The Vatican rejects the MAGA movement

 

 

 How Christians should pity the nations! Though guilty and culpable, they are also miserable and helpless. We should hate their sins and oppose their acts of injustice, but let us also be like Jesus, who “was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd” (Matt. 9:36). Let us who are saved by grace remember that we were once just as the lost are now: dead in sin, driven along by satanic lies and selfish ambition, damned under God’s wrath, and distant from the Savior and any hope of salvation (Eph. 2:1–3, 12). 

 Let us pour out our fervent prayers for God to send them gospel preachers and open their eyes (Matt. 9:37–38; Acts 26:16–18). And, as much as God providentially allows us according to our gifts and callings, let us speak the truth in love to them, for God’s Word is God’s means of giving life to the dead. (Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology: Man and Christ, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 413–414.)

  Christians need to abandon talk about “redeeming the culture,” “advancing the kingdom,” and “changing the world.” Such talk carries too much weight, implying conquest and domination. If there is a possibility for human flourishing in our world, it does not begin when we win the culture wars but when God’s word of love becomes flesh in us, reaching every sphere of social life. 

 When faithful presence existed in church history, it manifested itself in the creation of hospitals and the flourishing of art, the best scholarship, the most profound and world-changing kind of service and care—again, not only for the household of faith but for everyone. Faithful presence isn’t new; it’s just something we need to recover.(James Davison Hunter, “Review of To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World by Christopher Benson,” Christianity Today (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today International, 2010), 36.) 

 This side of eternity there will be no “revolution” that can change the human condition. The world will remain full of hope and sin, success and failure. We will win a few political debates and lose a few.

 Perhaps one day we’ll lose many, and faithful people will be dragged to their deaths, as they are now around the world.

 With time, evangelicals will grow wiser about the political arena just as parents do—through lived, practical experience. That experience will deliver a dose of reality about what politics can and cannot accomplish. Political action will not deliver utopia, conquer sin, or change human nature. But it can make a difference between rampant crime and safe neighborhoods, between hungry families and economic security, between victory and defeat in war.

 And only those who have never been mugged, never been hungry, or never been at war will think these differences trivial. Paul Marshall, “The Problem: In Their Zeal for Social Change, Some Evangelical Activists Stand on Shaky Biblical Ground,” Christianity Today (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today International, 2006), 94.)

 How is it that American public life is so profoundly secular when 85 percent of the population professes to be Christian? If a culture were simply the sum total of beliefs, values, and ideas that ordinary individuals hold, then the United States would be a far more religious society. Looking at our entertainment, politics, economics, media, and education, we are forced to conclude that the cultural influence of Christians is negligible.

 By contrast, Jews, who compose 3 percent of the population, exert significant cultural influence disproportionate to their numbers, notably in literature, art, science, medicine, and technology.(James Davison Hunter, “Review of To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World by Christopher Benson,” Christianity Today (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today International, 2010), 34,36.)

 Recent polls show that many self-described evangelicals march in moral lockstep with mainstream American culture in practices of divorce, spousal abuse, extramarital sex, pornography consumption, materialism, and racism, just to name a few.

 While we tip our cap to the importance of holiness, many in our culture don’t view us as morally different in any meaningful way—except to see us as hypocrites. 

 To be sure, biblical terms translated “holy” or “holiness” (qadosh, hagios) carry a strong secondary connotation of moral purity. But moral purity is not, first and foremost, what Scripture is talking about. Instead, the most basic meaning of the words is to be “set apart” or “dedicated” to God—to belong to God. “I will be your God, and you will be my people,” says Yahweh (Lev. 26:12; Heb. 8:10). 

Thus, prior to any consideration of morality, biblical holiness describes a unique relationship that God has established and desires with his people. 

This relationship has moral ramifications, but it precedes moral behavior.

  Before we are ever called to be good, we are called to be holy. Unless we rightly understand and affirm the primacy of this relationship, we fall into the inevitable trap of reducing holiness to mere morality.(Joel Scandrett, “Holy to the Core: We’re Tempted by Moralism Because We’ve Forgotten What God Wants at the Center,” Christianity Today (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today International, 2007), 39.) 

 For many American evangelicals, “holiness” conjures up musty images of revival meetings, gospel trios, and old-time religion—along with stern prohibitions against drinking, dancing, and playing cards. And many are happy to leave these notions of holiness in the past. Yet even in our era of techno-savvy megachurches and postmodern emerging churches, holiness (when it is discussed at all) is often associated with moral behavior such as sexual purity, financial honesty, and commitment to private prayer.

 While we’ve cast off old, legalistic notions of holiness, we’ve merely replaced them with private, moralistic notions. 

We act as if holiness were either outdated or something that characterizes only a small (if important) part of our lives. This is partly due to our quest for cultural relevance, which is defended in the name of winning others to Christ. If we talk about holiness with unbelievers, won’t that present just another hurdle for them to overcome on their way to Christ? For this and other reasons, we are rapidly forsaking our historic commitment to holiness.(Joel Scandrett, “Holy to the Core: We’re Tempted by Moralism Because We’ve Forgotten What God Wants at the Center,” Christianity Today (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today International, 2007), 39.)