empty-pulpitIt’s common in Christian circles to limit our preaching and teaching to Christ’s ability to take care of our sin problem and fix our broken lives.  That is the Gospel message, but that’s not all Christianity has to say about the world in which we live.  Christianity is total truth.  It’s not just truth about salvation, it’s also truth about science, morality, and insofar as morality should affect society, politics as well.  The Christian worldview affects every area of life, both private and public.

Unfortunately the church has typically limited its preaching and teaching to issues surrounding the private life.  We have ignored socio-moral issues such as abortion, embryonic stem cell research, same-sex marriage, cloning, etc.  If they are addressed at all, it will be with a passing condemnation that lacks both intellectual substance and explanation.  I think our lack of dialogue on these issues explains why our socio-political influence is disproportionate to our numbers.

What kind of message do we send our people when we fail to address the pressing issues of our day?  What do we communicate when our pulpits are silent on bioethical issues such as embryonic stem cell research, while the media is not?  I’ll tell you what kind of message it communicates.  It tells people that Christianity can do a lot for one’s personal life, but it’s not worth much when it comes to “real life.”  As Scott Klusendorf wrote, our silence sends the message that “Christianity has nothing relevant to say to the most pressing issues of our day. It’s fine as a personal life enhancement, but irrelevant to the real world of ideas, politics, morality, and law where the rest of the world lives. We’ll just let the secular world handle those matters. … When Christian leaders…implicitly tell their students that faith has nothing to do with real life, well, the kids (surprise) opt for real life.”

For too long we have failed to address some of the most pressing issues of our day in a thoughtful manner with the body of Christ.  For too long we have shied away from being involved in the public square of ideas, and that is why Christianity has been marginalized in society to the tiny sphere of “values.”  Our faith is being pushed into the closet, and we only have ourselves to blame.  Rather than engaging the culture with intellectual fervor we have been content to remain in the corner fixated on our emotional highs and ecstatic experiences.  While we’ve been preoccupied with getting our emotional fix for the week, the culture has been preoccupied with living life in the real world.  They will continue to make public policy with or without us.  If we choose not to have a presence in the public square of ideas we cannot complain when those policies do not reflect our worldview.  Our lack of determination to do the hard work necessary to refute secularist ideas with sound reason has locked us into the cage of irrelevance.  We handed the secularists the key to the public arena and then complain because they locked us out.

The only way to turn back the tide of our current situation is to re-engage culture with the full Gospel truth.  To do so we must prepare ourselves intellectually for a war of ideas.  We must discuss issues of social and moral relevance intelligibly with the people of God, giving them both Biblical and rational reasons for the Christian worldview.  And we must be willing to voice our arguments in the public square.  This takes time, discipline, and courage, but the future of our nation, and many souls hang in the balance.