ken wilson online

I wonder if we’ve had the emphasis on the wrong syllable on the pressing issue of authority.  Speaking big picture, long time frame here.  The church at it’s inception had one creed: Jesus is Lord.  Simple.  All authority in heaven and on earth given to him, Jesus. What rolls off our tongue like a tired chorus, was, on their lips, incendiary. Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not, and Apollos is not and Astarte is not and the moon and the sun and the stars are not….and the powers and principalities that hold sway in this world are not.  Every knee shall bow before the One not the many, not the several, not the few.
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Because we need to work together to solve problems that cannot be solved without our working together.  It’s a simple as that.  During the era of culture war (the 1980’s through the beginning of the new millenium), the basic structures of society were functioning.  We had a highway system, a phone system, an energy system, a political system, an economic system, that more or less worked for the majority of people.  We had the luxury of being sharply divided.  People could gain power by highlighting our divisions, rather than focusing on what we had in common.

Sadly, many religious people fell for this power grab, listening to voices of paranoia and fear. (Did anyone see the letter from James Dobson imagining 2012 if the hated liberals took over?  As paranoid as the anti-religion zealots who see faith as the root of all evil.)
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Got your attention, didn’t I?  Yes, I’m going to post on abortion and birth control.  Because we have to start talking to each other across the culture war divide.

But first: pause for a moment, lower your hackles, and consider the term, “war.”  What does it evoke?  A battle unto death.  Prepare to kill, prepare to die, that’s what war is about.  And there are times, perhaps, for war. But the followers of Jesus who care about the teachings of Jesus are not to be war enthusiasts. The war that counts, we’re told, is the one that is NOT waged against flesh and blood.  Can we agree on that?  So when we are talking with another human being, when we are struggling with other human beings over issues, war may be the LAST metaphor we should rely on to frame our discussion.   If the teachings of Jesus matter to us, that is.
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Yes.  We may be witnessing the end of the culture wars as the primary cultural drama of American life.  I suspect that for a time, the pitched battle between cultural-political conservatives and their liberal counterparts may intensify after a post-election pause, but it is inexorably now drifting from center stage. It’s a simple and unrelenting matter of demographics.
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