It's a constant refrain I hear - we should be making an impact on the world around us. We need to be salt and light, and salt is a preservative and thus we try to 'conserve' the good things in culture. This is despite the fact that in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ specifically refers to its savour, flavour, or seasoning aspect, not it's preservative qualities. We are in the world to be a light, to provide an alternative, to be always there, always reminding the world of the oracles of God - in other words the Church is a prophetic witness.
The
New Testament doesn't focus on impacting culture - Paul doesn't even
seem inclined to take on the issue of slavery. He shames corrupt
judges (Acts 16) but then doesn't press the matter - an abdication of
a citizen's duty some might say. Paul talks about leading a quiet
life, studying to be quiet, working with our hands - this is not some
bourgeois sentiment, but rather humility and a focus on the pilgrim
ethos that defines New Testament ethics. We associate with the lowly.
The assumption is that we'll be persecuted, downtrodden, second-class
citizens or losers as many Evangelicals are wont to sneer. This is
because they've not even remotely grasped the nature of New Testament
teaching regarding the Kingdom and how this groaning world is passing
away.
We're pilgrims here, strangers, exiles - and most
important, martyrs. Some of us may die but all of us (if faithful)
will bear witness and deal with the struggles that will beset us if
we lead the faithful lives we're called to. We are called to be
martyrs. That's not something that Rick Warren or Joel Osteen can
market or package in a way to make it attractive. It's foolishness to
the world and offensive - even shameful in the eyes of those who
esteem security and respect (the values of the middle class), those
who live to make a name for themselves. We don't embrace the gospel
of Christ in order to get something or be winners. We embrace it
because of the gift of faith, and because in a world of lies and
death we're looking for truth and we're willing to give up all to
find it and turn away (with contempt) from all that the world would
offer us.
And that's what it comes down to. Like Paul in 1 Corinthians 5, I'm not worried about those who are 'outside' - the fornicators, covetous, extortioners, and idolaters. The lost are lost, let the dead bury their dead (Luke 9.60).
The state does what the state does. It will always be unjust and inevitable wax bestial, but does what needs to be done in order to providentially create the conditions in which the longsuffering of God (2 Peter 3.9) can be demonstrated in the mission of the Church, the preaching of the gospel and (here's the important part that's usually missed) bearing witness to the world and to the principalities and powers. There's a cosmic/celestial element to what we're doing (Colossians 2.14ff, Ephesians 1.20-21, 6.10ff, Hebrews 2.5-8, 1 Peter 3.22ff) . We set up shop (so to speak) in the midst of the nations that belong to the gods (elohim) of the nations, the mighty ones, the thrones, etc. We live in their territories but we don't worship them. Our presence proclaims their doom as Christ has already proclaimed and yet delayed. We proclaim every Sunday with the Eucharist that Christ is coming to judge them - He's already present in His Body and through the Spirit. His Kingdom is established. We don't seek to tear down their thrones, though apparently there were false teachers promoting this - a point touched on by Peter, Jude, and in some other respect by Paul in Colossians where there is talk of angel worship. The angels or elohim in question are these principalities, these throne-rulers in the heavens who rule the nations.
And what do we see with those who seek to make an impact? They compromise left and right. They compromise Christian ethics because the end justifies the means. They end up giving occasion for the enemy to blaspheme. They end up making merchandise of God's people. They set aside Christ's teaching because to be someone in this world and to have access, to be taken seriously, you need to acquire status. You need money and power and those are the very things Christ preaches against throughout the gospels. In fact he says very plainly that you cannot serve God and mammon. There's no qualification to this. Once mammonism is embraced, the rest of the ethics in the Sermon on the Mount regarding power and violence are quickly dispensed with.
And make no mistake mammon is related power. Once you acquire wealth, you worry about protecting it. You need a safe, you need an alarm, you need a gun, you need cameras, you need people with guns you can call, you need a police force, you need laws, you need laws targeting the kind of people you want to keep away from your wealth and where you store it, and the business in which it's made. You need lawyers, courts, judges. You need banks, insurance policies and then more lawyers and courts. You need roads and infrastructure to move your wealth, trade your wealth, and then you need more police to guard the roads and their larger infrastructure. You need armies to protect all of these things and to deter and fight enemies who might take it or block your access to the things you need to get abroad in order to keep growing your wealth. You need borders and now you need more police to guard those borders, armies to cross those borders and pursue your interests in the borders of others. And you'll probably need banks and more lawyers there as well. You'll also need more laws and police to silence those who might expose what's happening and reveal what you're doing - and more insurance and more lawyers to cover your bases. And while you're at it, you'll need media, academics, think-tanks, and other outlets to produce the material to argue your cause and to counter your political opponents who are engaged in the same game.
But then the world is awfully complicated and always changing. You can't keep up and cover all the bases at once, and so you form alliances with other people with money, with people that have the guns, people that make the guns, planes, missiles, and the like, with the banks that finance these things, with the politicians and leaders of other countries who will help you protect what is yours - what you think you have lawfully earned. By then so much of the wealth is no longer about working and producing, but simply wealth begetting wealth, money multiplying by the alchemy of usury, the sleight-of-hand tricks of finance men, and the machinations of the market that bend the truth, push claims to the limit, employ a crushing efficiency, and seeks to extract every last ounce of profit from resources - natural, technological, and human.
In order to protect that wealth, lands are wasted, societies are destroyed, and people are killed. Alliances are sought with Egypt to fight against Babylon, with Rome to block Persia, with one company to fight another. Through a relentless cycle, every value is compromised, every ethic is violated. The only goal is to win.
But it's all for Christ, right? This is what He's called his people to do?
It's a cliche statement - it's not how you win or lose but how you play the game.
Paul speaks in a similar way when he writes to Timothy: And also if anyone competes in athletics, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.
There are no shortcuts. The race must be run rightly. And thus winning (so to speak) is not merely crossing the finish line or crossing it first, but to cross it rightly. And this isn't a game - it's a case of salvation versus perdition. This isn't just about 'rewards' but life and death.
But Paul prefaces this statement with another analogy, this time a military one.
You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. (2 Timothy 2.3-4)
Paul is not encouraging Christians to compete in athletics nor ratifying the soldier's profession. This is to completely miss the point. He's using them as illustrations to explain and unfold what he's trying to say. We are in a race and in a war but it's spiritual, not like the temporal and ultimately meaningless contests of the world.
And the point is this - He's warning Timothy to not lose his way, to be diligent, to uphold the truth, oppose the error, and avoid the snares of the devil, helping others to do the same. You can so badly want to do good that you lose sight of what you're doing, you think winning is everything, even the only thing, when in fact all too often winning looks like losing in the eyes of the world. Even as we are slaughtered like sheep and reckoned as 'losers' (even by large sections of the Church that have lost their way) we are more than conquerors. The gospel message is foolishness to the world and even much of the Church finds the New Testament calling to be foolish, insane, and clearly, it's nothing they're interested in entertaining.
He warns Timothy of entanglements with the affairs of this life - the very thing the false teachers of our day are furiously trying to promote. Interestingly Peter uses the same term in 2 Peter 2 - the false prophets who want to take the nations, promising liberty, and who in the process lose their way and become entangled again with the world - the dog to vomit passage. The imagery in the Greek term is closely related to the term for braided or woven hair - entanglement. Peter's final words are cutting - it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than to turn from the holy commandment.
When Paul reminds the Church that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but spiritual, the advocates of Christian 'impact' and dominion believe they are following the apostle's exhortation by engaging in this sweeping cultural war. They're trying to win 'hearts and minds' they argue and are not advocating for war or violence. And on this point they are deceived. The Christian leaders and intellectuals who advocate these ideas operate in a world of papers, conferences, podcasts, pulpits, and other media - sometimes making appearances on secular news outlets. But the larger project for which they advocate is one of pure carnality. They look to the power of the state to promote and enforce their agenda and make no mistake, the state is violence, the state is the sword. The courts are a form of that sword. Judgments and sentences are issued and if they're not obeyed, it leads to further decrees, and ultimately the men with badges and guns will show up to enforce the will of the court. If you refuse to comply, they will forcibly chain you and put you in a cage. If the resistance is more determined, they will shoot and kill you. The judgments of courts, the laws passed by the state, the rolling lights and siren on the police car pulling you over - they all contain a threat of violence. This is the nature of government.
It doesn't usually reach that point because people want to avoid escalation and ironically many in these enforcement agencies do not seem to make the connection that ultimately they are agents of violence - legitimized by the status of being connected to the state. This is why it's so problematic when other actors (vigilantes, militias, and the like) take this power unto themselves. It casts the power of the state into doubt and is subversive. This is why so many institutional thinkers and those rooted in historical understandings of statecraft and jurisprudence frown on these groups and on politicians who seek to make use of them.
And this is also why it's problematic for individual Christians to be part of these institutions which are marked by an increasing and near ubiquitous presence in our complex and population-dense modern society. Some would go further and question the ethics of even working alongside such institutions let alone donning the badges, guns, and/or being connected to these institutions and collecting a pay-check from them, or from the industries which support them and their violence. They're legitimate in terms of providence (the powers that be are ordained by God) but that very providential vengeance the state represents is something we as Christians are called to eschew - again, I appeal to the false chapter division between Romans 12 and 13 which destroys the flow of Paul's argument. We can only put on a policeman's badge or a soldier's uniform by setting aside our Christian faith on Monday morning and living by a different ethic while on the clock. It's Sunday-only Christianity they rely on to justify their cultural projects and would-be conquests.
The bottom line is this - the actors who would transform society and seek to make it 'Christian' (which is only possible by redefining the term in extra-Biblical and extra-Covenantal terms) rely on the power of the state and its institutions which are inherently about the threat of violence. There is nothing more carnal even if there are layers of insulation and plausible deniability before we reach the actual utilization of the sword. We haven't even touched on those who advocate militarism both at home against domestic rivals and enemies and in opposition to perceived (and often imagined) external threats - which are usually framed from the standpoint of both bias and obfuscation of the American (or Western) role in the tensions and disputes. And finally, we will only mention (due to the expansive nature of this question) the inherent violence at work in the economic policies and drive of Wall Street and modern capitalist investors who in the thirst for new markets and in the quest for resources intrude into the market and state dynamics of other nations, lobbying for laws (which are in turn enforced with the threat of violence) and contracts which in turn undercut local economies, exploit workers, push people out of their homes and wreak havoc on established and historical cultures. And when it doesn't go their way - the armies roll in. This is the way of the world, some would argue. Such dynamism characterizes history. It's true enough, but this doesn't cancel out the ethical implications. Like Paul, we're not trying to change the world. It's one thing to stand on the sideline, be truth-tellers, and expose the nature of the Babylon-order that characterizes this world - like the prophets of old. It's something else entirely when we join hands with these actors, appropriate their causes, profit from their endeavours, and after lining our pockets, we provide a theological and ethical justification for it all in the name of being impactful or expanding the Kingdom of God. The Balaam-inspired Christians who go down this road are not only deceived, they are what Paul calls deceived deceivers, and lead many astray and are themselves in danger of losing their way. They are unwitting servants of the enemy.
I recently read one pastor (Michael Clary) who leads a New Calvinist-style congregation that follows all the typical Evangelical patterns of ecclesiology and liturgy - the guitars, the lights, the drum-kit. He blasts the 'loser mentality' even while his reading of Scripture and understanding of history and theology is so paltry that the best he can do is copy pop-culture norms and political cues framed for him by Right-wing media. And what Scripture does he have to justify his argument for power? He offers Acts 1.8 as a support for the idea that Christians should wield power - as if the promise of power connected to Pentecost was about conquering culture and establishing political Christianity. If he bothered to read the passage a little closer and in its context he would discover that his expectation is exactly that of the disciples who were still thinking in Judaized terms about the Kingdom. They thought Christ was going to conquer Rome and set up an earthly empire in this age of the world. The whole point was to dissuade their misguided thinking - something made abundantly clear in Peter's Pentecost sermon wherein he declares the Kingdom, that Christ is the enthroned Davidic King and that the Kingdom is spiritual and eschatological in nature. There's no suggestion of conquest or conflict with worldly powers. The response was not power but humility, self-denial and self-sacrifice, living for others and for the brethren. This in keeping with Christ's explicit statement - My Kingdom is not of this world: if my Kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews - but now is my Kingdom not from hence (John 18.36).
Clary (a Mohler disciple and confederate of the Wilson sect), wants to inherit the Earth, meaning he wants to rule it. If he succeeded, he'd still be a loser because he doesn't understand New Testament teaching about the Church, the Kingdom and how it relates to the culture. It's evident in the way he misuses Scripture and his lame world-informed ecclesiology. Sadly the biggest losers of all are the people in his congregation that follow his teaching.
And what do they 'win' anyway? As I've long argued, the victory they find, the kingdom they build is not Zion, but pseudo-Zion. It ends up just being the Tower of Babel with a cross on top - the citadel of False Christianity, where the Bride-turned-Whore sits atop her dragon throne, the horned lamb speaking the dragon's words...
All these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me.
This is the end result of those who obsess with making an impact, who think godliness is gain. In the end they make merchandise of God's people, they are caught in traps of mammon. Godliness with contentment is great gain we're told by the apostle (1 Timothy 6). For so many this mere contentment means a retirement fund, an investment portfolio, properties, jewellery, automobiles, and the like. They can always compare themselves to someone else that has ten times more and justify their seeming frugality. The man who doesn't provide for his own has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel. And what is it to provide? For so many it's a 4000 square foot house with 6 bedrooms, 4 baths, a 3 stall garage, a stock portfolio, college savings account, insurance to cover everything, a financial advisor, and maybe even a lawyer on retainer. And for not a few, you better include an arsenal of guns and maybe a bunch of survival-prep gear and goods.
The desire to be rich is a snare leading to hurtful lusts that in turn lead to perdition. It's that serious. The quest for wealth and power is a sure road to perdition. This isn't just about having too much money - it's what money does to us, to our hearts, to our ethics, to our faith. And again, the more we have, the more we fall back down that slippery slope, that cycle of trying to protect what we have, resenting any threat or challenge, or anything that might allay the growth and security we seek.