CULTURE WARS: Explanation, Understanding & Need

CONCLUSIONS

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Jn 4:9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?”

The Jews of Jesus' day looked down on Samaritans – and the Samaritans knew it, as this woman's words reveal. But it is a battlefield that is about boundaries (I'm different from you, you're different from me) and it is revealed throughout history in cultures where traditions exist that distinguish people groups; their history tells of wars, invasions, of having to defend against others, and of course, although there are similarities, it is unique, it makes us, ‘us'. Jesus, however, didn't recognise boundaries of culture; people were people! And that's how he still sees them.

The starting place? We live with history and ALL history is tainted with sin. This is where the Christian perspective is a unique perspective and, I would suggest, is the most helpful perspective. It says two crucial things about the reality of our world:

•  First, we have ALL sinned and ALL got it wrong, and the history of the world is a history of Sin.

•  Second, that propensity to get it wrong (sin) continues today and will be seen in our words and actions UNLESS we have had a ‘God-experience' that transforms us from being godlessly, self-centred, all-out-for-me-and-my-ideas.

So, first give our lives over to God through Jesus Christ and THEN let Him change our thinking, speaking and doing. Without that happening, we may have all the good intentions in the world, and the culture warriors think they have good intentions – to change the world to a better place – but they fail to realise that it cannot be a better place until ‘I' am a better person, and that means far more than having good intentions; I need changing from the inside out, and that is what the Christian Faith is all about.

It means a new perspective, a new start, a new identity, and a new power source, to start me on a new journey of change that will take the rest of my life. I am a ‘work in progress' and the change will take a lifetime – MY lifetime.

Hopefully, this fuller perspective breeds humility, a willingness to speak gently and with compassion, not to steamroller the ideas of others. But there is the problem. I hope we have shown on various pages, how there are forces at work within Western society, with alien ideas, ideas that clash with God's truth, forces that will try to hide and deny these things, but forces that are being more and more called out.

In the prologue, we used the analogy of the tide of truth going out, but there are signs that it is coming back in. However, so far we should not be triumphalistic or even over-optimistic for it is early days and the effects of the lies, untruths & deceptions have well and truly taken hold of Western society and so the pressurizing voices are still there and have not yet been quieted. Institutions, without any moral base, are still giving way to those voices, and people are still losing their jobs for not conforming to the ‘politically correct' line today. It may be some time before eyes are opened and courage returns. It may only come if the reviving work of God by His Spirit brings conviction to society. In the meantime, we can but inform ourselves as thoroughly as possible, pray regularly, and seek to have gracious, open, but firm hearts to those who would challenge God and His word.

We hope and pray that these pages will have helped the first of those activities so that we are ready to obey the injunction, “Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you're living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy.” (1 Pet 3:15 Msg version) May it be so because, as it has been said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

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