The right Man on our side

Is anyone else dizzy or disoriented? The last six months of cultural developments have come across the plate with the heat of a Nolan Ryan fastball. Step outside the batter’s box and get your bearings if need be. We’ll all understand.

In fact, just since June when the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the changes have seemed to accelerate. Without DOMA, chaos is coming, sooner or later, to every state where the federal government does business. Emboldened, homosexual activists and their enablers are on a cultural blitzkrieg.

There are other problems we could get ulcers over. Our economic system is on borrowed time, nearing $17 billion in federal debt, a currency that is increasingly weak and a looming federal healthcare law that looks from here like an iceberg 20 feet from the bow. Then there’s the Syrian problem, which is potentially cataclysmic.

Worst of all and most fundamentally, our homes, and by extension, our churches, are struggling too. Researchers tell us about the rise of the “nones.” We hear that Christian parents are not giving children a sufficient biblical worldview that is “owned” by the kids when they leave home. One speaker I heard recently said the most looming challenge for the church is a fading belief in the exclusivity of Christ among the young.

Depressed yet?

If Christian believers were to get discouraged right about now, who would blame them? Far as the eye can see, things are not friendly toward the things of God. But our walk is by faith, not by sight. And remember, we are citizens of two kingdoms, the current one being temporal, even vaporous, the Word tells us.

It would be easy to hold grudges, to put up our dukes for a cultural fistfight. Certainly, we contend for truth and do well where we can. That involves cultural and political engagement in a fashion that does justice and loves mercy. We are, after all, our brothers’ keepers. But winning the culture war is not the aim of the church. Winning souls is. The two endeavors may aid each other at times, but they are not equally important.

As Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission President Russell Moore said in his inauguration sermon, we cannot be reaching back for Mayberry, as if we could. If we ever were a moral majority, we aren’t now. The kingdom of God is “not made up of the moral. The kingdom of God is made up of the crucified,” Moore reminded his audience.

We have nothing to say to a haughty and rebellious culture if our own lives are rotten, if our marriages are fleshy, if our pulpits lack a prophetic voice—in short, if we are not living crucified lives.

If the sky is falling, we may be the cause of it. But if the sky does fall, be of good cheer, Jesus said. He’s overcome all of it. He’s our Mighty Fortress and Strong Tower.

I like how Martin Luther said it, translated to English, of course: “Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing; Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing. Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He; Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same, And He must win the battle.”

This is no time to fear. Nor is it a time to retreat from the mission of the gospel. We rest under a Mighty Fortress in the temporal with the expectant joy of a new home to come. We grieve for those who have no such hope and bring along as many as will come into our shelter. We have a rescue mission.

Jesus was clear at the end of the Great Commission in Matthew 28:20 that he is with us always, “even to the end of the age.” There is no depth or height and no power able to separate us from his loving grasp (Romans 8:38 and John 10:28-30). David found strength in the God of Israel while breathlessly on the run from oppressors. Paul was tested and perplexed but not defeated. Stephen in his martyrdom uttered God’s words and glowed with God’s glory.

So rest easy and stay on mission. The Creator of the cosmos has got this.