In his fabulous post below on the culture and gospel debate, Greg suggests that I have an anxiety that the Gospel will remain too much as the Pearl of Great Price and not enough as the Leaven of Culture. In response, I would say “Yes, I do.” Yet, my anxiety comes from the very issue that Greg is addressing–a lack of balance. As Greg argues,

The artificial separation of the cultural mandate from the great commission, erected out of fear that the gospel will not be allowed to be leaven, makes it difficult for the gospel to be a pearl of great price.

I couldn’t agree more. There CANNOT be a separation between the Cultural Mandate and the Great Commission. The thought behind my initial post was that our attempts at fulfilling the Cultural Mandate are not being balanced by the Great Commission but superseded by it. To use Greg’s words (from Ballor from Bavinck), our allowing the  Gospel to be leaven is not being balanced with allowing it to be the pearl of great price. It appears that the assumption of many is that we cannot fulfill the Cultural Mandate until culture is converted, meaning that I must fulfill the Great Commission first and make disciples of people before I can work to fulfill the Cultural Mandate and transform culture. Or, the assumption is that the Great Commission is more valuable than the Cultural Mandate [being a missionary is more valuable than championing good highways]. These are both false dichotomies. I am called to fulfill both the Mandate and the Commission simultaneously, not one first and then the other.

Greg states of my post:

However, I think he errs when he separates the cultural mandate from the great commission as though they were not connected.

I understand how my earlier post may have given that impression, but that was not my intention. I do not want to separate the two. I agree with Greg that someone who is being made a disciple of Jesus Christ will be more culturally transformed, so that our task of the Cultural Mandate is certainly more accomplished when that particular part of cultural is also discipled through the Great Commission. Perhaps saying that a musician would not play “better” was not the best word choice. My point was simply that becoming a Christian does not suddenly make a baseball player have a higher batting average or run faster, but they will be “better” in terms of their glorifying God and understanding their calling as an athlete. This being “better” may make them more of a team player, affecting the team more even if they as an individual cannot suddenly run a 4 second 40 meter sprint. And yet, at the same time my engagement with transforming culture does not require that they are discipled but that I am a disciple. Certainly my hope and prayer is their conversion, certainly they will be “better” at culture if they are disciples of Jesus Christ, but I am called to fulfill the Cultural Mandate to the Glory of God while I fulfill the Great Commission to the Glory of God, not before or after.

Again, these thoughts all came about while considering the issue of homosexuality. As theological arguments have recently fallen flat in a secular culture that does not believe in a Theos, many have argued that we must work to convert homosexuals to Christ first before we can talk about the cultural issue of sex. An extreme segment has suggested that since we cannot convert homosexuals to Christ first we should give up and never talk to them about cultural issues of sex. My goal in posting Culturally Common Grace was to argue that I can and should be engaging the marriage debate from a Cultural Mandate perspective AND a Great Commission perspective, because as I argued, both flow together from the Gospel.

Over the last several hundred years, Christians have begun to take the Great Commission quite seriously as the church’s high calling from God. Through the movement of modern missions and the emphasis on personal evangelism, the church has risen to the challenge to see the Gospel of Jesus Christ carried to all peoples. And yet, the Great Commission is not the only calling that God has placed upon Christians; we must not forget the Cultural Mandate.

In Genesis 1:28, having created mankind in His image, male and female, God gives this new couple their calling as human beings. “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Because of the subsequent fall of mankind in Genesis 3, this task became much more difficult, but even after the fall Adam and Eve still have the same calling to be fruitful and multiply and to rule over creation. God repeats this calling again to Noah in Genesis 9 after the flood, and while the dread of humans would fall upon all animals, mankind was still to be God’s vice-regent on earth, filling it and subduing it.

The subtle message of the Gospel weaves its way through Cultural Mandate in the early chapters of Genesis and beyond. Mankind fails as God’s vice-regent in the garden, God in His judgment punishes but in His grace also allows the calling of the Cultural Mandate to remain upon the now imperfect human race. Years later, God sends His Son, the true King, the second Adam, to represent this fallen race on the cross and to rise again with all rule and authority over creation until He has subjected all things to God the Father. While all humans beings are still under the calling of the Cultural Mandate given at creation, in order for fallen mankind to most completely fulfill the Cultural Mandate of Genesis 1 and ruling in God’s name, they must be redeemed by the blood of Christ and forgiven of their imperfection and empowered and enabled by the Holy Spirit to be agents of the Kingdom of Light to advance the cause of Jesus Christ in this world. Thus we can accurately say that everything in creation is at its very base related to the Gospel because we will not completely fulfill our Genesis 1 calling without the work of the Gospel in our lives. We will not be the parents, workers, or caretakers of creation that we are supposed to be without the inner of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is not to say that an artist or musician would paint better or sing better if she were a Christian, but she would have a deeper understanding and grasp of her high calling from God and a proper thinking and perspective about her place in creation and the value of what she is doing for culture.

However, that does not mean that everything is a Great Commission issue because it is a Gospel issue. While the Great Commission is about the Gospel, so too is the Cultural Mandate. In other words, the end goal of all things is not always evangelism! Imagine for just a moment that I see my neighbor across the street being attacked by a wild band of thugs. It is not the Great Commission or evangelism that causes me to call the police. Yet it is the Cultural Mandate, the calling upon my life to order culture to the glory of God and the working of the Gospel in my own life that causes me to cal the police. My neighbor does indeed benefit from the work of the Gospel in my life and my understanding of the Cultural Mandate, but I will probably not tell him that since I called the police he owes it to me to become converted. My performing as a professional athlete or businessman is not just so I can share the gospel with teammates and coworkers. I do not plant a nice garden and pick up trash in the woods just so I can share the gospel. While it would be great if I do get to share the gospel, I do those things because it is part of my role in culture and creation under the Cultural Mandate of subduing the earth and bringing it in line with the glory of God. The end result is that all of creation benefits, even if people in the end are not converted.

This is often referred to as God’s Common Grace. God’s special grace flows out through Jesus Christ to all who believe in Him, saving them, forgiving them, adopting them, transforming them, and one day, perfecting them. But God’s common grace also flows out to the non-believer, as ‘He makes it to rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.’ God’s common grace is closely linked with the Cultural Mandate from Genesis 1 and 9 because all of creation benefits as humans take their calling from God seriously. As I am transformed by the Gospel, I act out my salvation culturally and creationally in the world around me. I stand and say “this is not right, it must change,” or I praise the lovely and beautiful as evidence of God’s common grace in culture.

Which brings us then to issue concerning Civil Law. Is the Civil Law for a believer in Jesus Christ a Gospel issue? Absolutely! Through the Gospel I understand true justice, as well as concepts of mercy, grace, and redemption. I grasp the value of every human being and strive to ensure that the Law does not promote a justice that devalues humanity. The list goes on and on. With a redeemed mind and the knowledge of God’s natural Law and revealed moral Law, believers are better able to govern civilly in ways that are in keeping with the Kingdom of God. But just because we can relate the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the the civil Law does not make it a tool to accomplish the Great Commission! Sure, the Law points to Christ, but we should not encourage Christians to become civil magistrates just so that they can witness! We should encourage our Christian lawmakers to make a Civil Law that upholds the Cultural Mandate to bring God’s common grace upon all peoples. You can’t go around killing people and whether you are or are not a Christian does not affect that fact!

And so, as I conclude, I come to the real issue that I began this article to address. Do our efforts to speak against homosexuality stem from our goal to fulfill the Great Commission or the Cultural Mandate? I would argue that one of the main reasons that we are losing our fight against the rising tide of homosexuality in this nation is that we are convinced we have to convert everyone first in order to have real conversations with them about sex. The truth, though, is that my neighbor does not have to be a Christian for me to call the police when thugs invade his home, and neither do I have I have to convert him before I can talk about sex. I can talk to my unconverted homosexual friends about the cultural issue of sex, which is a gospel issue no doubt,  because I am not just under the Great Commission but I am agent of common grace under the Cultural Mandate. Do I hope they come to the Gospel and God’s special grace? Absolutely! But I can engage my unconverted cultural even now!

Recent arguments in the ongoing marriage debate have revealed that theology is not the best way to convince our society that the Biblical concept of marriage is the correct one. I eagerly await Greg’s future posts on TGC concerning strategies for dealing with this difficult problem. Yet, what I find deeply ironic in this whole debate over homosexuality is not the frequent appeals to theology to win a secular argument, but the absence of theological arguments in the church when discussing the same issues! It should not be surprising that theological arguments fall flat when speaking to a group of people with no theological perspective. But why does the church fail to use theological arguments when dealing with its own members? The result is large swaths of the American church that cannot even adequately defend the institution of marriage when Biblical arguments are called for!

There seem be several key reasons for this sad pattern. The first is a misunderstanding of what is ‘theological.’ Many of the so-called ‘theological’ rationales concerning sexuality are not truly ‘theological’ but what I would prefer to call ‘nomological,’ using the Greek word nomos, meaning law. Because we say God gave a particular law, and God is the Theos, law must be theological. Which is true, to a degree but the thought process fails to progress much beyond that point. Teenagers are told to be sexually pure because it God’s Law. Homosexuality is wrong because it is against God’s Law. All of which is certainly true, but then all one has to do is present arguments about why those laws were cultural laws intended only for Israel or appeal to the law of love which seems to trump laws prohibiting certain behaviors. This has been done by many “Christian” churches and suddenly these supposedly theological arguments from God’s Law become muddled.

God’s Law is certainly theological, but it is so because the various laws in the Law are not arbitrary decisions by God but instead a reflection of His perfectly good and holy nature. The Law is part of God revealing Himself and how we should be like Him. When we understand who God is, we understand better why He would make particular Laws. ‘Do not kill’ makes sense when we understand that God is Love and God is Life. ‘Honor your Father and Mother ‘ takes on a deeper context when we understand that God is our Father and ultimate authority and has placed other human authorities over us as his vice-regents.

The same is true of human sexuality. From a truly theological perspective, sexuality flows from the nature of God the Father and Jesus Christ’s relationship with His bride, the church. Human sexuality, or union, is a reflection of our mystical spiritual union in the body of Christ. Theologically speaking, sexuality also flows from the understanding of God as a single God but plural persons. In the same way, there are single species, but two genders. Gender issues themselves are wrapped up in the image of God and human beings as His image bearers.

Yet, these are arguments that are rarely presented even in the church setting. Instead, natural law or the naturalness of sexuality is used to argue against homosexuality, even in the church. It’s wrong because that wasn’t how God made Adam and Eve in the garden, which is true, but why were they made that way? Teens are told not to have sex because it is against God’s Law without ever being told to think of why it is in God’s Law. Or, the most common argument I see in the church is that having sex outside of the way God planned it leads to an unhappy life, such as illegitimate children. But all of these arguments are insufficient to keep even the members of the church convinced that the Biblical ideals of sexuality are relevant today. Studies show that nearly as many Christian teens are sexually involved as non-Christian. Could this be because we are trying to use theological arguments in the marketplace and natural law and psychological arguments in the church?

Yes, theological arguments for Biblical marriage will struggle to the non-theological unbeliever in the tenets of the Bible. But we should be willing, in fact view it as our calling, to make sure that the theological arguments for Biblical sexuality are taught in our churches and to our children. Without such a firm theological foundation, Biblical morals are simply dismissed as being out of date.

In a recent post, Karen posited that while there are those beliefs that by their very nature cannot be subjected to the disciplines of philosophy and science because of their meta-rational nature, shouldn’t we as Christians still put at least some effort into having reasonable explanations for what we believe?

The answer to that question lies in the greatest commandment, the Hebrew Shema: Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is One. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. For the Hebrews, heart encompassed the mind as well, a fact that the gospel writers and Christ himself made more explicit in the New Testament, where Deuteronomy 6 is quoted as “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, MIND, and strength.

Today, Christians emphasize discipleship of the heart and the soul. It’s about how you feeding your soul and the emotions of the heart. Important, true, but incomplete. Many a well-intentioned person has simply responded to philosophy and theology with “I just love Jesus” or the other famous cliche “It’s a relationship, not a religion.” The fact, though, is that Christianity IS a religion in the purest sense of the word, and as such contains teachings, doctrines, and beliefs which must be rational in and of themselves for Christianity to be a rational religion. Christianity can be understood as a consistent, comprehensive, rational system of beliefs that can and should be examined by the mind as part of loving God with our mind.

Consider for just a moment if Christianity taught that God was finite. The very framework of Christianity would begin to crumble. Or, what if Christianity taught there is no life after death. Again, the result would be the internal disintegration of Christianity as a rational religion. Only a pure simpleton would believe in a ‘irrational’ religion, such as one that taught that squares were really circles, unless they were triangles. Needless to say, the Church Fathers were not simpletons. As challenges arose to the doctrines of Scripture, they responded with well-thought out, rational explanations from the consistency of Scripture.

And yet, as Karen has pointed out, many Evangelicals (Catholic and Protestant) seem to be content to treat this religion of God and His Word as though the requirement of faith eliminates any need for rationality. Instead, as part of our Discipleship of the Mind (nod to James Sire and his book of the same title), we should stand amazed and awed at the internal rationality and comprehensive consistency of the doctrines which believe. This is the value of catechizing, as catechisms present a systematic, rational explanation of Christianity.

To allow our children to go off to college without a well-thought out understanding of the rationality of our holy religion is to disciple them incompletely, allowing them to think that Christianity is a religion of the heart and not mind and HEART. One can see the conflict of sending someone who understands only on the level of the heart into a world that examines only with the mind. No wonder the two sides rarely understand each other. Rather than trying to come up with rational “proofs” per se of Christianity, we should be preparing our children and students to present the rational of Christianity itself, complete with its avoidance of square triangles.

Dan Kelly asks:

  We need to hire someone to bring practical leadership to those of us who want to serve but don’t have the capacity to envision, organize, and create.  We’ll think of a suitable title for such a person later, but let’s get on with the hiring process.

What would we call such a person? And then it hit me! Deacons! This is exactly the problem that the early church had in the book of Acts. The Elders felt called to teach and preach, because therein lies the power of the Gospel. But what about caring for widows and orphans? Thus we have Stephen and six other deacons being elected. These were not men who were forced into the position or men so busy that it was a stretch for them, but seven men who had been called and set apart by the Holy Spirit to do this task. And they could not do it themselves…it would be silly to assume that seven men alone took care of all the orphans and widows in the early church. Instead, they organized….wait for it…programs!

The problem in the church today is that too many pastors are trying to do the deacons job instead of focusing on leadership, vision casting, shepherding and preaching. Too many deacons are content to simply focus on mercy ministry within their own congregations (at least in my community in Wisconsin our deacons attempted to network with other deacons from other churches to care for the poor but were told by most churches that deacons only care for the needs of those respective churches!). What we need is not churches sold out to a program, that produces social gospel, or churches that only preach, that produces theological egg-heads. What we need to solve the issue is a pastor who proclaims the power of the gospel from the pulpit, preaches gospel application in human life, and shepherds the deacons of the church to look outside the church walls and come up programs to help the poor. In this way, elders and deacons work together, elders through teaching and shepherding, deacons through action in performing mercy ministry.

Thus, as Dan says, we should be expecting our deacons to deacon! And to take Dan’s argument to the next level, if an elder/pastor is ‘worth of his hire’ as Paul says and can be paid, we should be willing to pay our deacons as well if it will help them in their calling to action! Imagine if a church thought to hire a full-time deacon and a full-time pastor!