May
27
2008
The Day Of Small Things
Here I sit staring out from our chalet balcony at Les Dents du Midi (a famous mountain in Villars, Switzerland known for it’s five peaks) having just finished reading this article by Vern Poythress.
In it he questions our strategy to put Christians in positions of political power and influence for the purpose of instituting cultural change. He says:
Bible-believing Christians have not achieved much in politics because they have not devoted themselves to the larger arena of cultural conflict. Politics mostly follows culture rather than leading it…A temporary victory in the voting booth does not reverse a downward moral trend driven by cultural gatekeepers in news media, entertainment, art, and education. Politics is not a cure-all.
This brief article fleshes out one of my favorite Os Guinness quotes. He said, “The main reason we aren’t making more of a difference in our world is not that Christians aren’t where they should be, but that they aren’t what they should be right where they are.”
Poythress goes on:
The power of the Christian faith is the power of the cross, power in human weakness, the power of God’s love. Christian faith spread in the Roman Empire not by strategically placing Christians in the Roman Senate and in the aristocracy, but by people hearing God’s good news—the “foolishness” of the gospel (1 Corinthians 1:18-31).
For a long time now I have been convinced that what happens in New York (finances), Hollywood (entertainment), and Miami (fashion) has a far greater impact on how our culture thinks about reality than what happens in Washington D.C. (politics). The political arena is the place where policies are implemented which reflect the values of our culture that are being shaped by these other more strategic arenas. So when Christians conclude that the most strategic way to change our world is through the political process they’re already “too little, too late.”