Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I started blogging recently on natural theology and presuppositionalism, but before returning to that, my mind has been pondering lately what I heard about the recent royal wedding. No. I didn’t bother watching. I was out of town and sick anyway. I have heard from some people however that based on a reading of Romans 12, that this wedding was to be a witness of the impact of Christianity on our culture.
On the contrary, I think it’s a witness of the impact of secularism on our culture.
Let’s take a look at some basic facts that will show this. To begin with, the prince and the now princess lived together before they were married. This is not in line with the Christian tradition of sexuality. Not only that, the bride was pregnant before the wedding and the honeymoon is even being put on hold.
But they read Romans 12 at the wedding!
That doesn’t demonstrate the importance of Christianity. In fact, I see it as looking at Christianity as a relic of a bygone era. It’s like doing the tradition that you do simply because it is the tradition. Religion is what we do for marriages, but on the way that we live our lives as a whole, it does not make a difference. It is Stephen Jay Gould’s NOMA in some ways.
If we wanted a Christian witness, then we needed Christianity to be a part of not just the wedding, but also the dating, engagement, and the marriage itself. We in America and the West overall need to look at the way that our society is living and see if marriage is being treated as sacred. Are even Christians doing that?
Why have some looked at it so quickly as a witness. Could it be because we are lacking witness elsewhere? Now I am not against Christian films and TV shows and such, but are we often using the media to make a case for us? If we can take someone to see a movie like “The Passion of the Christ” well that will show them the importance of Christianity. No need for us to really study the Scriptures. We’ll just count on the media to do things for us. No need for us to form a witness to the world. We’ll just wait until Scripture is read in a major event televised around the world and claim that it was a witness.
I don’t doubt that some people were converted by movies like the Passion. Some of us however just weren’t impressed. I actually did not really care for it too much. For me, a movie like “Luther” was much more enjoyable. I own a copy of that film. My reason for not liking the Passion was because I did not see enough emphasis on the deity of Christ and too much stuff added in that was not Scriptural. If someone comes to Christ, great, but I hope they were discipled as well. If we count on someone to get an emotional response to a movie, TV show, song, etc., we could be setting ourselves up for failure as not all people will do that.
That Romans 12 was read is not going to have a major impact on non-Christians out there any more than hearing Christmas Carols that have religious themes will be impacting on them. I seriously doubt people the world over were talking to one another about the wedding and saying “I really loved that stuff from the Bible. I think it was Romans 12. Maybe I need to study Christianity more!”
Want a witness to the world? The best witness to the world is to BE the witness. Our jumping at any thing that we can shows not how seriously we take our faith, but rather that we fear our faith is being seen as antiquated in our modern world, and if it is, we ultimately have no one to blame but ourselves.
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