Christian Cultural Engagement

Here are a couple of alternatives to evaluate, when considering the degree to which Christians should be engaged with the world culture:

1) Do we merge with the world (as Christians), considering our surrounding world culture to be our own, and bring Christianizing influences to bear within it? In other words, is our degree of separation from the world reduced to the ethical, doctrinal (and individual) minimum, consistent with personal purity? Do we become part of the world mix, hopefully with power to change the mix? Or,

2) Do we create a distinct counter-culture, in, but not of, the surrounding culture, which, to be sure, brings Christianizing influences to bear within that surrounding culture, but yet truly bears a unique corporate testimony intentionally separate from the world?

It seems to me that these two contrasting approaches to engagement with the world culture are visibly and actively present in different Reformed "schools of thought" which speak to us today.  As a result there is confusion among us, brought about by our lack of clear discernment of the options.  As a consequence we Reformed folk find ourselves unwittingly led hither and yon with different visions of what our engagement with the world should be.

There are famous books on this subject, such as Richard Niebuhr's Christ and Culture, but I do not see that these kinds of writings have brought about resolution of the issues among the Reformed.

We need to re-think these things for ourselves in the light of Scripture.  We need to ask, "What is the 'look and feel' of the true eschatology of the Scripture, as its interpretation is controlled by the teaching of the New Testament."  We need to ask, "How is the Kingdom coming now."

As an amillennialist coming to terms with postmillennialism, I have to remind folks that the First Christendom was brought into being by God through amillennialists who had their eyes focused on Resurrection, Judgment Day and the Eternal State.  How can we expect to be used by God to "bring in the Kingdom" by focusing on our prospects here and now?  There is a law of unintended consequences here -- big time. 

We need to understand the real significance of the teaching of the Epistle to the Romans, Chapters 6-8, and especially the significance of that phrase in Rom 7:6, which states "having [already] died [in Christ] ... ."  It is only when our feet, and future prospects, are planted firmly in Heaven that we can reach down and bring some Heaven into this world.  It is only as a people whose eyes are focused on resurrection that we may manifest the first-fruits of the Resurrection now.