Jesus and the New Testament authors rationally and logically responded to the questions of the day. Jesus answered questions about taxes, about marriage, about the resurrection, as well as others. When the Saducees questioned the resurrection of the dead, he responded with a verse within the only five books of the Old Testament that they accepted. He went into their territory, on common ground, and refuted their error.
Luke wrote both of his books to the Roman Theophilus to explain and defend the young Christian faith. Someone wrote Hebrews to show how Christianity completed and improved on Old Testament Judaism. Paul wrote I Corinthians to answer a variety of questions about church doctrine and practice. James responded to those who valued faith without works by reconnecting faith and works. John answered the early Gnostics in his epistle. The early church responded to the questions of its day in an intelligent, reasonable way.
After the Apostles died, others took up the mantle. These early apologists defined Christian beliefs, criticized their culture, and contrasted New Testament Christianity with Greek religions. They too responded to the questions of their culture.
On the other hand is FCC petition 2493. Back in 1975, Christians were encouraged to respond to FCC 2493 which would ban all religious programming from the airwaves. Madalyn Murray O'Hare was behind this attack on the church. Christians responded with 600,000 letters in the next few months. By the 1980's, the FCC had four full time employees responding to these letters. By the 1990's, one million letters per year were arriving at FCC offices. In the new millenium, Dr. Dobson and various pastors have been associated with this effort. This year (May 2009) even snopes.com has been associated with the veracity of this attack on the church.
The problem is that the entire panic attack is based on misunderstanding or outrigth fraud. FCC 2493 was requesting that channels reserved for education not be used for religious broadcasting. The FCC rejected the request in August 1975. O'Hare was never associated with this petition. Neither were Dobson or any other pastor. Snopes.com clearly tells about the fiction of this story. Yet, 80 million Christians have been fooled over the last 34 years. What does that say about Christians except that they are gullible and fail to check their facts? No wonder they believe that the dead can come back to life!
As a church, if we are to impact our culture, we must follow the example of the early church and not the 80 million. We must look at the issues of our day and find Biblical principles that respond to those issues. Most Christians have opinions on any topic, but rarely do we actually gather data, read the Bible, and think about the issue. As a church, we must do that.
As a church, we need to have Biblical positions on various current events? Do we have a Biblical position on health care? What about stem cell research? Welfare? Divorce and Gay marriage? Global warming? Cloning? Year-round schooling?
I know we all have personal opinions on these issues, but do we have carefully thought out Biblical positions? Have we considered what God would say about these things? If we are to follow the examples of the Bible, we must -- collectively if not individually.
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