A Different Kind of Culture War

I read a quote this week that really made me think.  Allow me to share the quote, as well as a few thoughts I had after reading it.  It is from Jud Wilhite, a pastor in Las Vegas.  He was responding to a study that found most people outside of the church find the church hypocritical.  He says:

“The perception of hypocrisy also emerges when we start fighting the “culture war” – meaning we attack people’s behavioral patterns rather than love them as people.  Or we lobby to legislate morality.  In Las Vegas, where I live, the culture war is over.  We lost.  Let me repeat: WE LOST.  Now our calling is to love and accept people one-on-one, caring for them where they are.  Our role is subversive as we carry the light and love of Jesus into the casinos, clubs, and streets of our city.  We’re trying to flip the perception of hypocrisy by being honest and straightforward about our faults and our hope for transformation in Jesus.  And we’re joining our community in a different kind of culture war – one that attacks poverty, crime, addiction, and pain.  We’re active in helping the homeless, we’ve declared war on child hunger in the Vegas valley, and we are showing our faith by our actions, even in imperfectly.”

As people who follow Jesus, we know that there is a lot of pain, suffering, depression, and other things that affect our neighborhoods, communities, and cities.  Yet so often we go after the symptoms of these things, declaring a “culture war” on those things that we find offensive.  We do what we can to keep less of these “sinful things” from happening in our society, be it through voting, protesting, or avoiding people and places that contribute those things.  In doing this, however good our intentions are, I am afraid that we too easily miss the point.

Let’s imagine that we manage to change our society, and cut the sin in half, what have we done?  We have only made people act as we think they should, and have done nothing inside of them, which is where true transformation takes place.  I believe something that Jesus said is quite relevant here.  He said, “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?” (Matthew 16:26).  What good is it if we have change the behavior of the whole world yet not touched it’s soul?

We, as the Body of Christ, must be in the “business” of seeing beyond the actions and outward lifestyles of those around us.  We must see people in a deeper and more complex way than that.  These are people who are created in the image of God who are deeply loved by God.  Therefore, we have not choice but to treat them that way.  And this is why we must not fight the symptoms within our society, but the root causes of all that we see as “sinful.”  And you know what, that is going to be hard.  To find out what those are, we are going to have to be around people, and the more we are around people, the more we will realize that people are much less black and white than issues are.  But I truly believe that the only way to touch our society with the love of Jesus is through relationships with the individuals that make up that society, and the communities that those people make up.  We must be about people, not politics.  I know that phrase has become cliché, but I don’t care, because it is true.

Read the quote above one more time.  This church is not one where the Gospel is simply a message one hears on Sunday morning, but a church where the Gospel in lived out in more ways than you can count, in all aspects of their community.  Serving their community is not a nice side note to the Gospel, it is vital to it.  Heck, I want to be a part of a church like that.  Do you?