USA (MNN) — Christian. For most, it’s a person belonging to a particular religion. For many of our listeners, it is an identity. But for social media giant YouTube, per a WND article, it is unacceptable content. In the United States, a Christian ministry’s request to run an ad on YouTube was recently denied for including the term “Christian.”
Zoom out for a big-picture look and Rex Rogers, president of SAT-7 USA, a satellite TV ministry to the Middle East and North Africa, notes this is not a complete surprise. There have been signs for quite some time that Christianity is losing its influence in the public square.
“Our country, our culture has largely drawn its sense of morality and values, which, of course, goes into law and education and entertainment…from that source. From Judeo-Christian sources. That’s what’s changing rapidly in the last…20 years,” Rogers says.
Living a Biblical Christian Lifestyle
What Christians need to realize is that even though their influence on U.S. culture is slipping away, God has not disappeared. Rather, Christians living out a biblical worldview will increasingly look different from their culture. In a sense, this is a good thing.
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“If we’ve become too much like what preachers call the world, worldliness, and people can’t see in the church, or in Christian people, any distinctive difference from the world around them, then what’s to draw them to Christ in Christianity. What draws them to the Church? So, it can get our attention in a positive way to make us wake up,” Rogers explains.
The message of the Gospel doesn’t change, but how it is shared might. And U.S. Christians will likely need to relearn how to live out the Christian faith, particularly in a pluralist society where God’s truth is increasingly hard to share and unpopular. After all, truth in the United States is viewed through a relative lens rather than considered absolute. However, it is vital truth is shared with love and respect.
But how?
Still, this leaves a question unanswered. How do believers in the U.S. live out their faith in a changing cultural and moral landscape?
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“The answer is spiritual. You still go back to Micah 6:8 that were to walk humbly with our God, and that were to be faithful, or to speak the truth and love [as it] says in the New Testament. We’re to live out Christ. How shall they know we’re different? Well, we love one another…It’s not rocket science. It’s really pretty basic, Biblical Christianity,” Rogers says.
“You look back at Jesus, He didn’t start a political party, He didn’t hold an office. You know, He didn’t even own property or vote. He didn’t do any of those things. He did say render to Caesar those things that are Caesar’s, to God things [that] are God’s. And then He, of course, set forth the ethic of a Christian faith and how’re to live out our lives, no matter what the society. So, it might get tougher…but we’re still to live as unto the Lord.”
Are you living out Biblical Christianity today? Join us tomorrow as we look at examples of Christians in the Middle East and North Africa region who are doing just this in multi-religious societies.
Header photo by Matt Botsford on Unsplash.
