then I am a “nationalist.” If we argue that Christians must influence their society, and pray that the gospel will have such an affect that our nation will uphold what is moral and just, then “Christian” may be applied. But strictly speaking only the “church” is Christian, and nations (although ordained by God) in this age are not “Christian” in the sense that we apply that adjective to individuals believers and the church.
However, the term was not used to make these necessary fine distinctions; instead it was used en masse to silence the church from speaking truth in the public square. Further, the “theonomy” label was used to this end as well. Instead of wrestling with the question: “By what standard will our nation decide moral questions,” the label of “theonomy” was used to reject any Christian influence at all. But the truth of the matter is that all nations are governed by laws. Yet the question is which law? There is no such thing as an objective “naked public square.” All people have a moral standard they operate by, but what needs to be argued is the nature of what it is. Political Leftists in our country are just as religious as any Christian and they operate with their own standards that they impose on society. When they force people to uphold abortion, gay marriage, the loss of parental authority for gender-confused children, then the laws that enforce and demand this are just as much moral laws, except they are contrary to God’s law. The battle in our day is which law will govern our society, not the red-herring of “theonomy.” Everyone is a “theonomists” in the sense of wanting to live out their totalizing worldview—the question is: which “theonomy?”
9. The past decades revealed that evangelicals did not have a strong sense of a Reformational view of calling and vocation, and in our daily lives living under the Lordship of Christ.
These final two points outline where we need to go in our current condition. A proper understanding of the Bible, particularly the Reformation, is that God has called us to have a vocation, a job, a calling over every area of life. In Genesis 1:26–28, the creation mandate commands mankind to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. This mandate has not been rescinded. It is picked up in the Noahic covenant, which continues until the end of the age. Societies, families, and work continue, and as image-bearers, vocation is central to our task of putting everything under our feet (Psalm 8), even in a fallen world. As Christians, we need to recapture a proper sense of vocation.
I’m very proud of my five children. My wife and I sought to raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord as we prayed for their salvation and that their lives would be lived to honor and glorify God. All of them, by God’s grace, profess faith in Christ, which is what is most important before anything else. But I am proud that each of them has caught the sense of vocation and doing all to the glory of God. My oldest son serves the Lord in the difficult political arena seeking to bring God’s truth to bear in his work. My second son serves the Lord in the charter school system. He is an elder in his local church but he also sees that his education work is for God’s glory too. My third son serves the Lord through engineering, as he seeks to be faithful in his vocation and service. My fourth child, my daughter, serves the Lord in a Christian camp ministry, while my youngest daughter serves the Lord in the medical field as a nurse. Each one serves the Lord in their local church and in their vocation, seeking to be salt and light in this world.
What we need to recapture as the church is the sense of vocation and service to the Lord in every domain of life. This is how Christians impact the society and it’s something that evangelical theology has not emphasized enough.
10. The past decades demonstrated that the church needs to go back to “first things” and to be the church, which includes a recovery of the church as a counter-cultural institution.
The church needs to be the church. We not only need a biblical ecclesiology but also we need to recover a view of the church as a counter-cultural institution. As the church, the redeemed people of God, living under the Lordship of Christ, we need to witness to the world what a regenerate people look like: what it means to have a biblical marriage, raise children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, and how to serve the Lord in our many vocations. We need to live as God’s people, as an outpost of heaven broken into this world, and to reveal to the world what it means to be image-bearers who love God and serve one another.
As our world collapses from inside out, the church must serve as a compelling role model for the refugees of the World’s Vanity Fair. The church must be this counter-cultural institution. We have to show them how to raise children with glad firmness, how to work with diligent faithfulness, how to read books and the news with critical discernment. We must show them how to do all these things. We’ve farmed so much out to the state, and eventually the church must recover all of that. It has to teach people the Word of God and apply it to every area of life. The church is God’s new covenant people. We are the new creation living out our lives in this fallen world. We are part of God’s kingdom that has broken into the world in Christ, who has brought his saving reign. We are to obey God. We are to be conformed to the image of Christ. We are to show what it means to be an image bearer, and to be truly human. The world doesn’t show this. They can’t show this.
No doubt, the State has its role and the church is not the State. Each one belongs in its own sphere of authority that God has established. But it’s the church that will have to pick up the pieces of a dying State and culture. This means that the church will have to return to education, as it has done in the past, grounded in God’s Word. Today, we don’t need a privatized faith, but one that engages the world with the truth of Scripture.
The church must not be held captive to the philosophy of the day. Instead, we are to have a philosophy—a worldview, a theology—grounded in Christ and lived under his Lordship. We need to show in the church what it means to preserve life, to protect marriage, to value children, to rescue the unborn. If possible, we need to be involved with foster kids, to show them what it means to be a Christian and to witness the gospel to them. We need to train people how to work. People become Christians and they have been burned out on a whole system. They don’t know how to do much of life. You may have to, in your churches, teach these new Christians how to read, write, and do arithmetic so they can get a job. You may need to disciple them off the welfare system so that they can be restored to their human dignity and provide work and food for their families. That’s not just social action. That’s just the outworking of the Christian gospel. People need to know how to be human, and they need to know how to be Christian, and the church is the bright beacon of hope in the midst of a dark and decaying society.
Furthermore, we need to raise our children and grandchildren in such a way that if society does collapse, they will be able to pick up the pieces. We are going to have to teach our children in the church how to think not just about a narrow slice of doctrine, but to reckon with how that doctrine applies to running a business, and economics, and work.
All of this is calling the church to be the church. To speak God’s truth to the world, even if they don’t want to hear it. In this sense, the church is to be prophetic. Governments are established for their God-appointed task, which means we have to speak the truth to them when they stray. The church must have the courage to do that.
At the same time, the church is first and foremost to know and pursue after God. We must fear God, and as such, we are not to be those who accommodate to the culture. Our glorious triune God must be first in our lives, as we live our lives under Christ’s Lordship.
We also need to be a church that prays. Too often as we meet in small groups, we pray for various items, but rarely do our prayers encompass the entire world. But what happens before revival breaks out? The church prays. Praying for our country is not “political activism!” No, it’s people in prayer. God changes things. He will raise up people to make change. Yes, they have to be involved in society, but we need people who will pray. We need to pray for the spread of the gospel. We need to see people converted, and then there may be a groundswell that rises up and changes society. God has not promised that he will bring revival as he’s done in the past. But we pray in hope that he will do it again!
Ultimately, revival is what we need in our poor lost nation. But revival first starts with the church. We pray that God’s name will be hallowed and glorified in our society. If he doesn’t bring change, then we live under that persecution as many Christians have done, and we await the second coming of the Lord Jesus. But in the meantime, we are to be faithful. We are to pray. We are to live. We are to be a counterculture. And we must do that better than we have been. There are always exceptions, but we haven’t done that well over the last ten or twenty years. We’ve tended to drift, and we’re going to have to be something different than the world.
Concluding Reflections
Those ten lessons reflect my observations of the surrounding world over the last few decades. At the heart of these lessons is this: we need to keep the first things first. We need to be the church. And that doesn’t mean pulling out of society, but it means we have to teach the people the word of God. The gospel comes first.
This world is not going to change on its own. It’s only by the power of the gospel and the effects of that gospel as it spills over to society. That’s why in Hebrews 11 it speaks of that catalog of faith. Some saw glorious things. But some were sawn in two. Almost all of them faced persecution.
The author of Hebrews says the world wasn’t worthy of them, because ultimately, the very good of the world depends upon God’s people. God restrains judgment upon the world because His people are here. Common grace flows even from God’s saving purposes. So for the good of the church and ultimately for a spillover effect in the society, we need the Lord to revive us to be the church, being faithful and not accommodating.
Speak the truth. Have the courage to speak the truth. Francis Schaeffer preached a famous sermon where he pointed out that God uses little people to do great things. God doesn’t need all the large organization and big power figures and everything else. He doesn’t need big institutions. He just needs consecrated, faithful people—“little people”—to simply live for Him, glorify Him, stand up, make a difference, and be an influence in society. None of us are “big people.” We are just insignificant people. But in God’s hands, He can use even little people to do great things for his glory.
