theology | Al Ngu sermons & devotion

I am most sympathetic and liking towards the Transformationalist model of Christian and culture engagement, because it is active in influencing culture. It has the Kuyperian touch of Neo Calvinism, which spreads the influence of Christ over all aspects of culture. This model looks at the secular work in the world as important way to serve Christ and his Kingdom, and calls for the importance for Christians excelling in the work, and their spheres of influence. Christians must bring their distinctive Christian commitment to Public Square. And make them as part of the identity. I do have reservation of their triumphalism, self-righteousness, and overconfidence, which comes from the lack of theological understanding of the common grace outside the church. And their politically active in wanting to change politics is attractive, and compelling as Kuyper’s view on Christ rules overall including politics. However, excessive confidence in politics as a means of changing culture may be backfiring, though it’s the right direction as part of the overall package.

The Countercultures model is the saddest because they withdraw or separatist from the world, with a dispensationalist mentality. Saying that the return of culture is imminent, so no point in saving the culture. Basically, leaving the world to rot, and the spiritual darkness takes over the governments, and implement whatever godless culture to our kids and families and society. And they downplay penal substitutional redemption because they don’t believe God will endorse a violent atonement. The other problem is this philosophy undermines communication with the fallen world as Christians are so separated from the world, the culture.

The Two Kingdom Model places high value on secular vocations, like teacher, lawyer, etc. They believes in a strong doctrine of common grace in the public sphere. Christians and non-Christians can work together well. I do not like the low expectations for cultural reformation prior to the eschaton, in the Amillennialism viewpoint, resulting in the mindset that Church is going to be a minority. And it’s not big for cultural transformation and will not have a great deal of influence and power in the world. This is problematic in my view.

They tend to accept secularism. They encourage the church not to take action against society’s ills. Church only does gospel ministry and not meant to get involved in politics, social issues. Not to speak out on social political. And not act to organize on social issues. All these are problematic. In my view.

The Relevance model. They have such great optimism about cultural trends. Instead of influencing the culture, they’re bringing the culture into the Christian life. They emphasize on the common good and human flourishing. That Christians needs to promote the common good, and not just the welfare for the Church, but all of society and seeking to rectify injustices, which is a very good. Mindset of this model is to treat Christian and church as synonymous. There are groups like Liberation Theology, Black, Liberation Theology, Feminine Theology. And seeker sensitive movement like Willow Creek and Emerging Church Movement.

The biggest problem of this model is they have a low view of theological precision or orthodoxy and Christian tradition. And this another huge problem is this supplanted evangelism and conversion by emphasis on social action. There’s not much preaching of the gospel and asking for repentance, but move to social action and social gospel, false gospel. There is an erosion of the biblical distinction between the church and the world. And they regard any distinction will be problematic by them. They have a lack of enthusiasm for membership and discipline under authority of eldership. To me, this doesn’t sound like they’re even a born again group of Christians.

Tim Keller., Loving the City., Zondervan, 2016.

H Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, Harper one, 2001.

In one of my classes, I loved what my prof said on the case of John the Baptist criticized King Herod for marrying his sister in law publicly on moral ground.

The law of God is not just for Christians, but its for all human beings whether they recognize it or not because they are all made in the image of God. God’s people have the right and obligation to speak publicly on moral and political issues. Justice of God for all people. Christians to stand up and say its not right, evil wicked. Should church leaders keep out of politics? Strictly no.

Yes! God’s people have the right and obligation to speak out publicly on moral and political issues, justice for all. My question is why are the reformed pastors, leaders, scholars so quiet on the ongoing society moral sexual immorality that has affected our elementary schools, and universities and everything in between? And our politicians of certain political party pushing for abortion, and same sex marriage, transgenderism? These issues affect thousands and millions of Americans.

I think the key is the understanding that all men & women are made in the image of God. And church leadership in the House of God must also speak of any concern that affects anyone bearing the image of God and not just being exclusively confined to church. Because all men and women are created in the image of God and therefore it’s incumbent on pastors & theology scholars to speak out on moral and political issues and justice for all people. In fact I would argue that is even more incumbent and responsibility upon the leadership of the church to speak out on such because they know more of the theological issues from the holy scriptures and being good shepherds assigned by the great shepherd our Lord Jesus Christ comes with the responsibility and honor to do the job. I think the question is to confine that in the church or speak out on issues in our society, our city, our nation in general? Kuyper famously said that not a square inch in this world that Christ doesn’t say “it’s mine!”.

If God’s leadership from the churches don’t speak out and the scholars don’t speak out, there exists a huge vacuum of lacking the voice of God in some very crucial issues in our society like abortion, same sex marriage, or marriage between a man and a woman like in Genesis 1, God brought Eve to Adam and God said the man shall leave his parents and be joined to his wife and become one. That kind of thing needs to be expounded to the society at large. The separation of the church and state has gone too far in constraining the voice of God in the hands of pastor’s leaders and theologians that has crippled God’s voice to the society at large. John the Baptist spoke out against the king and his time and he didn’t care about the separation of the church and state. Augustine wrote the book City of God to rebut the voice of the political world of the Roman Empire which had just fallen and blamed the church for its downfall. Augustine became the most powerful voice of the Christian churches or Christendom against such tyranny and lies of the Roman world. In fact the biggest spiritual battle is the lies of the devil perpetrated into our postmodernism world in their ideas that have poisoned and influenced thousands and thousands of young people, college students, and that’s what we see for example recently what happened to Harvard University, U Penn, and MIT.

We need leaders in the House of God to speak with conviction and be filled with the Holy Spirit to our modern era.

I think the biggest fear of Christians and pastors and scholars of scripture to speak out on moral and political issues it’s the fear of backfiring. As far as the moral issues go, Christians leaders have no qualms to speak out against social injustice, crimes etcetera but the problem comes on the issue of sexuality. We have to know and understand that there’s a difference in speaking out against sin and speak it out against sinners. To be perfectly clear we are all sinners in the process of sanctification by the grace of God. But that doesn’t mean we cannot speak out against sin and by doing that we are not attacking the sinners or the people who commit sins, in fact on the contrary we pray earnestly that sinners will repent and come back to the way of godliness in Christ and that applies to our society overall and in general. So by speaking out on moral issues like John the Baptist, he criticized king Herod he in fact went a step further than most churches today. I’m sure if king Harry repented John the Baptist would have been so pleased and congratulate him and pray for him. In the same way we pray for sinners to come back to God and at the same time we expose the darkness of our society as the scripture says to expose the deeds of darkness.

Ephesians 5:10–13 (ESV)

¹⁰and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. ¹¹Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. ¹²For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. ¹³But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible,

So conclusion is are we exposing them?