I’ve been thinking about Christian moral discussions in the public sphere. My Facebook page is filled with Christian opinions about this or that hot topic in the news. I believe in engaging the culture on moral issues to an extent, but becoming consumed with that causes us to take our eye off the ball. Fundamentally, we are calling people to allegiance to the God of the universe. We are not primarily calling people to a better moral system. That the crucified and risen Jesus is Lord is the core of the gospel message. It follows from there that whatever he says about morality goes since he’s the boss. If you follow him you follow his moral positions. Now it turns out that his moral positions are better, but that is secondary.
The church has given secular humanity the high ground on morality and found herself having to show why God isn’t so bad after all. The unstated assumption seems to be that present day secular culture is mostly right. Our job, then, is to show that God actually thought that all along. It goes without saying that if you are wiser than your god, he or she isn’t a very good god. It seems to me that if we immersed ourselves in the Biblical worldview much of our cultural sin and bias would fall away, without have to get permission for our views from the Huffington Post. Outside checks are helpful as we all have blind spots, but I worry that the progressive church too often picks her battles based on what CNN says is important. Imagine Paul the Apostle writing his epistles based on Caesar’s opinions about right and wrong. Inconceivable!