Guest Commentary

J.R.R. Tolkien is easily the best-known fantasy author of the last 100 years. If you haven’t read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings or seen the various films based on those stories, you almost certainly know at least one person familiar with them.

There’s no need to fight a culture war if your worldview is in the ascendency. Christians in the Middle Ages didn’t go on crusades to lands full of churches. Upper-class men didn’t fight for the right to vote because they already had it. So why does it feel like, in every sphere of society right now, a culture war is being fought by both sides? Why does literally everyone feel as if they are the victim?

Rioting is not a solution to any problem; it only creates more problems. It’s hypocritical to riot about a social problem, only to become a social problem yourself. Violence only serves to breed more violence.

Comfort, renew, restore, and resurrect them. Expose the perpetrators and cleanse your house in Jesus’ Name. Destroy our man-made institutions and build a church that looks like you.

As I’ve written elsewhere, obeying the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20)—without loving wounded souls inside the kingdom—is to commit a great omission.

Have you heard of the little boy who found a long stick and cut notches he assumed to be accurate measurements? He went running to his mother and said, “Mom! I made this ruler and measured myself! I’m seven feet tall!”

We need to have our arsenal of weaponry ready, and that includes excavating the hidden places in our own lives. Once we have the freedom to address what needs to be exposed, then we can equip the next generation to find their freedom. We need to fight for the children so they can rise up and fulfill the purpose that was deposited into them, to take their position in this world and to change it. But we must first do our part to fight for them right now.

In the central Vietnam province, officials vying with each other to create “Christian-free zones” operate “with no conscience or humanity,” as if they were in a different country than the one whose religious freedom measures they are violating, Christian leaders say.

In America, users of Facebook spend 58 minutes per day (325 hours per year) on the platform, while users of Instagram spend 53 minutes per day (297 hours per year) viewing its content. And the people and organizations we follow on these platforms influence us more than we might realize. It is my hope that most mature Christians spend less time on these platforms than the average cultural consumer of media. But the truth is, we all spend time with media of some sort every day. In fact, except for personal conversations, prayer, and meditation, there is little that we learn and interact with every day that doesn’t come through media of some sort. (Even the Bible is a form of traditional media — a book.)

The Bible offers us at least 5 ways to restore civility to our communities. As the tried and true saying goes, when there’s a will there’s a way. If you’re willing to do your part, then read on.