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

Obeying God won’t guarantee we get to address every issue we want. Thankfully, the church is not called to fix the world but to be faithful in a...

James Spencer

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.

Originally published June 20, 2023.

James Spencer earned his PhD in Theological Studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and an MA in Biblical Exegesis from Wheaton College. By teaching the Bible and theology, as well as evaluating modern social, cultural, and political trends, James challenges Christians to remember that we don’t set God’s agenda—He sets ours. James has published multiple works, including Serpents and Doves: Christians, Politics and the Art of Bearing Witness, 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 Min, and Trajectories: A Gospel-Centered Introduction to Old Testament Theology. His work calls Christians to an unqualified devotion to the Lord. In addition to serving as president of Useful to God, James is a member of the faculty at Right On Mission and an adjunct instructor at Wheaton College Graduate School. Listen and subscribe to James’s Thinking Christian podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Life Audio.