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How Christians Can Know if They're Trapped in Culture Wars

  • James Spencer President of The D. L. Moody Center
  • Updated Jun 20, 2023

 

We live in a disorienting and disoriented world offering an endless stream of new ways to ignore, distort, marginalize, or deny God and diminish human dignity.

Thankfully, Christians are not responsible for fixing the world but for living faithfully in a broken world, only God can fix. We are not a people called to be effective at policing morality but faithful in proclaiming the gospel.

Even though we aren’t responsible for fixing the world doesn’t mean we are not to practice a “pure and undefiled” religion by visiting “orphans and widows in their affliction” and remaining “unstained from the world” (James 1:27). Instead, it means we obey God even when doing so leaves the world broken.

I won’t pretend to have the answers to all of these questions, but I think we need to be asking them. I am not offering a final word on these matters but encouraging Christians to think beyond the immediate, the popular, and the present to ensure we are not diminishing our ability to save some to ensure the world is only broken in ways we are willing to tolerate (if not enjoy).

We would do well to consider how biblical patterns might inform our contemporary actions.

Sound and Photo Credit:© D8SF6VRW5NEI6GUO/iStock/Getty Images Plus/skynesher


James SpencerJames Spencer earned his Ph.D. in Theological Studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He believes discipleship will open up opportunities beyond anything God’s people could accomplish through their own wisdom. James has published multiple works, including Christian Resistance: Learning to Defy the World and Follow Christ, Useful to God: Eight Lessons from the Life of D. L. Moody, Thinking Christian: Essays on Testimony, Accountability, and the Christian Mind, and Trajectories: A Gospel-Centered Introduction to Old Testament Theology to help believers look with eyes that see and listen with ears that hear as they consider, question, and revise assumptions hindering Christians from conforming more closely to the image of Christ. In addition to serving as the president of the D. L. Moody Center, James is the host of “Useful to God,” a weekly radio broadcast and podcast, a member of the faculty at Right On Mission, and an adjunct instructor with the Wheaton College Graduate School. Listen and subscribe to James's podcast, Thinking Christian, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or LifeAudio! 

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