Cultural Engagement

So just a few years ago, the movie Noah with Russell Crowe came out. It was very loosely based on the biblical account. It did follow a man named Noah and his family, he did build an ark, and there was a flood that wiped out the world, but other than that it was very very different from the real story. It was interesting for me at the time to witness how different groups in the church were responding to the film.

There were those who were so critical of the movie, they said, it was such blasphemy to God that you would distort the story so much, that we’re going to boycott it and have public protests to convince Hollywood never to make a movie like this again. This group was very negative, almost hostile, toward anyone who supported the film. Of course, the boycott meant nothing, the film still made a ton of money.

The second group looked at the first group and said, ya’ll are nuts, you’re such a bad witness for Jesus! You should just go see the movie and accept it for what it is. Jesus would never have been this negative toward other people. In other words, just accept the movie 100%, and stop being so critical.

Then there was a third group that kind of looked at the other two and said, you both are crazy, let me write a bunch of blogs with all my analysis of what both of you are getting wrong. This third group did a really good job of analyzing the movie at a philosophical level,and pointing out how the movie reflected other cultural narratives that are dominant in our society such as environmentalism, vague spirituality, and so on.

Here’s the funny thing. Each of these groups represent one piece of the pie on a proper Christian response to the culture. The first group was right that we should be careful of what we accept from the culture, but by making an idol out of purity and our own morals, they took it so such an extreme that they isolated themselves in a bubble from others.

The second group was right that Jesus was compassionate toward outsiders, and he was kind. But he also had a lot to say about not distorting God’s Word and upholding the holiness of God. So the second group, by making an idol out of being approved and accepted by the culture, lost their distinctiveness, their saltiness, and could no longer make any kind of Christian impact on the culture around them.

The third group was right in that Christians should be wise, “wise as serpents” as the Scripture says, and we should be able to analyze the culture to the degree that we understand the false idols and narratives of society around us. But my making an idol out of wisdom and knowledge, they turned Christianity into an intellectual mind game rather than the redeeming and restorative message of God’s work in the world.

You see what each of these groups were missing, and what almost nobody was talking about when Noah came out, was how do we engage the culture. How do we bring Christ to bear on the world in our current cultural moment? How can we redeem this movie and use it as an opportunity for cultural witness to engage others with the good news of Jesus?

If we only focus on morality and moralism, we’re going to become like the first group. If we only try to become accepted by the culture, we’re going to lose all of the things that make Christians unique and distinct. If we only focus on knowledge and cultural critique, we’re going to turn Christianity just into another philosophy that dies on the pages of the history books.

But the Christian’s posture toward culture is to be one of engagement. In , Paul uses this language of being citizens of heaven. I think when most Christians hear that, they think, ok, this simply means I’m supposed to look forward to leaving earth and going to heaven, because that’s my true home. But that isn’t what this text meant to its audience.

The city of Philippi in Greece was a Roman colony, where many people have the privilege of Roman citizenship. This citizens of a colony were not supposed to desire going back to their home country, in this case, Roman citizens in a Roman colony weren’t supposed to desire going back to Rome. Their job was to secure Philippi by infiltrating the culture to make it more like Roman culture. So by telling Christians that we are citizens of heaven, Paul is telling us to permeate the culture of this world with a heavenly culture.

We are supposed to be engaged, working as those who belong to the kingdom now, even while we wait for the kingdom to come. So, two texts I want us to look at for the next few minutes, and I gave them both to you so you could see the parallel and the repeated emphasis, particularly in the New Testament, for our posture of cultural engagement. Of course I could give you several others from the Bible, but we’re focusing on these 2 for now. And there’s 2 things I want to focus in on: 1) Making the best use of the time, and 2) Our posture toward others

Making the Best Use of the Time ()

There are a lot of words that we could use to describe the world that we live in. Here’s a big one though, I think. You and I live in a world of distraction. We’re distracted by things all the time, running here and there, always busy, but never actually getting anything done. And the biggest culprit of our distraction is sitting right here in our pockets. Our phones.

Our phones – and all other pieces of technology – are not inherently sinful. They’re a tool that could be used either for great blessing or great foolishness. It’s much like money. Money is not evil. The love of money is. Smartphones are not evil. But the love of what smartphones offer us: distraction, temporary pleasure – that is evil.

Listen, everything I’m about to say about our use of smartphones, I’m preaching to myself, ok. I’ve been doing a lot of research in this area for a long time, and it wasn’t until recently that I’ve become more convicted about my own use of the phone. I love my phone. I do. I love Instagram and posting funny Instagram stories. I love the games that I play. But I’m becoming more and more aware of how much time I’m wasting, how undisciplined I’m becoming. I’m becoming more aware of the fact that I can’t sit down to read without a compulsion to check my phone every 5 minutes. It’s not healthy, and it’s a distraction from making the best use of the time that God has given to me. One of my goals for the next few months is to work with my wife to come up with better limitations for ourselves in our smartphone use.

It is universally agreed by psychologists and social scientists that the more addicted to our phones we are, the more distracted we are. The more addicted to distracted we are, the more likely you are to be depressed, anxious, lose sleep, and become unrelated to others in person.

My mom is a professor at American University in Washington D.C., and she has long been noticing the changes in students from year to year as they are taking her classes. She has noticed that her students seem more anxious and distracted than ever before. So I’ve been helping her do some research and studies on how students are using their smartphones and the impact that this might have on their education.

We’ve done studies in her class, and we recently partnered with another university in Brazil to do some studies as well. And all of our research is pointing to a profound change in how people learn and interact with the world. College students today across the board say that they always have their smartphones on them, next to them, they’re constantly checking them while they study or write their papers, they sleep right next to their phone…we’re always plugged in, which means we are never fully engaged with the people and the tasks that are right in front of us.

When we’re always distracted, we are unable to make best use of the time that God has given to us. The world we live in is distracted, but that does not mean it should make us distracted. We must be conformed to Christ, who is purposeful, intentional, engaged – not conformed to this world.

There are several cautions I could give you about smartphones, far too many for the time that we have together. I do want to recommend to you 2 books called 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You, and Do.More.Better. Read these with your youth group, read them with your friends, read them with your parents, and use them to figure out how to make the best use of your time. However, I do want make a couple points here, and urge you to really consider why should improve the way you use your time. My point here is not to put guilt or shame on anyone, because guilt and shame are not good motivators for change. It just makes us feel worse. Instead, I want to give you a better vision for the good life and the great purpose that God has for you in this world.

1) Pornography

Most pornography use happens on smartphones. Almost all of it. That is because it has become just incredibly easy to look things up on google from our phones. It is an incredible temptation. Now, we have already talked about some of the consequences of pornography this morning. I’m not going to go through that again. But I do want to say this. The heart that is addicted to pornography is burdened by all kinds of other sin, not just the sin of treating other people like objects. The porn-addicted heart is stubborn, hardened to the fruit of the Spirit, arrogant, proud, cynical, often angry, always selfish. It has to be. The only way we can be numb to the sin of our pornography addiction is if our heart is infected with all these other sins at the same time.

And the more we are enslaved to these sins, the less we can fulfill the purposes God has for us. God has a glorious purpose for us, that is to be a colonizer of his Kingdom, to spread his glory and fame in this world through the lives that we live. Pornography takes us away from that purpose, focuses us inward, and causes us to live a life of shame and regret rather than purpose and satisfaction.

You may feel as if it isn’t a big deal because you can get away with it. Maybe you’re deleting your search history so no one finds out. But eternal regret will follow forever for the clicks you are making on your smartphone today. Your search history is permanent before God, unless he shows us mercy and grace. Our search history must be washed clean by the blood of Jesus.

Jesus said in that if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better to enter the Kingdom of God with one eye than it is to go with two eyes into the pit of hell. His point was, if there is something in your life that is leading you into sin, take it out of your life, even if it is incredibly important to you. So here’s my point.

If your smartphone is causing you to sin through a pornography addiction, or maybe its causing you to gossip constantly about classmates behind their back over snapchat, whatever it is. If your smartphone is causing you to sin, GET RID OF IT. It would be better to live a life of purpose and enter the kingdom without a smart phone, than to live a life of sin and end up apart from God. Jesus’ warning for us couldn’t be stronger.

2) Engaging with People

Our distractions don’t just allow us to cover up our sin, but they prevent us from really engaging with others. How can we engage the culture and make the best use of our time if our smartphones are causing us to be addicted to private sin and preventing us from spending real time with others? The answer is, we can’t.

In his book 12 ways.. the author Tony Reinke has a really good illustration of how we prioritize our smartphones over others, and that’s the problem of texting and driving. It’s a foolish, foolish thing to do, and he rightly points out that whenever we text and drive, we are willing to prioritize our temporary distractions above the safety of others. And he also points out how no matter how tight the laws are, our behavior isn’t going to change. In a car, you can send texts with one hand under the window texting so nobody can see you. The harder the laws clamp down on texting, the lower the phones go, and the lower our phones, the more our eyes are off the road, which puts other people more and more at risk.

See, at the root of our smartphone use is what we idolize most. Do we idolize ourselves, our comforts, and our distractions, above our ability to serve and engage with others?

The sad reality is, for many people, it’s easier to hide behind our phones to talk to others rather than having real human interaction. That makes us even more awkward at having conversation in person. This has a huge consequence on the church, because what happens when a bunch of phone-addicted people show up to church together and don’t know how to interact? They conclude that church isn’t a good place to open up, and it will be better to just stay home and hide behind their phones. As Tony Reinke says, we will start to think that awkwardness is a strange feeling that should be resisted rather than God’s intentional means of transforming us.

Talking with others face to face is a far better use of our time than using technology as an interface. And I know that for many of you, its pretty normal to use the phone as the primary way of communication for friends and family. My guess is that many of you hang out with your friends and sit down together while you’re all on your phones. I know that can be fun sometimes, but it can also prevent you from relating on a deeper level.

So my encouragement to you is this: be weird. Be weird! Don’t conform to what’s normal for everybody else. Be the weird friend who leaves their phone in their pocket and tries really hard to engage with their friends. Be the weird one to suggest to your friends that you turn your phones off when you hang out together. Tell your parents that you want the family to have good limitations set for your phones, such as not using them at the dinner table, or when you’re doing a family activity together. Be weird for the sake of the gospel. Be weird so you can make the best use of your time.

Our Posture Toward Outsiders (4:6)

There’s a lot in these two texts from Colossians and Ephesians about how, as we are making the best use of our time, how our posture is to be toward outsiders, those outside the church, outside the faith. Paul says that our speech should be gracious, and seasons with salt. Of course, he’s using the same image that Jesus uses, that Christians are the salt of the world. The idea here is that Christians who live and share the gospel will have savory speech, attractive speech, gracious and humble and generous toward outsiders.

I said a moment ago that the age we live in is one of distraction. Well we also live in an age of outrage. Everyone is angry ALL THE TIME. Politics: everyone is angry. Social media: everyone is angry. Movies and twitter: everyone is angry. Some people hated Episode 8 so much that they’re actually trying to raise money to remake it. It’s wild. Everybody is angry.

The Scriptures tell us to be gentle and kind to unbelievers. Unbelievably so. And some people say, but aren’t we at war with sin and evil? Yes, absolutely. We’re at war with sin, but we’re not at war with sinners. We are at war with the spiritual forces of sin, we are not at war with those who are victims of sin. We are at war with the Devil, not with his prey.

Historically, Christian’s haven’t always done a good job at this. One example that you all are seeing right now is with the LGBTQ movement.

GA example…

Of all the things Christians should be known for, it should be compassion and grace. That doesn’t mean acceptance of other peoples views or way of life when they disagree with the Bible. But it does mean they should feel as if we respect them and yes - even love them well.

Rosaria Butterfield is a Christian author, some of you may know her story. She formerly lived her life as a lesbian woman in a committed lesbian relationship. She became a Christian, and knew that she had to leave her life of sin as a lesbian behind her. God is now using her powerfully to help the church see ways that we can love people who are outside the church.

When you listen to her story, of course she will talk about how she heard the truth of God’s Word, that she needed to repent of her sin, and trust and follow Jesus Christ. But what you will also hear is how much she was loved by the pastor and members of the church she was visiting. Unbelievable love, bringing her into their home, having meals with her all the time, taking care of her. She was drawn to the faith not only by the words of the Scriptures but the Christian community acting toward her in faith and in love.

One of the things she says now that I think is very helpful is she says, when talking with others, especially those outside the Christian faith, our relationship should be stronger than our words. So, for example, if you want to share with someone that you believe their lifestyle is sin, then your relationship better be strong enough to prove to them beyond a shadow of a doubt that you will continue to love them and be their friend, even after you share those words with them.

I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with Mr. Rogers. There was a documentary that came out recently about him that was excellent. You may not know this but Mr. Rogers was actually an ordained Presbyterian minister, and his life and care for others reflected his conviction that Christians really ought to love all their neighbors well, regardless of race, lifestyle or belief.

One of the more popular episodes of the show was about shame and regret. At one point the puppet Daniel Tiger was telling Lady Aberlin that he felt like he was a mistake. He felt a deep sense of shame about himself, so he felt like a mistake and a fake. The two of them start singing a duet together, and as Daniel Tiger is singing about how he feels like such a mistake, Lady Aberlin is responding back to him, “You’re not a fake, You’re no mistake, You are my friend.”

The world we live in is filled with people who do not know the love of Christ. So many people – especially those in the LGBT community – struggle much like Daniel Tiger did. They often wonder, “Am I a mistake? Am I a fake?” In this world we live in, perhaps one of the most counter cultural things a Christian could do is befriend people who are not like us, and then unashamedly tell them:

There is nothing you must do to earn my love. You have inherent value and dignity, and because of that I’m going to treat you with fairness and kindness even when we disagree. It doesn’t matter what you do – you can never lose your worth in my eyes. You’re not a mistake to me, far from it – you’re my friend, and I treasure you. I would do anything for you, even if it cost me everything.

All of that sounds a lot like Jesus, doesn’t it? Why is it that we should be gracious toward others, making the best use of our time to care for others, to speak compassionately and mercifully to others?

Because isn’t that how Jesus speaks of us? Doesn’t the Bible say that he is our high priest who died for our sins and yet now lives to make intercession for us before the Throne? If that is true, then that means, although we had an incredible debt of sin against God, Jesus loves us more than we could ever dare imagine. He now lives to speak well of us before the throne of God.

If that truth has sunk down deep in our bones, then we will become people who are radically loving and compassionate toward people – even those who are not like us – even those who live lifestyles we may disagree with.

Jesus said in :

John 15:15–16 ESV

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

If God has so incredibly befriended us, will we then extend that friendship to others?

I want to give you some time now to quietly think about one person, one person right now who does not know Jesus but who you want to see come to love him. Take some time to pray for them, and ask God how you might become his servant in reaching this person. I’ll give you a minute or two, then I’ll close us in prayer.