Many will recognise the words found in my title. Actually, they might have one of two different books and authors in mind. Both in their own ways were Christian apologists and culture warriors. They both had a very clear understanding of where we as believers are at in the post-Christian West. The two books are these:
How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture by Francis Schaeffer (Fleming H. Revell, 1976)
How Now Shall We Live? by Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey (Tyndale House Publishers, 1999)
Both men had God’s heart and mind on the sad situation the Christian Church finds itself in. Both knew that we were in dire straits, and believers needed to snap out of their daydreaming and lethargy and gird themselves for action. Both were deeply concerned for what was happening all around them.
And what is happening to us today is not unlike what happened to ancient Israel. Because of sin and disobedience, both the northern and southern kingdoms were judged by God. In the south, Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed and many Jews were taken into captivity. Those who loved God deeply could only grieve and weep. Consider seven key passages on this:
Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by
Look around and see. Lamentations 1:12
My eyes will flow without ceasing,
without respite,
until the Lord from heaven
looks down and sees;
my eyes cause me grief
at the fate of all the daughters of my city. Lamentations 3:49-51
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land? Psalm 137:1-4
O God, the nations have come into your inheritance;
they have defiled your holy temple;
they have laid Jerusalem in ruins.…
How long, O Lord? Psalm 79:1, 5
The Spirit then lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness and in the anger of my spirit, with the strong hand of the LORD upon me. I came to the exiles who lived at Tel Abib near the Kebar River. And there, where they were living, I sat among them for seven days, overwhelmed. Ezekiel 3:14-15
They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.” When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. Nehemiah 1:3-4
So the king asked me, “Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart.” I was very much afraid,but I said to the king, “May the king live forever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my ancestors are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?” Nehemiah 2:2-3
These texts make clear the sort of heart attitude we need to have in our own similar situation. And it should be fairly obvious how Israel’s Babylonian captivity is not unlike where the church in the West today is at. As I wrote in an earlier piece:
To see his relevance for believers today, consider these parallels. As to the Babylonian captivity:
-The Israelites found themselves in a hostile culture, whose values, worldviews and language was quite different.
-They went from being the predominant culture to a counterculture.
-They went from being cultural leaders to cultural captives.
How should we then live? I have often spoken and written about this matter. And I always say we need to get God’s heart on all this. We should grieve over what he grieves over. We should be broken-hearted over what breaks his heart. We should be greatly concerned about what he is concerned about.
It is NOT business as usual. We are in dire straits, and we need to get the mind and heart of God on all this. Here I want to simply share some commentary from other Christian writers on the two Nehemiah passages. Wallace Benn says this about the Neh. 1 passage:
Nehemiah was expressing a deep concern for the welfare of the people of God, the church of his day. The state of the church then caused him to weep, mourn, and above all, pray (1:4).
How concerned are you about the welfare of your church? We should be first concerned about the health and well-being of the congregation we are part of. In this day of a growing lack of commitment, when regular attendance at church can mean twice a month rather than twice a week, how committed are you to your church and how prayerful are you about its well-being? As a church warden (lay elder) once said to me, “If we prayed as often for our ministers as we are willing to criticize them, the church would be a much healthier place!”
Nehemiah was not only concerned about the well-being of his own congregation in Susa; he had a wider vision, and so should we. How concerned are you about the health of the church in your city or area? In your country? While we cannot meet the needs of Christians everywhere, we should have a concern to pray and support suffering believers in some particular part of God’s world. Nehemiah wasn’t parochial in vision or concern; he had wide horizons, and that concern drove him not to depression or a fatalistic attitude but to God in prayer.
Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther: Restoring the Church (Preaching the Word)by Benn, Wallace P. (Author), Hughes, R. Kent (Series Editor)
And on the Neh. 2 text he says this:
How does the work of God get done? It gets done by a person with a concern for the glory of God and the well-being of his people, a prayerful heart that engages in persistent prayer with others, claiming God’s promises, a dedicated and involved person who is ready and willing to be used by God. In every generation, these are the kind of people God raises up and uses to get his work done. Nehemiah was certainly like that.
James Hamilton Jr. speaks of Nehemiah’s great concern for God’s people, and asks us about our chief concerns:
If you care more about how your favorite college football team does on Saturday than you do about how the gospel is advancing, that’s probably because your identity is more shaped by the time you’ve spent watching and talking about football than the time you’ve spent studying the Bible. Which do you know better: the roster, stats, and prospects of your team, or the contents of the Scriptures? Who do you feel more passionate about: the players on your favorite team, or pastors and missionaries and co-laborers in the gospel? Which would grieve you more: seeing your favorite team lose the national championship, or hearing that Christians are being persecuted in a faraway place?
Nehemiah is in exile in Persia, but though he is in the world he is not of it. He doesn’t mourn like those who have no hope. He mourns because the enemies of God’s kingdom have prevailed, and he mourns because he loves God’s kingdom more than life. He also doesn’t stop with prayer. Nehemiah intends to go into action, and in verse 11 he asks that God will prosper what he sets out to do:
Please, Lord, let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant and to that of Your servants who delight to revere Your name. Give Your servant success today, and have compassion on him in the presence of this man.
And lastly, these comments from Mark Roberts:
Let me clarify that in commending a vulnerability that allows for sadness, I do not intend to sanctify unhappiness. Many Christians walk around with dour faces, not because they feel the broken heart of God, but because they are mired in self-pity. The fact that someone cries for days at a time does not guarantee his or her fitness for ministry! My intent is rather to challenge popular Christianity, which emphasizes joy to such an extent that a genuine, Spirit-filled sadness has no place in the Christian life. For all Christians, and especially for leaders open to the heart of God, there is indeed “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (Eccl. 3:4).
Notice in this passage what Nehemiah did with his grief. He did not try to forget it, nor did he simply pine away; rather, he fasted and prayed. He took his grief before God. Prayer is the place to process God’s work in our hearts; it is where we discover and clarify God’s call upon our lives. Prayer provides the only sure foundation for our lives and our leadership.
These are all helpful reminders of how we must deal with what we find happening all around us. The world is certainly in a mess, but all too often that is because the church is in a mess. We need to get God’s heart on this, we need to pray about this, and we need to act on this.
Susan Ley, the new Liberal Party leader has challenged the Government over the rise of anti-Semitism in Australia. This is a very good start.