I’ve been reading a number of books recently that all orbit around a similar theme. I didn’t set out to do this; it just sort of happened.
Here’s the theme: the current cultural unrest we feel is due to living in a cultural period in which a number of value systems and ways of living are at war for the cultural throne that was once held by Christendom and the perpetuation of Christian values throughout the corridors of culture—from government to family relations to entertainment—but is now, effectively, vacant.
Put another way, we live in a culture that once had a clear king (Christendom), but now has a cultural civil war as the throne sits empty.
Now that we live in a post-Christian West, culture wars persist with different groups vying for the empty throne of influence that Christianity once held. Some fight in hopes of helping Christianity regain the throne. Others fight against Christianity (or any faith) ascending the throne, hoping for a more humanistic or naturalistic ruler. Yet others fight, perhaps, for the throne to remain empty.
Being a Christian “culture warrior” has never felt right to me or for me. I don’t mean to say I think those who fight for Christianity to gain more influence in culture are wrong, I just mean to say that I’m not sure I can bring myself to engage in culture wars on behalf of Christianity. I am not a good cultural “crusader,” if you will. I want human flourishing to flood forth, and I think the way of Christ is how that is best achieved, but I’ve never felt comfortable adopting a pugilistic means toward that end.
“But then,” I sometimes wonder, “How might I best work for the flourishing of others and the glory of God if not by campaigning for various reforms or candidates or the like?”
Put another way: how do Christians faithfully breathe life into a dark and dying culture stained by the bloodshed of different people groups and ideologues vying for the throne once held by Christendom if they don’t want to join the fight themselves?
By midwifing glimpses of new creation through countless small, creative acts of faith—little fires in the dark—that God’s kingdom may come and his will may be done.
‘Only birth can conquer death’
In his classic The Hero with a Thousand Faces mythologist Joseph Campbell quotes the British historian Arnold Toynbee—I came across the quote in Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine. Campbell writes (emphasis mine):
Schism in the soul, schism in the body social, will not be resolved by any scheme of return to the good old days (archaism), or by programs guaranteed to render an ideal projected future (futurism), or even by the most realistic, hardheaded work to weld together again the disintegrating elements. Only birth can conquer death—the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new.
We live in a culture that was once ruled by Christendom and its values, but that era has died and it cannot be resurrected, no matter how many Christian politicians are elected or how many Christian TV shows are popularized.
We don’t conquer death by destroying or belittling or “owning” or ideological opponents. That is to say, the way to react to the death of Christendom is not by conquering our foes in hopes of resurrecting the old. We conquer death through new birth.
Kingsnorth writes, “At the end of a culture, the real work is not lamentation or desperate defence—both instinctive but futile reactions—but the creation of something new.”
We don’t work toward the flourishing of our neighborhoods and our nation and the nations by fighting over fiefdoms of cultural influence in hopes of one day re-seating Christian culture on the throne of the West. Even if we were successful, we would misunderstand Christendom on the cultural throne for Christ on the cultural throne—these are not the same.
We work toward the flourishing of our neighbors and our enemies by acting as midwives of new creation—or at least by trying to provide an ultrasound picture of it, if you will. We sow seeds of God’s kingdom come and his will done. We work to reveal some of the already as we wait for the not yet.
This sort of work doesn’t have to be done with some kind of postmillennial optimism that our work will bring about the Christianization of the globe. But it does require us to believe that even amid the increasing brokenness and warring of the world it is good work to help others see the beauty and wholeness of the new creation hope we have in Christ.
How do we functionally do this? How do we preview new creation in an effort to help our neighbors and our enemies flourish as everyone fights for control of the throne of culture?
Lighting Little Fires
Midwifing glimpses of new creation in the midst of our crumbling culture is difficult and thankless work. In fact, it can create more enemies than friends. If we commit ourselves to providing glimpses of the world to come amid an ongoing war for control of the present world, all those who quarrel for control will harangue us for not joining their side.
Our faithful Christian neighbors who attempt to fight for the throne on behalf of the Christendom that lost it will wonder how we can live with ourselves if we don’t join in the fight for Christian values to pervade the halls of Congress and the soundstages of Hollywood.
Others who fight for some other value system to ascend the throne, or to maintain its vacancy, will bemoan our unwillingness to fight on the right side of history and push back against the oppressive value systems that threaten to rule.
So what do we do?
Kingsnorth writes (emphasis mine):
This, in practical terms, is the slow, necessary, sometimes boring work to which I suspect people in our place and time are being called: to build new things, out in the margins. Not to exhaust our souls engaging in a daily war for or against a ‘West’ that is already gone, but to prepare the seedbed for what might, one day long after us, become the basis of a new culture.
Kingsnorth goes on to describe this work like lighting “particular little fires—fires fuelled by the eternal things, the great and unchanging truths—and tend their sparks as best as we can.”
I love this image.
It is as though we live in a dark cave. And while others crusade to become the Ruler of Darkness on the Throne of Despair, perhaps our time is best spent grabbing some tinder and sticks to provide a bit of Light and Warmth in little nooks and crannies around the cave for people who are looking for a spell of relief.
Just a bunch of little fires here and there and everywhere. No giant blazes. No burning down of others’ buildings. No fires set in an attempt to retake any throne or gain some sort of authority.
Like freed prisoners who have seen life outside the cave, we light fires to provide some glimmers of hope that maybe the darkness isn’t all its cracked up to be, suggesting that maybe there’s a place where the Light rules and not the Darkness. A place where there is a Ruler of Light on a Throne of Grace.
We pray “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” But do we act in accordance with this prayer?
Will we have the courage to do the slow, boring work to light particular little fires that midwife a longing for a new creation marked by sharing warmth and light rather than for grasping for power and darkness?
We may have such courage. “But first,” Kingsnorth concludes, “we are going to have to be crucified.”