A Wake-up Call to God’s People
by Ian McKerracher
When my kids were little they liked to watch TV, and since those were the days before PVRs, when a commercial came on they were held captive by the flickering square of light while giant corporations attacked their unguarded minds. All those catchy jingles and slogans gave kids the ammunition they needed to nag their parents into submission and get them to buy the sponsor’s product. If you want to be horrified by the amount of research that has gone into successful advertising, here is a small clip from a documentary called The Corporation, first released in 2003.
Yes, slogans are a big part of advertising and account for the corporate world’s success in getting into our heads. Slogans are like bait in a trap, trite little sayings designed to focus our emotions and thoughts on the advertiser’s product. Slogans have taken over from the jingle, at one time the staple of the advertising world. Jingles are sometimes still heard, but slogans are now so ascendant over jingles, one must assume studies have shown them to bring more power to the pitch.
Slogans also rule in politics. Even before science proved the slogan’s effectiveness, politicians naturally desired their audiences to have something upbeat and inspiring to remember. Today’s Liberals want their crowds thinking, “Choose Forward.” The Conservatives are going through a leadership election with four candidates, so they have four slogans. Here they are, in no particular order: (1) “Courage, Compassion, Common Sense,” (2) “Unite, Build, Lead” (3) “Let’s take Canada, together,” and (4) “Conservative. Without apology.” The other federal parties also offer slogans: “Quebec, it is us” (no prizes for guessing which party); the NDP, “In it for you;” the Greens, “Not left. Not right. Forward together;” and finally, the People’s Party, “Strong and Free.”
“Let me say this as clearly as possible; spiritual mindedness does not excuse Christians from the duties of citizenship.”
Now some you may wonder why I am spending so much time talking about slogans, especially political slogans. For various reasons many Christians religiously avoid any connection to politics. Some think politics is beneath spiritually minded people. Others stay out of politics because they do not believe the Bible has much to say about life in a democracy. Of course, such people have a right to their opinions, but they should be made aware of the inevitable fruit that falls from the idealist, pietistic tree. As Ralph Nader once said, “Turn on to politics, or politics will turn on you.” In my opinion, Christians have lost a lot of influence in the last few decades due to our refusal to speak God’s truth and live God’s truth before the world.
Let me say this as clearly as possible; spiritual mindedness does not excuse Christians from the duties of citizenship. Quite the contrary, the gift of God’s Spirit should be a clarion call to involvement in the public square! A democratic republic such as we enjoy in Canada is a gift from God. Moreover, it comes to us as a legacy from our believing forebearers. They saw that one of our Lord’s primary mandates was the command to seek the common good of the community as a testimony to God’s transforming grace (see the Sermon on the Mount, especially Mat. 5:13-16; 5:38-48, Mat. 25:31-48, as well as Acts 10:38. Observe the blessing that rested upon the governmental service rendered by Daniel and his three friends, not to mention Joseph, Mordecai, Esther, and Nehemiah.). If it still seems that only a few Scriptures point Christians toward public service, that just means we need to study those passages more closely. Certainly, enough Scriptures on the subject exist to encourage us to apply our God-given wisdom to the gnarly bits of human existence.
Christians should remember all this when they enter the political arena. We are called to impact our world with wisdom and clear thinking; to be the “light of the world” that communities need. We really do need to get involved in public life. But in doing so we must come forth as servants, not rulers. A naked display of power tempts those in opposition to try and match power with power, and when that happens public service is reduced to yet another arms race. We must never try to rule, but to serve, and fortunately that approach is most compatible with the form of government found in Canada.
If we are going to get involved we must understand the times. On one side we have a culture built on Enlightenment ideals established centuries ago as a push-back to the political power centralized in the league between the Catholic Church and Europe’s monarchs. In their zeal to oppose that political alliance philosophers of the day, including John Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau, wrote books and tracts that captured the minds of much of Europe.
First, John Locke moved away from the Lordship of Christ as a rational basis for existence. Then, starting where Locke left off, succeeding philosophers became increasingly adamant in opposing every expression of a Christian worldview. Four centuries later the modern State has become entirely secular and openly anti-Christian. So, rationality rules, right? Not quite. Enlightenment rationality is now thought to have run its course. Today’s new kid on the philosophical block is called postmodernism, a strict and intentional departure from rationality. Today, any claim to Objective Truth is defined by postmodernism as oppressive. Therefore, all attempts to defend objective truth are dismissed. For too many “thinkers” objective truth does not exist. Postmodern ideas include the taking down of the “tyranny” of binary gender-based thinking, the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy of Cultural Marxism, and the conflicts surrounding Intersectional Politics.
As a result, both rationality and subjective postmodernism are employed as weapons of convenience against the Christian worldview. When Christians confess their faith in the effectiveness of prayer they’re told they are “anti-science” (rationality at work), but when they insist there can only be two sexes, they are disparaged as rigid and judgmental because they refuse to believe that how a person feels can determine reality.
Black Lives Matter is only one of the organizations built on these notions. The name has the double usage of being a slogan to capture our minds (remember what I said about slogans earlier), and a declaration of a specific political philosophy. It is instructive to go to the website to investigate who these people are and what they believe. Do you really want to support an organization that believes in things so utterly opposed to Christianity? I didn’t think so.
As Christians, we are in a bit of a quandary, aren’t we? On one hand, we are encouraged to get involved politically, and on the other hand the combatants in our streets hold a severe hatred for all things Christian! How do we respond to this? What can we do to apply the Christian worldview to the mess before us?
“About matters where public policy intersects with Biblical truth Christians need to become a unified voice in a fractured world.”
These are perilous times, and what Christians do next had better be well-considered. Whatever decisions we make, they need to be drawn from the storehouse of God’s wisdom, i.e., the Bible. Otherwise, we will crash and burn! About matters where public policy intersects with Biblical truth Christians need to become a unified voice in a fractured world. Without shame we need to derive our collective political substance from the meat of God’s Word. Our public positions must be so clearly Biblical, and so clearly accountable to a Biblical worldview that when opponents dismiss us they will do so knowing that they have dismissed the thinking of our Lord. At the same time, our stands we take must be aligned with a real and meaningful love for people (once again, think of Mat. 25:31-36).
In the next little while we are going to be called upon by Christ Himself to be The Church to a lot of new people, all of them victims of the devastating social conflict going on around us. We need to be intentionally and openly nonpartisan. But we really need to get ready to be there for the people who need us. We should have been prepared for today’s collapse decades ago, but clearly we are not, even at this late date. This means we must work now to formulate good answers for the hard questions that will be asked of us. We need to become better at graciously conversing with volatile people. We must provide intellectual and spiritual pathways to lead them away from their immediate temptation toward violence. We need to be unafraid of intellectual discourse since that is the language of some, or emotional connections since that is the language of others. We need to become THE CHURCH! And our slogan must be, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).