Winsomeness, Christianity, and Culture

Winsomeness, Christianity, and Today’s Culture
Developing Domestic Diplomacy

Watching and participating in this current election season has been challenging, frightening, and even disheartening all at the same time. While I’m tempted to write on the concerns I have regarding competing ideologies and their resultant applications in everyday culture, I am instead going to write about my concerns for the apparent mass rejection of Christian values.

Typically Christians hold dear three large categories of values: the sanctity of life; the sanctity and preservation of marriage; and, the sovereignty of God. However, regardless of how dearly these values are viewed by Christians, they appear to be viewed quite differently by the culture-at-large.

Why do I say this? Let me briefly explain. I survey the sweeping over-throw of the political party most representing these Christian values and being replaced by the party most representing the opposite view of these values. From local legislatures, to governor’s, to Congress, even to the White House, the party most representing Christian values is a quickly shrinking minority. Abortion is viewed as nothing more than a personal choice rather than a need to take responsibility for the life resulting from pervious personal choices. So-called Death with Dignity is now considered a right, if not an obligation, for the terminally ill; and what’s more, other states want to adopt it. Around the country state governments are beginning to call unions of same-sex couple’s marriage, even if the will of the people they serve has disallowed it. And God and Scripture are already removed from public schools but there are many other pressures to remove these from all facets of public life. In fact, there are threats to force Christian churches to renounce certain aspects of their creed merely to accommodate culture’s personal preferences or lose their tax statuses.

While I know the media and entertainment industries are biased and entice others to their biases, I don’t think they have that much power to sway an entire nation away from Christian values. So why, then, does it appear that the entire nation is swaying away from Christian values? I believe one word aptly conveys what I think the main reason is: Christians.

That’s right, I think we’re mainly the ones driving people not so much away from our values but from our approaches of conveying our values. Just listen to or read literature from a lot of Christian-based organizations, or read Christian blogs, or even listen in on conversing Christians as they consider these hot topics. The language, both verbal and non-verbal, is more often than not, hostile and confrontational. People of differing values are demonized when in fact, they, to, are made in the image of God just as we are.

While we loudly proclaim abortion as murder, why do we not proclaim as loudly that anger, which leads to murder, is punished equally as murder? (See Matthew 5:21-22.) And even though God’s Word is very clear about the sexual sin of homosexuality, His Word is also equally clear about several other sexual sins; in fact, Jesus even said lusting in our heart or leering at another person constitutes sexual sin. Then in considering the slow removal of God from all public life let’s ask ourselves how removed is He already from our private lives? Do we seek Him daily or just now and then? Could it be these are “silent sins” we commit ourselves?

I raise these issues to point out how we’re sometimes viewed, we loudly proclaim rebuke for more “public” sins but rarely proclaim the Deliverer and Lover of our souls Who can release us from all sin. We also rarely admit that we, to, are broken and guilty of sin, but through Jesus, we’ve been redeemed; but so can they if they just knew the Savior.

So stop for a moment and think back to your childhood. Remember those days of adolescent defiance against your parents or teachers? Remember when you were disciplined or scolded in a way that made you mad at them? How did you respond? I suspect you responded very similarly to the way mass culture is responding to us, rebellion. You were angry with them so you got back at them by denouncing everything they held dear. When we confront our culture with hostility and rebuke, why are we surprised they respond by rejecting not just us, but our message as well?

Now while still reminiscing over these not-so-pleasant memories, think about how you might have responded had you been approached differently, say with loving or winsome words of hope and encouragement rather than a hostile confrontation? Perhaps if you were approached in this manner and treated as a valuable and significant person you would have had more motivation to listen and respond differently. Why would we expect our culture to be any different than us? After all, culture is nothing more than a bunch of people like you and a bunch of people like me combined with a bunch of other people all trying to live our lives and provide for our families.

Believe it or not, we often offend people; even if we don’t intend to, we do anyway. I know this well because I have, in my attempts to convey Christ to the culture-at-large, done so in ways that offended people. I did not intend to offend anyone but even so, the result was a group of people taking offense at what I had said. In closely examining this situation I very well could have approached it differently. As it was, I sought forgiveness both from them and from myself, because I was devastated to think that rather than draw others to Christ, I had driven them away. I don’t know if my apologies were ever accepted, but the whole situation made me realize how I may be a contributor to the tide of cultural rejection of Christian values. Bottom line, the communication I chose was not winsome at all. It was a hard lesson learned and quite possibly at the cost of some relationships, but perhaps my learning could help start a desire toward winsome communication of our faith rather than caving into the temptation of ceasing to communicate our faith at all or to communicate it in a hostile manner.

Please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not speaking of people who are just plain offended by Christ and the Gospel of salvation, hard core atheists will be offended by anything pertaining to God no matter how well it’s proclaimed. I’m referring to how we “message” Christ, do we deliver the message of Jesus Christ and the Gospel of salvation in a winsome way? If we do and people are still offended, that’s different, we are only responsible for proclaiming Jesus Christ and the Gospel of salvation in a way people will hear, once they hear it, then they become responsible for how they respond to the message.

Think about it, what I’m really talking about is a mind-set of domestic diplomacy, winsomely proclaiming Jesus Christ to those around us. If more people were winsomely won to Christ and by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit began being transformed, many of our culture’s ills would diminish regardless of elections or government programs. Relationships would mend and people would honor one another rather than denigrate one another. Life would be treated as sacred and we would want to worship God rather than removing Him from every facet of life. In short, we could possibly spark a revival simply by choosing more winsome ways of communicating our faith. And just think, revival would bring healing and wholeness to broken lives and to a fractured country.