"The culture, then, is like the weather. We may be able to influence it in modest ways, seeding the clouds, but it is a recipe for frustration to expect that we can direct it. Nor should we expect positive change without some simultaneous downturn in a different corner. Nor should we expect that any change will be permanent. The culture will always be shifting, and it will always be with us.
God has not called us to change the weather. Our primary task as believers, and our best hope for lasting success, is to care for individuals caught up in the pounding storm. They are trying to make sense of their lives with inadequate resources, confused and misled by the Evil One and unable to tell their left hand from their right (Jonah 4:11)...
[W]e are misguided even to think of our opponents in the "culture wars" as enemies in the first place. They are not our enemies, but hostages of the Enemy. We have a common Enemy who seeks to destroy us both, by locking them in confusion and by luring us to self-righteous pomposity.
Culture is not a monolithic power we must defeat. It is the battering weather conditions that people, harassed and helpless, endure. We are sent out into the storm like a St. Bernard with a keg around our neck, to comfort, reach, and rescue those who are thirsting, most of all, for Jesus Christ."
~"Loving the Storm-Drenched" by Frederica Matthewes-Green
John Stackhouse has a completely different take which is posted on the same website, right here (if you actually read the article, let me know if you find it heretical?). Whereas Matthewes-Green emphasizes people need fixing, Stackhouse argues that God's purpose is that culture itself gets fixed. All this trendy talk about Christians and culture leaves me wondering if anybody knows what they're talking about.
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