A Cloistered Church is Catastrophic for a Culture

A Cloistered Church is Catastrophic for a Culture

"The sin of respectable people reveals itself in flight from responsibility." Eberhard Bethge (commenting on his good friend Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

When the church remains cloistered our culture faces catastrophe. The church has become adept at cloistering itself and moving carefully from one comfortable Bible study to another, and from one service to another. We gather as fishermen who carefully discuss the various and sundry elements of the fishing business, but we never actually get the smell of fish on our hands. We remain confident and smug in the illusion of our safety, content to let culture rot and get her just reward as we smile securely in our ultimate salvation. We privately worry that we are now post modern and post Christian. Perhaps this means that we should retreat even more since maybe Jesus is coming even sooner than we expected?

Meanwhile, our culture, our history, our heritage, our future is hurling itself at a breakneck pace into the abyss of spiritual apathy, moral irrelevance, self-absorption and eternal destruction. The value of tolerance has been raised as the highest banner to fly in this land, but its meaning has been changed so drastically that it is no longer a value. Where tolerance once stood for a respectable sympathy for another’s view of a matter even though it may be wrong or different than my own, it now means that there is no right or wrong and that everyone’s opinion carries equal weight and that everything is right in a man’s own eyes.

The church’s response has been to sit back and watch culture self-destruct. We have bought into the lie, as have the majority of the people of our land that the separation of church and state is a Constitutional principle. In fact, it is not! But even if it was, the church has a mission that cannot be set aside. It is true that we are citizens of heaven, but we are also citizens of this land serving as ambassadors.

As ambassadors we are given the almost incomprehensible privilege of sharing the good news that God so loved the world that He sent Jesus Christ the righteous one to die for our sins, rising again, eternally triumphant over all His enemies, so that there is now no condemnation for those who believe.

The church collectively and its individual members specifically are called to be salt in a corrupt world and light in a dark world. Of course, this cannot happen until and unless the church decides to engage culture—though not embrace it. Jesus said that the very gates of hell would not prevail against His church, which is a clear picture of a contending and not cloistered church. We are also called to go into all the world and make disciples. One cannot carry this out in the continued cloistered confines of one meeting after another. The ‘making’ happens when we intentionally determine to engage our culture and the people who live in it. D. A. Carson rightly observes that "Christians learn to do good in the city where they live, knowing full well that the prosperity of their city is both for the city’s good and for their good."

There must be a biblical balance between faithful evangelism and the teaching and absorption of the Bible, as well as active concern in ministries of compassion and justice. We cannot minimize our obligations to fulfill the Great Commission, nor marginalize our obligation to fulfill the Great Commandment and the carrying out of the message of the gospel. It is not an either one or the other decision, it is and/ both decision.

The great men who have gone before us have set the examples of how to do keep the proper balance and to present the gospel, while at the same time engaging culture by helping the poor, setting up nonprofit institutions for various social ends, being involved in local school districts, voting, writing letters to editors, presenting biblical views in legislative discussions, running for office, and much more. Men such as George Whitefield, John Wesley, D. L. Moody, William Wilberforce, and Abraham Kuyper were all fine examples of how to keep the right biblical balance of feeding and nurturing the flock, along with taking the gospel to a lost and hurting world through a clear presentation of the spoken Word and active offerings of physical help.

The early church did not seek influence through politics but power through prayer. As a result through the power of prayer they began to have a biblical influence upon culture. They actively began to engage the culture in times of great distress, and as a result the people both heard and saw the gospel and responded. We should be actively involved in all biblical means to influence our culture, but the influence does not stand as a substitute for prayer, but is rather informed and strengthened and given direction by prayer.

Charles Spurgeon said, "Stones are not broken, except by an earnest use of the hammer; and the stone-breaker must go down on his knees. Use the hammer of diligence, and let the knee of prayer be exercised—and there is not a stony doctrine in Scripture, which is useful for you to understand, which will not fly into shivers under the exercise of prayer and faith….Prayer is the lever which forces open the iron chest of sacred mystery, that we get the treasure hidden within…."

Informed prayer through the diligent and consistent meditation upon the Word of God is necessary to know how to engage our culture and the individuals who live within it. We have no excuse to not have our minds sharpened by the Word of God. We have no excuse to not have our hearts made tender by the Word of God. We have no excuse to not speak to others in mercy and truth about temporal and eternal matters. In other words, we have no excuse for soft minds, hard hearts, and apathetic spirits.

Peter said, "Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame." Think of the irony of the one who once denied Christ making the statement above.

We are to start our days by sharpening our minds to think clearly and be ready with a reasoned defense of our faith and biblical position on cultures issues. We are to start each day by asking God to tenderize our hearts so that we are sensitive to the hurts of others even as we engage them with sound and biblical arguments for our reasoning. We are to start each day by humbling ourselves under God’s mighty hand knowing full well that except for the grace of God we would have gone the way of our own lost culture. And yes, we are reminded that not all will respond and that many will ridicule and revile and rebuke us. We not should not run from this, but embrace it as a badge of honor for so they did the same to our Lord.

Let us gather together regularly as we are called to do for worship and edification and nurturing and fellowship. But then let us leave the meeting places to engage our culture with mercy and truth, lifting up the name of Christ, and raising the banner of His glory. Let us together look forward to the days in eternity where we will share war stories together and not stories of cloistered comfort and playing it safe. Our focus is not on winning the argument, but on saving the soul and offering our culture hope. If we do not engage our culture with the hope of the gospel then who? If we do not do so now then when?