Say what you will about Mark Driscoll – but the man is sharpest (I think) when he’s talking about how the church should interact with the surrounding culture. I like this video because we are almost completely in agreement.
Christianity, society and politics from CPX on Vimeo.
He talks about how we can learn from Calvin’s approach to Christianity and Politics, avoiding anachronistically suggesting that any imposition of Christian government is wrong, and suggesting that it’s not appropriate today because you’d need everybody in a country to be Christian in order for that to be appropriate.
“Change often times comes from the bottom up. And I think one of the great myths is that politics changes culture. Politics doesn’t change culture, it represents culture. Politics represents the views of the constituency.”
“My efforts particularly in our city have not been politically active, I’m quite frankly not, I mean, we don’t talk about politicians or issues, much, I mean as I’m teaching through the Bible there might be some corollary between a social issue and a biblical teaching, but for the most part our goal is to love and serve people, to serve the city, to be people who really do love and are committed to our city and want to see the benefit to all people in the city, not just the Christians, and I believe that as more people share that ethic that will help to turn the culture of the city over and that will lead to political change.”
Watch it. It’s good.
This is the sort of post that is eventually going to migrate to Venn Theology (in fact, it’s cross posted there).
Comments
Thanks Nathan. I liked that too.
What do you think we should do as a Christians at the moment about the same-sex marriage stuff? Agitate? Write to the papers or politicians? Protest?
I’m just not inclined to get all hot and bothered about it. But some of my mates who subscribe to the ACL reckon I should be.
Thoughts?
“I’m just not inclined to get all hot and bothered about it. But some of my mates who subscribe to the ACL reckon I should be.”
Very funny Al.
I’m neither here nor there on gay marriage – I think we should be fighting for freedom for the church to define marriage as we believe it is defined in the face of public opinion to the contrary. As Driscoll says, the government reflects the views of the people – and the people are moving pretty quickly towards being in favour of gay marriage.
I wrote a little about it here (though a lot in the comments with Mark Baddeley), and a bit more about the dangers of not putting our position forward well here (or at least, that’s a story where things have gone wrong).
I’m much more interested in fighting for freedom to discriminate and letting the government not discriminate than I am for legislating a Christian worldview.
I mostly agree with Driscoll, but I wonder if he separates God a bit too much from government? I’d like to ask him:
Should a Christian should be an elected politician in a representative democracy?
Does he want to introduce Jesus to his local MP (congressman)?
Does seeking the peace & prosperity of the city include considerations of God’s basic principles of right and wrong when it comes to social policy? If so, how can you do that if/when it’s not what the majority wants?
[…] highlighted this one this week, and made some good points. Be sure to check them out […]