The Counter-Cultural Church

Every society has its peculiar emphasizes: some they get right, some they get wrong. For example, the Romans excelled in both courage and chastity, but were often times very cruel. We modern westerners are much more kind, but we are far more cowardly and far less chaste.

Every society in which the church has existed has influenced the church. For example, the church under the Roman Empire excelled both in courage and chastity (one need but consider for a moment the bravery of the martyrs), but they often lacked kindness (in St. Augustine’s time a rival group of Christians known as the Donatists murdered rival bishops and sacked their churches). In our age the church, like society, is cowardly and unchaste (see our identical divorce rates for proof), but we are more kind (accepting those who are different, etc).

Before I proceed I must make one thing clear: the values of God are incommensurate. That is to say, they cannot be compared. Our kindness does not make up for our lack of chastity just as the chastity of the earlier church did not excuse its cruelty. We cannot compare sins just as we cannot compare the things God values (e.g. justice is not twice as valuable as beauty).

Given that all the things that God values are, well, valuable, the church should ideally value and display them all. But short of that, I believe the church has a responsibility to intentionally value those values of God which are ignored or mocked in our society.

Courage and chastity were held as virtuous by all men during earlier periods. Yes the church was right in being both courageous and chaste, but it need not emphasize them for in doing so they merely reinforced what people believed. Their time would have been much better spent promoting kindness. In the same way, today kindness (tolerance, diversity, etc) is in the very air we breathe. It is not to say that this is not valuable (rightly understood, it is), but only that the church should spend more of its time promoting values (like chastity) that are not widely held and are in fact openly mocked.

But instead we see the opposite. We see the church more and more moving toward accommodation, wanting to be more like the world in tolerating a lack of chasteness and worshiping tolerance so that the world we see us as one of their own and maybe somehow we will be able to trick them into our pews.

I do not see mega churches as a testimony to the church’s success, but rather to its failure. The world killed Christ and His disciples. Yet significant parts of the church today our accepted by our increasingly worldly society. The fact that they are accepted and not persecuted is probably evident that they are too much like the world, not only in it, but of it, that they have lost their light, for the darkness cannot tolerate the light.

Should the church not try to be so friendly or cool? The church should not focus on results. We are to preach the gospel and have faith in God to take care of the rest. If we do any more we risk perverting our task (preaching the gospel) in order that we may do something we are not asked to do (save the souls of men—that is God’s job). In doing this we not only corrupt our rightly given goal, but put into jeopardy that which we were never asked to do (it is difficult for a man to repent if he is not given the true gospel message!)