Hello and welcome back to life and books and everything.

This is Kevin DeYoung. I'm reading today an article just posted on the world opinions page entitled Just War and Our Cultural

Conflict. You may remember that I'm doing a multi-part series addressing six questions related to

Christianity and politics. In part one, I asked, why is it so hard to talk about

politics? In part two, I asked are Christians to focus on politics? And this here is part

three of six. And this question is, should Christians be engaged in the culture war?

The answer to the question, should Christians be engaged in the culture war, is quite simple.

You are, whether you mean to be or not.

For starters, the Bible does not hesitate to describe the Christian life with warfare imagery.

We do not wage war according to the flesh, but we are engaged in warfare, 2 Corinthians 103.

We destroy strongholds, verse 4, take prisoners, verse 5, punish rebels, verse 6.

A reference, by the way, to discipline in the church, not church as wielding the sword.

Christian discipleship is a battle.

More specifically, there is no doubt that the American people and American

institutions are engaged in deep disagreement about the fundamental realities of human nature,

sexual differentiation, the definition of marriage, the definition of personhood, the purpose of

government, the role of natural rights, and the conception of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Talk to parents with children in our public schools, or talk to conservative Christians in academia,

or talk to faithful believers in many of our Fortune 500 companies,

and see if we aren't enmeshed in profound ideological conflict.

James Davis and Hunter was already writing in 1992 about culture wars, the title of

his book, and quote, the struggle to control the family art, education, law, and politics in America.

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