The Church and the Secular City
More from E. Stanley Jones:

"And now they say that the church to be able to function in that Secular City must adopt its culture, its language, and its outlook. I agree that those within the Church must know the culture, language, and the outlook of the secular city, for it must know what we are speaking to and hence direct its message accordingly. But that we should adopt that culture, language, and outlook is quite another thing and quite a different thing. For the center of the culture of the Secular City is essentially and fundamentally self-regarding. It is a driven society, driven by pagan urges to get on, to succeed, to get ahead, to get status, to accumulate no matter what happens to the other person. It is softened at the edges by Christian attitudes and principles, but at the center it is anti-Christian. It makes itself God. Threfore, to adapt yourself to that secular society so wholeheartedly that this adaptation becomes an adoption, then this is a fatal abdication of the Christian faith in favor of paganism, whatever its name. For the Christian faith says that one must lose his life in a higher purpose and a higher will and then one will find it. This secular-city mentaility and outlook says the opposite--find yourself by asserting and looking after yourself in every way possible, in every sitatuion possible. Therefore, if the modern demand for adaption means adoption we are lost. We must be in the secular society but not of it. We must love that secular society but we must love something higher and more supremely. To merge is to be submerged. And if we are submerged we have no message. To have a message is to be different, inwardly aloof, conscious that we have something to give. Jesus ate with publicans and sinners as one of them, but when he was challenged, he said that "they that are whole need not a physician but they that are sick." He was there as a physician not as a fellow patient. He was different--that difference made the multitude crowd about him to touch him and be made whole."

Emphasis added.
posted by Jimmy at 5:19 PM | |