I got one of “those” phone calls recently: a public opinion poll, the kind where they ask questions about political candidates. It was more than little entertaining. However, as I listened to the issues on the agenda of this particular pollster, I was reminded that our culture has obviously lost its sense of direction. We have completely severed the chains of our moral anchors, and we are utterly adrift on a stormy sea of rival opinions. We know neither where we are nor where we’re going.
It got me to thinking. And praying.
There was a time when the church served as the moral and spiritual conscience of our culture, not because it was perfect or pure, but because it called society without compromise to submit to Him Who is.
How did the church lose its moral influence in our culture?
It boils down to the fact that the church was asleep during those crucial times when the culture was making critical moral and spiritual choices. During the secularizing upheaval of the 1920’s, the sexual revolution of the 1960’s, the cultural relativism of the 1980’s, and the moral decline of the last decade, the church in western culture has done little more than wring its hands and pout.
Keith Green put it this way in one of his songs:
“The world is sleeping in the dark
That the church just can’t fight,
‘Cause it’s asleep in the light!”
What can be done to restore the church to its rightful place as the conscience of our culture?
It will never happen if we wait on the leaders of the church to make it happen. Indeed, the moral lapses of so many church leaders practically guarantee their inability to bring the needed changes. It has to begin with each of us. With me and you.
Admittedly, you can’t change the whole culture.
However, in the power of the Holy Spirit, here’s what you can do.
You can quit griping about the way things are, and start doing something about it, by bringing the moral imperatives of God’s Word to bear in your own life and in the public arena of decision-making and policy formation.
You can pray for your community and its leaders, and occasionally even attend a School Board or City Council meeting to say a word of Godly encouragement.
You can impact your sphere of influence: the people you know; the neighborhood where you live.
You can share God’s truth with others.
You can live God’s truth for them to see.
You can love people in Jesus’ name and demonstrate to them that He loves them very much.
You can show up where God’s presence is required.
You can stand up where God’s influence is needed.
You can speak up where God’s voice must be heard.
You can change your world, in the power of God: one choice at a time, one life at a time, one heart at a time.
You can. And you must.
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1 John 3:7-10, 7 Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; 8 the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. 10 By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.
I think it's a significant reason Christ's church isn't making the difference it should. We should be making it clear to the rest of society what are the things of God as opposed to the things of satan. Sad truth is, the world has done a far better job of influencing the church than visa-versa, hence it is now difficult to tell by looking at us the difference between light and darkness.
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