Culture War?

A lot of time had been spent by many people talking and preaching about a culture war. I had a brief conversation with someone this past week about it and it inspired me to think about it once again.

I have excerpted a blog from a good friend of mine, Nathan Gann, dealing with this 'culture war.'

In America, Christians are no longer moral because they love God or their fellow man, but they do so for the sake of superiority, for the sake of building a better nation here on earth, to protect our schools, or to be able to identify who is in our group and who isnt.
Take for example the culture war. Somehow Im so supposed to believe that those in Hollywood, the professional athletes, or politicians have an immoral agenda that I should be threatened by? But in all the rhetoric from Christians I never hear about Jesus love, or grace or forgiveness. It sounds like anger and bitterness about our morality, our culture, our schools, which are being taken over by people who ignore our morality. Seriously, none of it has anything to do with God.


Today we have only two issues that Christians seem to care about: homosexuality and abortion. But the NT seems full of moral ideas like loving your enemies, being at peace, taking care of your own junk before you worry about others, forgiving because we have been forgiven, loving our neighbors, etc. Morality becomes the glue not the divider for our communities because of Jesus and his love to a confused culture, his calm to all the loudness, his life in a world of routine, his kindness in a world of self-hatred.

So how has a man who hung out with prostitutes and the detestable, healing the sick, turning the other cheek, changing water into wine, become the poster boy for a Western agenda with a morality of rules or financial gain through this dividing war rhetoric? Satan is crafty.

Maybe you think I am a theological liberal. But my take is that if someone can focus on what other Christians drink while ignoring the wedding at Cana or rant on about gay marriage and abortion as the two main sins while ignoring the othersthis person should never be called conservative. I think the theological liberal is the one who defines morality by these two issues while ignoring loving those neighbors, ignoring the environment, world trade, or feeding the poor.

Really, we should stop showing off and telling people how much more moral we are. Any feelings of anger you have towards the culture are not from God, but rather a soul ready to throw stones at the women caught in adultery. If Jesus were here today I dont think he would react any different than he did to the moralists of his day. I know I screw up and need grace and love from Jesus, so Christians (myself included) should be the ones befriending our culture.

Are we in a culture war? Is this country at a "crossroads"? If we are, what's right and what's not? Is a war for the culture of America a good thing for America? For Christianity? Is it necessary? "Be in the world, not of it." What does that mean? At what point does my Christianity and my American Patriotism collide? What happens when they do?

There are a lot of questions about this culture war? Maybe we just should listen to Peter with his first salvation altar call - "Be saved from this wicked and perverse generation."

You can find more blogs by Nathan at his myspace. Naked Corbu