Talking Points: Dad, are Christians narrow-minded?
The Cultural Challenge
The values of Western society, shaped by Christian belief, used to make living out our Christian faith acceptable and even culturally advantageous.
As Western society becomes post-Christian—even anti-Christian—Christians are encountering increasing ridicule and disdain.
Fundamental Christian beliefs, such as the necessity of faith in Christ for salvation, the reality of hell, heterosexual marriage, etc., are now vilified as narrow-minded bigotry.
This increasing cultural opposition pushes Christians to respond in two ways:
Assimilate: become like the culture and forsake their distinctiveness.
Separate: withdraw into distinct cultures of inward-facing Christians.
The Underlying Theological Issue
Scripture repeatedly warns us that those who do not share our faith (“the world”) will oppose us.
Paul, for example, warns Timothy that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,” as people reject the truth for the teaching of teachers who suit their passions (2 Timothy 3:12; 4:3–4)
Through our allegiance to Jesus as Lord, we represent a competing ruler for people’s lives, which they may perceive as threatening.
If we respond with assimilation, we sacrifice our obedience to Christ’s Lordship.
The culture becomes our kingdom, and we submit to its values.
If we respond with separation, we sacrifice our witness to Christ’s Lordship.
We create our own separate kingdom, which reflects our own values.
The anti-Christian forces in our society can’t succeed in attacking genuine Christian faith.
Jesus declares that the gates of hell cannot prevail against his church (Matthew 16:18).
But those forces can successfully attack a comfortable, cultural, complacent understanding of Christianity.
Jesus never promises us this; in fact, he promises the opposite.
“In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
The increasing cultural conflict reveals to us whether our true Lord is Jesus or our comfort.
The Biblical Solution
The biblical model for Christian cultural engagement is not assimilation or separation.
Instead, Christians are called to be ambassadors for another kingdom.
In Jeremiah 29, the prophet Jeremiah writes a letter to the Israelites who have been taken into exile in Babylon.
God’s message for them, Jeremiah proclaims, is to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile” (v. 7).
They are to maintain their distinct identity while investing in the prosperity of the very country that took them from their homeland.
In John 17:14–19, Jesus says of his disciples, “The world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world” (v. 14).
But this is the starting place, not the destination of Jesus’s desire for his disciples.
He then says, “As [the Father] sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (v. 18).
Christians are not called to be “in the world, not of it,” but “not of the world, but sent into it” (see Mathis article in Resources).
This is what Jesus calls his disciples to in the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20).
We see the church in Acts live this out, as Jesus calls them to be his witnesses “in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
Paul summarizes this in 2 Corinthians 5:16–21, where he calls Christians to be “ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us” (v. 20).
Ambassadors represent the values of one country within another (see Sample Discussion).
They seek the good of both; as Paul says, we have a “message of reconciliation” (v. 19).
Application
Be students of the Word—who understand who we are as Christians—and students of the world—who understand the culture around us.
How has God formed and shaped the life that he’s called you to live as an ambassador in an age that desperately needs to see and to know the beauty of Jesus Christ?
We should engage with the world broadly so that we can guide people through the “narrow gate” to faith in Jesus (Matthew 7:13).
