| ReadBibleAlive.com Front
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| Series Theme: "Culture Wars" |
| Chapter 1: Introducing the Suggested Perspective
CONTENTS:
PART 1.1 Laying down the ‘ground rules' Perspective Christian & Bible-based
PART 1.2 Creating a Biblical Perspective for Learning A New Perspective God and Israel A Land to be Taken Enter the Son of God A Right Balance Not Alone & with Divine Purpose
PART 1.3 Resources to help us Resources Summary-Recap
PART 1.1 Laying down the basic ‘ground rules'
Perspective: We present each aspect of this subject of ‘modern culture wars' on a separate page, seen in the Contents page. We will explain what culture wars are when we move on to the chapter titled ‘Culture'. For the moment, suffice it to say it concerns the battles that have gone on in recent decades about how people view themselves and others. It is a battle for truth.
Christian & Bible-based: Now this is vital to understand for anyone coming to read these pages that they are written from a Christian perspective and, to clarify that, from a perspective that believes that the Bible is the inspired word of God, by which we may assess all else. Now the Bible does not directly address the topics that will come under the microscope as we examine these ‘culture wars' but it should provide a foundation that creates a starting place from which to assess all else. In many chapters we may, therefore, have a substantial element of Bible references, if for no other reason than to maintain a ‘God-awareness' throughout our thinking in all the pages.
We hope that the perspective we present will be helpful for both understanding of the Bible and these topics more clearly. We may not say what you might be expecting so please don't judge these pages until you have read all of them. Also, PLEASE we would prefer you NOT just jump to the page you think are likely to be the ‘hot potatoes' but see the complete series as a unified package.
PART 1.2 Creating a Biblical Perspective for Learning
Josh 1:2 “you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them.”
A New Perspective: We would like to approach these pages, using the picture of Israel approaching and exploring the ‘Promised Land', i.e. we approach an exploration of a ‘new land', the land we live in, in this fallen world, in which a war has been waged and which we're called to enter into.
God and Israel: The Bible is an historical account of God's activity, first with a people named Israel and then with a people called the Church. Within this account of Israel which appears to stretch over a two-thousand-year period, the people involved find themselves in new ‘lands', new environments, places that presented new challenges. After the initial 12 chapters of Genesis, we find a man named Abram, called to go to a land that God will show him, a land that we know as Israel or Palestine or, as it originally was, Canaan. His people would eventually leave that land but come back to it a little over four hundred years later when it was occupied by very different peoples. While they, Israel, were being formed, it was all in the context of God who gradually revealed Himself to them and then revealed His plans for good for them.
A Land to be Taken: When they eventually returned to the borders of ‘the Promised Land' they found peoples there worshipping idols, sacrificing their children to them, while living in superstitious fear. Their call was to drive these peoples out so they themselves could settle there and make it a place of God-worship, a place where they could live according to God's revelation of the way He had designed for them to live (The Law). The emphasis was on driving the present occupants out (there are over 30 references to the Canaanites being DRIVEN OUT and just 4 references to them being DESTROYED and 4 to them being WIPED OUT, the latter references only being the case if the occult-driven occupants refused to leave.) The book of Joshua is all about taking the Land.
Enter the Son of God: Centuries later when the Son of God came from heaven to live in this same land, he faced a new battlefield, witnessed by his early confrontation in the desert with Satan. But listen to the language of his mandate: “He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,” (Lk 4:18,19) worked out as, “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” (Mt 11:5) No, it was not a physical war but a war nevertheless that had both physical and spiritual dimensions, even as it still has today – a war to set captives free. Ultimately the battle is still for the hearts, minds, and very lives of those around us. Yes, it is so intense that physical lives are actually being lost, being destroyed by the works of the enemy.
A Right Balance: I have felt for some months I need to visit this subject as it has been worked out in the battlefields of sexuality, gender, and race, which I believe are each subsumed in the main battlefields called ‘culture' and ‘identity'. This is the new perspective, a war zone where a conflict is being fought with specific weapons being used by the enemy, which he has applied to each of these secondary ‘battlefields'. Now, of course, the truth is that this is a war carried on by minorities – but it affects all of us and has increasingly been seeping into wider life, even life in the Church. So yes, many people have been until recently, unwittingly merely onlookers, not participants, not wielding the weapons we will consider in the pages ahead, but the truth is that we are ALL gradually being impacted and drawn into it.
Not Alone & with Divine Purpose: The big thing about this enterprise, these studies, is that, as it was with Joshua, we go with the Lord's calling and, equally importantly, God is with us in it, and we need to remind ourselves of that fact again and again, “As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Josh 1:5 echoed in Heb 13:5). Again and again, I have been driven to prayer, so if you will join me on this uncomfortable expedition into these battle-zones, may I encourage you also to pray before you read each page and after you've read it.
PART 1.3 Resources to help us
Resources: This work is not that of a scholar or academic, but in the course of my reading in recent days, in preparation for these studies, I have read a number of books by those who would better fit that description, and would recommend the following from which I will often quote in the pages that follow:
- Morality by Jonathan Sacks, past chief rabbi in the UK, published in 2020 just six months before he died, what I believe has been one of the most significant, insightful. and informative books of recent years.
- The Madness of Crowds – Gender, Race & Identity', first published in 2019 and again in 2020 with an updated ‘Afterward', by Douglas Murray, an intellectual, author, and journalist (and self-declared gay) who writes winningly and comprehensively on these topics we've mentioned, and who often comes up with a remarkable degree of honesty and integrity. Also his ‘The War on the West', published in 2022, a wider view on the subject of how racism has been distorted, is also a worthwhile read.
In addition to these writers, Trans – When Ideology Meets Reality, by Helen Joyce, British editor of The Economist is some seriously heavy reading for those wishing to dig deeper in that subject. I could add others on racism and sexuality but sometimes some of these may be too uncomfortable reading for some Christians.
Summary-Recap: So far I have simply sought to present the subject matter of this series – the culture wars, identity politics, the subjects of sexuality, gender, identity, and race – as a picture of land with which we previously thought were familiar, but which, increasingly in recent years, has seemed alien, making us more and more aware that this is a ‘fallen world'. God is in this world – it's still His! – and time and again we will need to turn to Him in prayer for help in understanding, wisdom to know what to do with it, and grace for how to live it out. I concluded with noting some of the key resource books that I will often be referring to. May this be an equipping for how to live and counter the enemy in our midst.
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