Shall We Oppose The Secular Monopoly On Culture Or Remain Quietly In Our Churches?

The following statement was written in 1984:

“The church is safe from vicious persecution at the hands of the secularist, as educated people have finished with stake-burning circuses and torture racks.  No martyr’s blood is shed in the secular west.  So long as the church knows her place and remains quietly at peace on her modern reservation.  Let the babes pray and sing and read their Bibles, continuing steadfastly in their intellectual retardation; the church’s extinction will not come by sword or pillory, but by the quiet death of irrelevance.  But let the church step off the reservation, let her penetrate once more the culture of the day and the . . . face of secularism will change from a smile to a savage snarl.” (Classical Apologetics, p. 4, R. C. Sproul, John Gerstner, & Arthur Lindsley)

I know that this was not intended as a prophetic statement, but the ongoing secular progressive drive to push Christianity and Christians from the public arena of culture, conversation, intellectual debate, and politics is moving ahead with the savage determination stated above.  As more Christians stand against moral relativism and the attack on “absolute truth,” the secular progressives continue their fascist attacks through the media and best selling books on atheism.  Sproul, Gerstner, and Lindsley were right.  Secularism does not want the intrusion of Christianity into its cultural monopoly.

The secular progressives see Christianity as being intolerant.  Secularism defines tolerance as “no one is wrong and nothing is absolute,” except the secularist opinion that absolute truth does not exist.  When Christians say that some action is immoral, Christians are immediately portrayed as being intolerant.  The idea of absolute truth is a dangerous enemy to the politically-correct secularist who seeks power by legitimizing sin.

As Christians, we must do a better job of sharing the Gospel without compromising the Word of God.  We must teach our children and our neighbors the values of virtue and duty grounded in the image of God.  The church must do a better job of teaching the saints a Christian world-view that we are competent to articulate to the culture around us.  Christians must commit to a life of Biblical study so that we can say we have loved the Lord our God with all our minds and made disciples as He commanded.  Satan may roar like a lion over today’s secular kingdom, but his teeth are rotten like the abomination over which he rules.  “But you, O God, will cast them down into the pit of destruction; men of blood and treachery shall not live out half their days.  But I will trust in you.” (Psalm 55:23, ESV)