Relevance: The Woodsman Interview File
Aug. 10 2006
Our interview with the theologian intern outdoorsman continues.
Na: Let’s talk about the issue of “relevance” and whether Christians should care about what is going on in the culture. Should the Christian worldview shift according to pop culture?
W: Some aspects of the way we communicate the Christian worldview have to change as our culture changes or as we bring the gospel to a foreign culture. We have to “translate” the gospel into the idiom of our time and place.
Na: But isn’t scripture clear that the fundamental message we proclaim doesn’t change?
W: Yes, translating the message is different than changing its substance. The substance of the Christian view of God, man, and the world remains the same because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8), and because the faith has been delivered once for all to the saints in the Scriptures (Jude 3).
Na: So, do we need to try to do things to make the gospel more “relevant”?
W: Ultimately, we can’t possibly make the gospel any more relevant than it already is. The gospel is inherently and universally relevant because it answers the universal human condition: we are born dead in sin, alienated from God, willing slaves of Satan, destined for wrath (Eph. 2:1-3).
Na: So beneath culture and environment there’s a common denominator for all human beings.
W: Right. Deep down, beneath all of our sophistication, distraction, and evasion, we know that we are image-bearers of God and yet we deserve to die for our sin (Rom. 1:32). The death of Christ in the place of God’s enemies, his triumphant resurrection, his enthronement at the right hand of God, and his imminent return to climactically rid the world of all evil, is the only message that is truly relevant to the real human dilemma.
Na: OK but in our contemporary culture all of that sounds too weird, too miraculous, too distant in the past, too judgmental and intolerant and violent to be relevant to people’s felt needs.
W: The trouble is that sin has distorted our sense of what our real needs are. We think that our deepest needs are for true love or better health or a more satisfying career or more money or whatever. Nobody ever wakes up in the morning thinking that their deepest need is for someone to die for their sins. We only come to see our real problem (sin and death) in light of the real solution (the cross of Christ). When the gospel is presented to us, then the Holy Spirit uses it to open our eyes to what our real need is.
Na: So Christians shouldn’t try to adapt the gospel to the felt needs of the culture, because the gospel itself will change the needs people feel?
W: Right. It is a strange message--not one that any of us would have thought of. The gospel will always be foolishness in the eyes of the world. But the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. We have to guard against robbing the cross of Christ of its power through our supposed eloquence and wisdom (1 Cor. 1:17-32).