(Joe Boot – Clear Truth Media) The man who is content to sit ignorantly by his own fireside, wrapped up in his own private affairs, and has no public eye for what is going on in the Church and the world, is a miserable patriot, and a poor style of Christian. Next to our Bibles and our own hearts, our Lord would have us study our own times. – J. C. Ryle
Every age of the church has people happy to stay ignorant. They will sit by their firesides, or these days in front of their screens, unwilling to bother with careful Christian thinking about culture and what that would actually require of them as believers in the world.
Today’s Western church is generally either paralyzed by pietistic retreatism and cultural disengagement, or misled by unthinking enthusiasts. The latter – ‘influencers,’ agitators and activists, loud and sweeping in opinion, are the alleged victims of past generations and are ready to act as judge, jury, and executioner. They are like revolutionaries with metaphorical guillotines, attempting the impossible, like liberating a triangle from its three sides.