Paulitics of Moral Celery

Like all self-respecting blog posts, I will start with a non-backed-up pithy quote.

The church (i.e., believers) was not called to change or create a culture; it was called to change people and make disciples.

I was thinking about this and started wondering (dangerous!) – it seems like my focus should not be on what in my culture is bad and thus needs to be avoided or separated from, etc… rather, it should be on what in me is bad and thus needs to be “avoided” … or repented of.

I’ll illustrate: it’s easy to get caught up in looking around at the culture we live in and proclaiming this or that is bad. Examples: divorce, sexual immorality/infidelity/adultery/pornography, cursing God, bad movies, bad music, rebellion, immodesty, drugs. Those are all pretty external, generally, sins; or at least, that’s what we actually see and react to.

What seems to be less prevalently, ah, scrutinized are the more internal sins that perhaps hit a bit closer to home: greed, lust (well, that one is talked about), anger, prejudice, pride, racism, haughtiness, not truly worshiping/loving God, condescension, strife, impatience, grudges… you know, the things that James talks about, heh.

I know for me, it’s a lot easier to compare myself to the “world” and culture and somehow subtly excuse myself and see culture as the enemy, not my own sin. Here’s a more to the point example: we get surprised or saddened or whatever when a politician (we are saddened if it’s in “our” party and maddened if it’s the “other” party, heh) is caught in some adulterous or immoral behavior. Clearly a sin; but then, assuming the world is made up mostly of unbelievers, it shouldn’t be surprising. However, how many are similarly outraged about… well, since I’m fairly conservative politically, I’ll use an example that hits close to home; am I similarly outraged by greed? It’s just as much a sin, but for some reason, I view an immoral senator a lot lower than a greedy banker. If I have kids, I think I would be much more quick to tell them of how immoral behavior is wrong, sinful, and they shouldn’t do it (and it seems we typically talk about how the culture doesn’t agree with us, etc).

Let’s take greed as the “other” side. Do I point out how greed is a sin and should be avoided (with statements like how our culture “accepts” greed)? Do I talk about how the Bible tells us that it’s hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? Do I talk about the rich young ruler and how he was more interested in his money than his God? Or do I tell my kids that they need to go to college so they can get a good job (and make money… for themselves? …). Definitely not wrong to go to college and get a good job, of course; but it seems that there are certain sins that we just don’t talk about; maybe because they aren’t externally visible in our culture.

Annnd there’s my point. It seems that the sins that we are most concerned about are those that we can see in other people, and specifically, that we can see in our cultures. This seems to most often get followed with wanting to change culture (legislation, etc.), rather than repenting ourselves of sins that maybe we don’t see, and trying to change people. Which begins with repentance of one’s own sin and following Christ, not repentance from one’s culture’s sins and following a new culture.

Random musings.

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