Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books (mostly)

When Church Motives Go Awry

When Church Motives Go Awry

It’s funny, I heard this exact same issue with church motives, within the last meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.

See, there were a few controversial issues up for a vote.

Rumor was that a frequent refrain in the halls and side conversation was: “the world is watching us.”

Right? I mean, good grief.

In these matters, C.S. Lewis has it completely correct.

The church should not care at all what the world is doing. The church should care that “God is watching.”

The most insane part of this is that it has happened again and again through the generations on every topic under the sun.

Nations use the influence of the church to further their own motives…

The church uses the voice of the nations to water down the gospel (trying to be more tenable)…

And most people use whichever one suits their interests best at the time…

Ooof.

The problem with most things is that people are involved, honestly.

A rather different tone than that embodied in “Prosper, O Lord, our righteous cause,” in that the petitioner is in as much need of divine grace as any enemy whose cause might be less “righteous.” Lewis concluded this section of his letter by saying flatly, “I see no hope for the Church of England if it allows itself to become just an echo for the press”—or the government. The Church must bear witness to the Christian Gospel in complete independence of any patriotic imperatives. 

-Alan Jacobs, The Year Of Our Lord 1943 (Amazon)

When Christian Intellectuals Stopped Having A Say

When Christian Intellectuals Stopped Having A Say

It wasn’t so long ago, not really, that Christian intellectuals had a wide influence.

Not a wide influence among the church – a wide voice in Western culture at large.

People looked to them for guidance, and they felt an obligation, a duty, to give it.

Can you imagine this today?

Imagine the likes of Tim Willard, John Piper, Bob Goff, and Andy Stanley having real influence over politicians, journalists, celebrities, and voters-at-large.

Maybe the wide popularity of Billy Graham was the last glimmer of this?

The issue – or at least the issue in 1943 – was that Christian intellectuals saw Judeo-Christian morals as an axiom of an ethical nation.

At least if that nation was going to flourish long-term.

Prosperity and education would eventually point us toward other gods though…

What kind of world would be left to us when the Axis powers had suffered that “inevitable disaster”? There would be much remaking and reshaping to do: who would do it, and what principles would govern them? Such thoughts were on the minds of many, and some of the more ambitious and provocative ideas emerged from a small group of Christian intellectuals. This was a time—it seems so long ago now, a very different age, and one that is unlikely to return—when prominent Christian thinkers in the West believed that they had a responsibility to set a direction not just for churches but for the whole of society. And, stranger still, in that time, many of their fellow citizens were willing to grant them that authority—or at least to listen when they asserted it.

-Alan Jacobs, The Year Of Our Lord 1943 (Amazon)

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