Wow–Mark Dever has blown me away today with his How to Survive a Cultural Crisis over at The Gospel Coalition. For those concerned over the cultural decay in the United States, this is absolutely a must read. The title of this blog post is just one of the gems within…
Posted in: Religion & Politics
Bereans @ The Gate - old 
Anonymous
May 30, 2013
Wow. That is nicely written and really makes you think, while it reminds you just how blessed as a nation we really are. All in all we should be more thankful.
Spencer Rioux
June 2, 2013
Christians in America tend to be so wrapped up in specific moral issues in society that we begin to treat the world as if it was supposed to live up to our own moral standards. How can we expect non-Christians to act like Christians (or at least, how Christians should act)? Dever was absolutely right when he commented on grace. Grace is everything for us as followers of Christ, from beginning to end. We have no part in the family of God without the grace He has given to us. So then, why do we expect those who haven’t received and partaken in that supernatural grace to share the same morality that we do?
Jeff Haymond
June 2, 2013
Spencer
Do you think there is a difference in how we address the fallen world as individual sinners and how we address the common culture? Who has a responsibility for the common culture? And what is that responsibility? What does grace look like in the our efforts to address the common culture?
Spencer Rioux
June 2, 2013
Yes, I do believe that we as followers of Christ address the fallen world differently on the individual and corporate levels. That is, we should seek change in individual sinners as individuals ourselves, Christians who can relate specifically to other individuals in the manner of Christ (i.e. the way He responded to people like the Samaritan woman at the well or Nicodemus); likewise, we should seek broader, corporate, cultural change through corporate means, i.e. The Church. The culture of the Church should be the example which we wish to see reflected in the common culture. We cannot expect the common culture to replicate the culture of the Church exactly (as I said in my previous post), but we can corporately influence culture by living up to the ideal of a vigorous, loving, and firmly established family based on the model provided in Scripture. That is grace, when the Spirit of God works in us both individually and corporately to live the truly human life designed for us by our Creator, and that is the way we can influence the common culture positively for Christ.
Jeff Haymond
June 2, 2013
So does this mean that the extent of our influencing the common culture is through the corporate culture of the church? Should the church call for public morality? If so, what would it look like? Is it loving and an act of grace for the church to press for the end to abortion, for example? Should the church corporately stand for marriage between one woman and one man? I’m just trying to understand where the limits to your model are. I certainly struggle (as most Christians do) with understanding the right way to be salt in the world and the broader culture, but I’m fairly convinced the answer is not abandoning the broader culture nor is it in seeking to implement “his will on earth” through political means. So if its somewhere in between, what is that right balance?
Hannah Wiley
June 7, 2013
I completely agree! As Christian Americans we should be involved in our government in some sort of way, especially because we have the ability to do it.
Della
November 14, 2013
Well mamacadia nuts, how about that.