Beautiful Loser

The Culture Wars – what were they? Why were they fought? Were they worth fighting?

Well, that depends on whom you ask. If you ask a Progressivist, the answer is “YES!” The Progressive agenda accomplished, pretty much everything it set out to do: women’s “liberation”; normalization of homosexuality and gay marriage; legalization of abortion; no fault divorce; and dereligification of schools and the public sphere.

The Progressivists got what they wanted, so, absolutely the culture wars were worth fighting. But ask someone on the “other side”. As an Evangelical, and particularly an educated Evangelical, and even more particularly one of the cool kids and they’ll tell you that fighting the culture wars was a mistake. How do they know? Because we lost.

The Christian Right lost to the Progressivist Left and because we lost we can now look back through history with the clarity of hindsight and say that we were always destined to lose. Moreover, it evinced Evangelicalism’s failure to truly be the Church and focus on gospel issues. Nevermind the fact that the same people who say we should never have fought the culture wars because we should’ve been focusing on “gospel issues” are the same ones going whole-hog into Wokeism, trying to syncretize Critical Race Theory; and Critical Legal Theory; And Critical Gender Theory; and all the Critical Theories with Christianity, thus demonstrating that they are either very blind to their own hypocrisy or are arguing in bad faith when they way that Evangelicalism oughtn’t’ve fought the culture wars because it distracted us from the gospel! Of course, they would say that them getting on the Woke-train IS a gospel issue, because, you know…justice. Let me put this another way, if you were to ask them to create a substantial differentiation between them and the Moral Majoritarians they would say that the Reaganite Republic Christians were wrong and the new Woke Christians are right.

That’s the difference. There’s really no appreciable difference in methodology or motivation. It’s just that if you fought in the culture wars to illegalize abortion or to oppose gay marriage, then you are ignoring the gospel in favor of politics – whereas they are right to decry Systemic Racism from the pulpit…cause…you know…they’re right. And I’m actually OK with this. I’m OK with the argument that two people can do the same kinds of things and one can be right and the other wrong. But that’s not how the argument is presented.

But at a deeper level, I think we have to ask whether the defeat in the culture wars invalidates them altogether? Because Evangelicalism…or maybe simply orthodox Christianity…because orthodox Christianity lost does that mean we shouldn’t have tried to influence culture through politics? I think that’s a very shallow and specious assessment. I mean, we’re all gonna DIE does that mean we should eat right and exercise? We’re all going to have to hand over our wealth EVENTUALLY so does that mean we oughta go blow our money in a Casino overnight?

Just because something is bound to fail doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile.

The Church is bound to fail. It is. The Church never has, is not, and never will convert the world. So, if your understanding of the Church’s purpose is that the Church is gonna convert the world – the Church will not. We will fail. Just like Israel failed. Just like the Patriarchs failed. Just like Adam failed. In every dispensation there has been failure to make the world Eden. In ever one of God’s unique economies there has been a failure to convert the world to right worship. And so, by that metric, the Church is a failure.

I think conversion of the world and making the world come under the obedience of Christ – including, but not limited to, in law and culture – is part of the Church’s charge. Jesus, in Matthew, commands us to make disciples of all nations. Paul said it was his goal that everyone would become a Christian like him – except without chains. But it’s a task that we know we’re going to ultimately fail at. We know that not all will receive the Gospel and eternal life. Indeed, Jesus said that few find eternal life.

But like salt, or yeast, a relatively small number of very committed and very active people can move a culture. We saw this when Christianity changed the ancient world. We saw it in the French and Russian Revolutions. We saw it when a disaffected Austrian overthrew the Weimar Republic. It doesn’t take mass numbers to move a culture. It is amazing, throughout history, how almost always the majority is ruled by a minority, how culture and law can be moved by such a small number of people.

Indeed, look at contemporary America. The real Wokeists are an extreme minority – yet they dominate the bully pulpit and they get what they want. How? How did these jackasses ever gain enough influence to get the wealthiest most powerful nation in history to believe girls can have penises and that rioting is peaceful and Marxism works and people with black and brown and yellow and red skin can be white and that all white people are cryptoracists…but nobody else is? How? They used strategies to be force multipliers, they were louder, more obnoxious, and more ready to disrupt society than anyone else. They captured places on influence in academia, media, and government and used those positions to gain leverage over the whole system.

So, Wokeism, like salt, yeast, or a virus, doesn’t require a majority, or even a large minority to be effective – just a very vocal cadre in key positions who can effectively wield shame and social stigma to manipulate markets and the masses.

The Church did this once. When it converted Turkey, and Rome, and Germany, and France, and England, and Scandinavia, and the Low Countries, and Iberia, and the Americas, and Hawaii, and the Philippines.

The Church has had massive influence throughout history. And sometimes that’s been very ugly. And sometimes, in fact, often, what we thought was victory was really defeat.

History is a funny thing.

Life is a funny thing.

So is culture. And the Church lost the culture wars. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t worth fighting. The Church lost Turkey, and Rome, and Europe – does that mean it wasn’t worth converting those places for the gospel? Does that mean that the culture that was created by Western Christendom wasn’t majestic and wonderful – albeit flawed and sometimes evil?

So what if we lost?! What’s the alternative?!

Seriously?! Now, if people want to say that the WAY they were fought led to our demise or led to damaging the Church, yeah, absolutely, sin happened, mistakes were made. I’ll agree with that all day. But historians are supposed to not look at the mistakes made in a worthy endeavor and say, well, hey, mistakes were made, the whole thing was a bust…ummm that’s dumb. If mistakes were made we learn from them! You don’t say something nasty to a friend and then say it wasn’t worthy trying to be their friend. That’s puerile. Because, while it probably was forgotten many, many times, there’s nothing more friendly you can do than to keep someone from sinning. That’s the most loving thing you can do.

Did the Church oft forget that we wrestle not against flesh and blood? Of course. Did we fail to keep in the forefront of our minds that the culture wars should have fundamentally been about loving our neighbors? Of course. Did that mean that good didn’t happen? Of course not.

And again, I ask, what was the alternative – abandonment theology?! – that’s pretty cowardly! Or perhaps siding with the sinners? Yeah, not good.

So, what was the alternative?

The biggest problem with all this is that American Christians have such a distorted view of success, a view so far from the biblical view, that they aren’t even consonant – but are unrecognizably different. American Christianity defines success in the world’s terms: power, money, and meat in the seats. We think that winning means getting your smiling face on tv. We think it means building bigger barns. We think that it means everyone loving you and getting to have fancy people interview you.

But that’s not how God defines success. He defines it by being faithful and doing what’s right nomatter the cost. It means being a Beautiful Loser.

Some day, when we’re in glory, God may give us enough wisdom to assess the past and we’ll learn that the culture wars were a destructive distraction from the gospel. But I doubt that. If telling people that they shouldn’t legally be able to murder their babies drives you away from the Author of Life, I’m not sure that Pro-Life Politics was really the obnoxious form of patriarchy you decry it as.

On the other hand, who knows how many lives were saved because the Church fought the long defeat?! How many people avoided divorce, or stayed out of homosexual relationships, or ended up not hating their parents, or not overdosing with narcotics, because the Church fought hard to influence the culture? Because historians aren’t privy to “what might’ve been” and since Aslan tells us that nobody gets to know that, we can only speculate.

But I’m of the opinion that it’s OK to be a loser. It’s OK to fight the long defeat in honor of something good, and true, and beautiful. Capitulating and siding with the godless mobs may make you a winner – but you’re an ugly winner. It makes you ugly because you sacrificed your principles and forsook your command to reprove, rebuke, and exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine, so you could retain your respectability.

Jesus didn’t care much for respectability. Jesus was content to be a Beautiful Loser and not an Ugly Winner. He could have lived. He says that he could have denied His Messiahship – but then he’d be a liar like those who accused Him. Jesus refused to take the easy way out to be respectable – or to maintain his “influence”…dear Lord if there’s a word that ever you needed to make fall flat off the tongues of men it’s “influence”!

We so desperately want to be Winners in the world’s eyes that we’ll be Ugly Winners. We forget that Jesus was a Beautiful Loser. And then He wasn’t. Because He chose to be a Beautiful Loser, God vindicated Him and made Him a Beautiful Winner. And to Him all the influencers will some day answer for every idle word…as will we all.

Knowing, then, that we will all stand before the judgment seat of God and nomatter what the world’s description, we will be labeled by God as Ugly Losers of Beautiful Winners, let’s choose to take the path to being a Beautiful Winner – by being Beautiful Losers.