Descending Mount Sinai: Navigating in a Post-Christian World

By Ken Kinton

The book looks at the contemporary issues surrounding politics, society, and church and offers suggested solutions and outcomes using a biblical lens. The books purpose is to balance our daily mountaintop experiences of God with a secular world that tries to dissuade Christians from becoming more spiritual. The events in our world today can lead to disillusionment. This book tries to give a perspective that each of us can have a positive impact in shaping a better world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781512797336

Ken Kinton

Ken Kinton offers a unique perspective on contemporary issues by comparing and contrasting similar issues that took place during biblical times. He has completed extensive coursework in biblical studies, and he holds a master of arts degree in pastoral ministry, a master of divinity degree, and a doctor of ministry degree.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Rugged Terrain

IN THE OLD TESTAMENT BOOK of Exodus, beginning at chapter nineteen, we are told the story of Moses and the Israelites reaching the Sinai desert. Most Christians ought to be familiar with the story of Moses climbing Mount Sinai and receiving the Ten Commandments from God on two tablets made of stone. The most powerful scene of the story, arguably, is when Moses sees the Israelites dancing around a golden calf as he is descending the mountain. In a fit of rage, Moses shatters the stone tablets into pieces and must return up Mount Sinai to receive a new set of tablets. I use this story to illustrate my thesis for this book. In the lives of Christians today, each of us is likely to face challenges that will seem as difficult as climbing and descending Mount Sinai was for Moses.

Moses had to face the societal and political issues that affected the Israelites, and so too must we navigate a world that functions in a way contrary to our Christian values and sensibilities. As Christians today, we must tread the tightrope of political correctness while still remaining true to the precepts of the gospel that Jesus Christ laid out for us two thousand years ago. While the answer might seem easy to some—just put a megachurch on every street corner and just bully the secular world into submission—it isn’t realistic. The reason it is not realistic is that we are no longer in a modern or postmodern culture; we have evolved into a decidedly post-Christian culture. The fact that we have authors penning books about the demise of God, or the idea that people are somehow better off without God, should be reason for concern among those proclaiming the Christian faith.

The primary symptom behind this post-Christian movement is a new narcissism that has pervaded our culture. One only needs to watch television ads to understand the emphasis advertisers put on self-gratification. Every marketing strategy seems to emphasize appeal over utility, or as I like to refer to it, the sizzle in place of the steak. Here in the Buffalo, New York, area, one of the local programs regularly features promos for a spa where you can have everything from unwanted bodily hair to unwanted fat removed. They even promise results in eight easy treatments! However, churches also like to get in on the narcissism bandwagon. I have to admit I have not warmed up to the idea of the catchy messages some churches put on their signs. Churches, sadly, seem more interested in luring people in with gimmickry and attractions than with their proclamation of the gospel.

Christian philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once wrote, But woe, woe to the Christian Church if it would triumph in this world, for then it is not the Church that triumphs, but the world has triumphed.¹ At the very root of the problem for the church today is that the church has become an entertainment venue rather than a place to experience the growing pains inherent in the daily life of a Christian. It has also become an insular setting, where people who look like us, believe as we do, and think like we do are comfortable for us to associate with. However, if someone enters a church who does not look as we do, there is a palpable discomfort among some of the established members of the church. The church in many instances has also been uncomfortable with reaching out to those individuals who have not yet accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. I would suggest that part of some individuals’ reluctance to embrace Jesus is that the church presents the gospel in language that is either too complex to understand or exclusionary of certain segments of society. As Calvin Miller states, Let the church celebrate its own heritage and traditions if it must. But the church that reaches the unevangelicized world will speak the street language of encounter.²

In our earlier discussion, we noted how Moses encountered God on Mount Sinai. As he descended the mountain, he encountered the raucous behavior of the Israelites as they worshipped a calf made of gold. So how do modern Christians encounter those who worship the human-made idols of our time? Instead of golden calves, we are confronted with people who worship large, elaborate homes. Or we see people who need to have the most expensive automobiles. In the Old Testament, prophets were the individuals who were called upon to confront the social and political issues of the day. As we will discuss in a later chapter, prophets were more than predictors of the future—they were the sociologists and political analysts of their time. While we may not believe we are capable of being like the Old Testament prophets, we can be better equipped to understand the social and political issues of our day.

Dr. Calvin Miller illustrates how the prophets had a profound impact on the societies they inhabited: One can find the object-lesson sermons of Jeremiah or Isaiah an album of sociological pictures. These prophets not only preached out-of-doors but made their sermons fit their various object lessons! Jeremiah, for instance, once stumbled through the city under an ox yoke. This image was video ahead of its time. The stumbling icon spoke without words: God would soon put a yoke around the neck of Israel.³ Jeremiah did not need words to convey his message; he merely held up a mirror for the Israelites to see their abject behavior for themselves. This is something that you and I are capable of doing as well. We need not be eloquent orators or learned scholars in order to have a positive impact on a society that has evolved into a post-Christian state of existence.

A Pauline View

It is conceivable there will be no official declaration that as a society, or a church, we have entered into a post-Christian age. There probably won’t be a breaking news story on the nightly cable news programs, where it seems a sensational story is breaking every ten minutes. Newscasters will not breathlessly report that Christendom has collapsed, with breaking details after we pause for a commercial break. It will also never be brought up in a Sunday sermon, particularly if the sermon is followed by the collection of the weekly offering. Nothing could sour a cheerful or cheerless giver more than the admission that his or her hard-earned money is supporting an already lost cause. Such a proclamation would also adversely affect weekly attendance totals, which already cause pastors and church boards alike enough sleepless nights. So the question that begs to be answered is how can we know if in fact we are living in a post-Christian world? The answer lies in studying the Bible, and it is about being vigilant to what we see with our eyes and what we hear with our ears. At that point, we will need to sift and discern this data and arrive at our own conclusions.

In order to better understand what we see and hear, it is helpful to read what the apostle Paul wrote to the churches in Corinth, as found in 1 Corinthians 1:17–21:

The message of the cross is folly for those who are on the way to ruin, but for those of us who are on the road to salvation it is the power of God. As scripture says, I am going to destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of any who understand. Where are the philosophers? Where are the experts? [Isaiah 29:14;19:12]. And where are the debaters of this age? Do you not see how God has shown up human wisdom as folly? Since in the wisdom of God the world was unable to recognize God through wisdom it was God’s own pleasure to save believers through the folly of the gospel.

Paul is warning the churches in Corinth, and us for that matter, that those who profess to have all the answers are the very people we ought to be wary of in their teachings. The wisdom that Paul is speaking is the wisdom that can only come directly from God. The Old Testament provides us with the definition of that wisdom, as told to us in Wisdom 7:26–30:

For she is a reflection of the eternal light, untarnished mirror of God’s active power, and image of His goodness. Although she is alone, she can do everything; herself unchanging, she renews the world, and, generation after generation, passing into holy souls, she makes them into God’s friends and prophets; for God loves only those who dwell with Wisdom. She is indeed more splendid than the sun, she outshines all the constellations; compared with light,