CHAPTER 3
Biblical Christian or Cultural Christian?
The Problem
- Many men sense that something isn't quite right about their lives,
but they can't put their finger on the answer.
- Forty years of consumerism and media influence has caused a shift
in values: we live in a culture dominated by the secular view.
Two Impoverished Views
Francis Schaeffer in How Shall We Then Live? suggests that the
majority of people today have adopted two impoverished values:
- Personal peace. To want to be left alone, not to be troubled by
the troubles of other people, to live one's life with minimal
possibilities of being personally disturbed.
- Affluence. An overwhelming and ever-increasing prosperity -- a
life made up of things, a success judged by an ever-higher level of
material abundance.
A Third Impoverished Value
If religion is such a big part of our lives, why hasn't it made more of
an impact on our society? Since the mid-seventies a third impoverished
value has evolved: cultural Christianity.
- Cultural Christianity means to pursue the god we want instead of
the God who is. It is the tendency to be shallow in our understanding
of God.
- Cultural Christianity is Christianity made impotent. It is
Christianity with little or no impact on the values and beliefs of our
society.
Two Kinds of Christians
Because of the current ambiguity surrounding the term Christian,
thinking in terms of Biblical Christian or Cultural Christian is a
useful way to explain the wide differences in what professing Christians
think, say, and do.
- Biblical Christians. Those who seek to live by understanding and
applying Biblical principles.
- Cultural Christians.
- Defeated. Those whose association with Christianity is a matter
of conscience, but who have been drawn into the secular mold.
- Counterfeit. Those whose association with Christianity is a
matter of convenience rather than a matter of conscience.
Lessons From Elementary School
The secular culture today is so polluted, that to be a cultural
Christian today means that your life view and lifestyle are contaminated
by failed, impoverished values.
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