It should come as no surprise to people who know me or have read this blog that I am a religious conservative. That can be a tough label to wear proudly as a twenty-something (for another three months!) in our culture. My team has taken a thrashing lately, politically and culturally, and it seems as if an era in American culture--that of the cultural and political dominance of Christianity--is passing. I am not writing about this to wring my hands or declare the falling of the sky, but to point towards what I believe to be a better way to be aliens and strangers in this world.
Some people my age that I talk to are hopeful about the passing of Christianity as the default civil religion of the United States. They think it will spur the church to enhanced creativity and that belief will actually mean something now. In other words, to be a Christian it will not be possible, for the most part, to be a Sunday Christian and live the rest of the week precisely like the rest of the world. I understand this impulse and thought largely the same way for a long time. And then I had kids. Having kids removes this lazy disposition as you realize that your kids will now have to grow up in a world largely opposed to what they are taught at home. The passing of Christendom is not something to treat glibly as if there are no associated costs. It is going to entail harsh realities for those committed to living out a Biblical morality in the public square. We might tire of the excesses of civic religion Christianity, but it has built us a pretty nice place to live. And it is an edifice we tear down to our own destruction, or so it seems to me.
That being said, there is no need to be sour about this. As a Christian, I have read Matthew 24 and St. John's Revelation. I know stuff gets bad. This isn't Utopia, which, as anyone knows who has read Thomas More's fictional account of the place, kind of sucks anyway, and of course means "no place." God is not surprised by what is happening here. He is not up in heaven going, "They're legalizing what down there!?!!?" He is in control whether America is a comfortable place to be a conservative Christian or whether we are blacklisted and persecuted.
That control gives me hope. I believe that the world is governed by the holy-love of the Trinitarian God. I believe he is sovereign over that creation. I believe every atom in our universe is sustained by the Word of his power down to this moment, that every mote of dust I can see through the sunlight coming in my window as I type dances at his command. I believe that one day the Son will return and make all things new and every tear will be wiped from our eyes.
You know what that makes me? Happy. Very, very happy. Because just as the above paragraph is true for me, it is also true for the persecuted Christians in India and Eritrea and Iran. My circumstances do not change the reality of God's providential control of the world, of the fact that he works out everything for the good of those who are called to his purposes.
Therefore, the face I want to present to the world is not one of despair over circumstances. I don't want to hold tight-fistedly to some notion of a bygone era when everything was right and, like the children of Lake Woebegone, everyone was above average. I don't want to resent and see myself as opposed to the people on the other side of the aisle, the people I have been commanded by my Savior to love as he does. That is a tall order as anyone who has tried to put it into practice (and here I speak theoretically, as I never have) can attest. But it is our calling.
To be filled with joy. To live as exiles. To work for the good of those around us. To love our God. If this ship is going down (and the jury is still out on that one) I don't want to be clinging to the railing screaming against the unfairness of it all. I want to sing "Nearer, My God, to Thee."
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