Something Tim Keller said in a talk he gave several years ago came to mind the other day. Keller is an interesting voice in American Christianity. He founded a church in Manhattan (NY) and is a big advocate of urban ministry. Plenty of people have been pointing to some of his views as unorthodox, but I’ve benefited from his talks and writings. I’m particularly fond of his book, The Reason for God. It’s an absolute classic.
I recalled Keller’s words from years back as he was pondering the effectiveness of evangelism at that time. He felt it had turned a corner over the decades since the 50’s and Billy Graham’s “crusades.” For many years In the US you could talk to the person on the street about God and they’d know what God you were talking about. That slowly evolved though – as fewer and fewer Americans even bothered with God, less of them had a common reference when you tried to tell them about the plot of standard Christianity. Keller used unforgettable terms like “Christ-haunted” (borrowed from Flannery O’Connor) and “the inoculated Christian” (those who just had enough of a grasp “Christiany” things that they couldn’t catch the real faith) to describe the state of America.
But I think we’ve turned yet another corner over just the past decade. It’s no longer a matter of unfamiliarity with God, it’s become a matter of having the same points of reference when speaking of morality. To many people today, the Christian moral perspective is foreign. This is important because one of the main tenets of Christian evangelism is the convincing of people that they have actually done something wrong. Yet, without that common understanding of what exactly is “wrong,” this is becoming increasingly more difficult.
Ray Comfort is a street evangelist I’ve loved listening to in the past. His primary focus wasn’t so much about how the world was messed up and we all needed God to make it right, but rather, you are messed up by sinning against a loving God who has given you your very life. Have you lied? You’re a liar. Have you lusted after others? You’re an adulterer. Have you ever taken something that doesn’t belong to you? You’re a thief.
And that kind of got people thinking. “Hey, maybe I do need to get right with God.”
But not so now that even a common morality upon which we can agree is in question. Lying is now an accepted practice, as long as the person doing it is on your team. Adultery has become a meaningless term. Where Comfort would quote Jesus – “if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, you’re committing adultery” – the world today is quite literally saturated in imagery specifically designed to invoke exactly that reaction. Stealing? See “lying.”
It’s not just that Christian morality is old-fashioned, it’s largely unrelatable.
The evangelist is faced with a problem now. The very foundation of the Christian story is that Christ died in our place – that he took the punishment that was ours so that we could be reunited with God. But in a world now where the consciences of those who already lack a reference for God are being conditioned to ignore those things we all believed at one time to be wrong, where do we go to show them the way?
There’s only one answer to this, and it remains the same despite the changing world. And the more the world drifts, the more miraculous the answer.
