It is common today to hear voices claiming Christianity is an outdated way of thinking, that it is, intellectually, a juvenile view of reality. Of course, this objection is not new; what is new is the intensity of the rejection as naturalism continues to conquer the intellectual landscape of the West. Christians, however, should not be surprised by this development. In fact, we should expect it. When Jesus was on this earth, He announced it would be this way (Jn 15:18-21). As the spirit of the world becomes more and more naturalistic in its view of reality, the idea of God as an implausible proposition increases proportionately. Many Christians, especially in the evangelical community (the theological tribe to which I belong), as they witness their social marginalization, are desperately trying to reverse this trend. What is clear is that Christianity no longer enjoys the position of presumption in the West. Of course, there are those who naïvely believe studies that suggest a high percentage of citizens in the United States still believe in God. While that may be how surveys are answered, if the truth be known it is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob or the God of John Calvin that is in view. However, Christians who are realistic in their assessment of the situation are trying to re-establish their place in society. Unfortunately, the present strategy of many evangelicals is to re-invent the church, making it appear more relevant to the world with its naturalistic conclusions. This re-imaging began by trying to look like the world in outward appearance and sound like the world in speech and music. Of course, the world sees right through the new plastic image for what it is---superficial, reactionary, and vacuous.

To be clear, it is not the desire to reach the lost that is troublesome, it is being willfully deaf to the voice of historic Christianity. What is revealed is a dreadful lack of dependence on God the Holy Spirit to live the new life in Christ. It is hard to stress the point with the force necessary to show the importance of this.

Francis A. Schaeffer once asked Edith a curious question on one of their mountain walks. He asked: what would the church look like in the morning if overnight God removed His Holy Spirit? Their conclusion was that it would not look much different from the day before. In his book No Final Conflict, Schaeffer lamented that in the latter half of the 20th century many evangelicals were beginning to “ape the world’s wisdom” (Vol 3, 47). This is seen today in the hosts of worldly marketing tools used by the church to attract new members and keep old ones. The results are an unintentional converting of the sacred into the common as leaders fill the church service with noise, flashing flat screens, and slick slogans.

Such choices are not the cause of the declining dependence on the Spirit of God to do the work of God; they are the consequences of ignoring the Spirit. They are a sign of something lost in the spiritual life of the local church body. The justification for this re-imaging is to either lure young people into the church or keep them in the church while trying to convince the world this means evangelicals “really understand” the culture. Of course, this is anything but the case. Aside from this pragmatic madness, a number of evangelicals naively accept, in full or in part, standpoint epistemology as the new hermeneutic as they pretend to be social activists to the glory of God. I say pretending because while intentions may be good, the sum of what is being done is merely repeating the mantras of a few social discontents who intentionally deny or contradict the facts of history.

Reviewing early church history reveals that it was Truth-telling that brought Christians into conflict with its surrounding culture, but on the other hand, it was Truth telling that resulted in hundreds coming to Christ. In those days, the Christian church was not looking to be seen as culturally relevant, but rather as being faithful to the Truth they preached that challenged what the world believed. From the beginning, Christians have been commanded to be Truth-tellers in all of life which most often put them at odds with the world. In contrast, many evangelicals today are tempted to abandon the old paths, merely because they are old, and they believe the world when it trashes what is old---the Enlightenment lie that new is always best. In order to find out what is “new” or “cool” evangelicals began asking themselves questions about how they could re-invent or re-package themselves. Unfortunately, many are asking the wrong questions when attempting to understand their place and responsibility in their cultural context.

Nothing is so subversive even to the best of intentions as asking the wrong questions. It is precisely asking the wrong questions that will prove disastrous to the best of initial intentions. The assumption that the world will be attracted to the Christian message when they see that Christians care about the same things as it does, is not only fallacious but contrary to the history and teaching of the Church. Historically whenever the Church moved to make friends with the world by looking like the world, the result has been catastrophic theologically and evangelistically. The fact is, the Christian message does not make a lot of friends, but of course, that is not the purpose for which Christ has left His Church in the world. The fact is the world expects us to be different and Christ has called us to a different way of living. The world does not need the church to “ape its wisdom” to be relevant.

As Christians, we must understand this and believe it is the power of the Spirit of God and the Gospel that draws men and women to Christ. In truth, it is this that makes the Christian message attractive to humanity’s lostness. It is what gives humanity an alternative to its own failing worldview. Plainly put, Christians are in the world but are not to be of the world. This is our calling by Christ our Lord.