Waging the wrong war for the wrong reasons

April Luebke linked to a post about the blind eye we turn to socially acceptable sin while railing against sins targeted in the "culture wars". From the blog Extreme Theology:

As long as those who believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, who zealously wage war with the forces of immorality in the culture refuse to understand that they are ambassadors of the Kingdom of God, not the Republican Party, and are called to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Name to ALL sinners left and right, socialist and capitalist then there will continue to be something TERRIBLY wrong with Conservative Evangelicalism!

There are a lot of very valid points in the post. Some of it is over the top. Are corporations “evil”? Are these faceless “corporate executives” evil? Eh. Not any more so than anyone else. Is capitalism an evil system that exploits the poor? Not any more so than socialism. Let’s keep in mind that every corporation is merely a legal construct and every corporate executive is an employee paid to do one thing: maximize profits. They act on behalf of shareholders who more often than not are ultimately the dentist who lives down the street and your retired parents living off a pension. Where corporate executives are complicit with breaking the law, either knowingly or through neglect, they should face the legal consequences. We should also realize that improving the working conditions for a child in India or Thailand might make their quality of life now better but leaves them in the same state for eternity absent the Gospel. Eliminating sweat shops is a noble goal, but it is not the Gospel.

Having said that…

It is very true that the culture war is the wrong war for the wrong reasons and is often used as a cynical tool of politicians to gain power. The culture war is not about taking the Gospel of Christ to the world, it is unfortunately mostly about conforming the world to a “Judeo-Christian morality”. The order is all wrong. I find homosexuality to be abhorrent and I oppose homosexual marriage as an abomination. I also abhor heterosexual couples living together and to the same extent my own frequent, catastrophic failings in this area. I find abortion to be a bloody stain upon our nation and I would do anything within the bounds of God’s Law to see it overturned. I similarly recognize that I have harbored hatred and resentment against others in my own heart. What it comes down to is this simple fact: the culture war will never be won because we were never called to this war in the first place. We are called to simple, humble, quiet lives where we live out the Gospel and proclaim the Good News to a lost and dying world. That doesn't mean we are disengaged from the political world but it does mean we recognize the limitations and realize that winning elections is not carrying out the Great Commission. The only way that we will see true change come to anyone is through the transformation of the Gospel and that is something that no Congress can legislate and no court can enforce.