Cultural engagement in a polarised world - Dr. Darrell L. Bock.

Let me tell you a little bit about where I'm coming from on this.

Uh, I'm, I'm really-- I'm concerned, to be honest, about where the church in America is taking at least segments of the church globally by fighting a culture war.

Uh, not that there isn't a war to be fought, there is, but Ephesians six makes it clear that that war is not against people.

For our battle is not, not, not, not, not, that's emphatic in Ephesians six ten, against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces in the heavenly places, against the cosmic forces, uh, in the heavens.

Uh, and I tell people the Greek word for w- for one of those descriptions of the, who the battle is with, is the term cosmocrat.

And then my joke is, if you think a bureaucrat is bad, you should meet a cosmocrat.

So, um, so people are actually not the enemy, they're the goal, people outside the church.

So how do we engage in such a way that is healthy for what's going on? And in case you haven't noticed, our world, and in some cases even the church, is fairly polarized in places and in spots.

And, uh, a- and, and so I don't think...

It's so deep, I don't think we can fix the polarization of the world.

Jesus is gonna fix that.

But the premise of this talk is we shouldn't be contributing to it, that we should be a source for the gospel that is designed to draw people towards God and not, not continue the alienation that exists.

Even if that alienation preexists in the attitude of some, we're supposed to be trying to draw people towards God, not away from Him.