Does it bother you that Christianity has lost much of its influence over our culture?
It bothers me.
It bothers me for multiple reasons. It paves the way for persecution—and I don’t want that for anybody that I love. It opens the door to crime, corruption, and all kinds of evil. It positions our nation to be on the receiving end of Divine judgment. And it’s symptomatic of a church that has—in part, it seems—lost its way.
We are meant to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a city on a hill. And, I’m sure, at times we are. But, wow, look around, and ask yourself: What went wrong?
I’ve been obsessing about that for a long time.
Here’s a question I ask: Did we get our message wrong?
We go out into our world and say, “Hey, everyone! I have a free gift for you! It’s called eternal life. All you need to do is pray a prayer, and then your sins—past, present, and future—will be forgiven, and works-free grace will open heaven’s door for you.”
How does that transform a culture? How does that “make disciples of all nations” and “teach them to observe all things I have commanded you”? (Matthew 28)
I’ve been sending a different message to my world. The grace that saves transforms. (Titus 2 and, maybe, the rest of the Bible.) This isn’t a one-and-done business deal with God; this is a new life—as in an entire life. Eternal life is free and it costs you everything.
It shows up in some of my recent YouTube videos like my most recent 38-minute video on the Kingdom of God.
(And if 38 minutes of Dwight is too much, I’ve recently posted about 35 ten-second YouTube shorts; you can check out some of those.)
Most people in our world don’t know or believe that God is good, so I tackled that in this video.
And, of course, when Christian fixes don’t work, we lose our credibility with our culture, so that’s covered in this video which got over a thousand views.
Anyway, I’m doing what I can to reverse this lack of influence in our culture.
What do you think? How can we restore and increase the influence of Christianity in our culture? What would it take? I’d love to hear or read your thoughts.
Dwight
