Culture wars

Sharon pointed me to this article from CT and I saw it referenced again by someone else, so here it is at the author's website: http://www.frederica.com/writings/loving-the-storm-drenched.html Here are some threads I pulled:

The culture appears to be an aggressive challenge to the
church, and Christians keep worrying over what to do about it...

The influence of the culture... is more like the weather. We can observe that, under current conditions, it’s cloudy with a chance of cynicism. Crudity is up, nudity is holding steady, and there is a 60 percent chance that any recent movie will include a shot of a man urinating. Large fluffy clouds of sentimental spirituality are increasing on the horizon, but we have yet to see whether they will blow toward or away from Christian truth. Stay tuned for further developments.

...God has not called us to change the weather. Our primary task as believers, and our best hope for lasting success, is to care for individuals caught up in the pounding storm.

...We are sent out into the storm like a St. Bernard with a keg around our neck, to comfort, reach, and rescue those who are thirsting, most of all, for Jesus Christ.

I applaud Frederica Mathewes-Green for not reducing the subject to simple blacks and whites, but instead she shows the shades of gray that both culture and church include. It is our challenge to not be consumed by culture, but to avoid being antagonistic. Otherwise how will our transformed lives be heard by those needing safe harbor from the storm? If we piously reject culture we make it more difficult to be taken seriously. I like what some churches and groups are doing to live out the gospel within a local cultural context. They use familiar cultural forms of media and technology and also draw on ancient traditions that speak of personal faith and relationship. More on that later. See what you think of the article.