I almost never watch the local news (and I avoid cable news, since I can almost feel myself getting dumber every second I spend watching it). But one evening this week I turned on the local news during dinner.

I took note of two back-to-back car commercials. One was a national commercial for Honda, replete with cars zipping through winter scenery while a gospel-sounding choir sang an alternate chorus of “Joy To the World!” in the background. The other was an area Mazda dealer touting their year-end sale, with one of the owners/spokesman enthusiastically saying “It’s the reason for the season!”.

It’s been clear for a while now, to those paying attention, that Christianity has become primarily a cultural artifact – as opposed to a deeply held and Biblically-based conviction – for a majority of the population. This isn’t particularly surprising given the trends in church attendance and affiliation.

Yet perhaps even more telling is that even though an ever-shrinking majority of Americans still respond to pollsters as espousing Christian faith, more in-depth polling reveals that a fairly small percentage actually hold to Biblically orthodox Christian beliefs. Scratch the surface, and we find that a growing number of them – including many who do attend church on a semi-regular or regular basis – really subscribe to what sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton identify as moralistic therapeutic deism. MTD is characterized by the following beliefs:

1. 1. A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
   2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
   3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
   4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
   5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

This is, of course, significantly contradictory to scripture. Scripture doesn’t call God’s people to be “nice”. It calls them to be obedient – to submit their wills, their thoughts, their lives, to God and His truth, as revealed in His word. (Of course, in doing so, we should love others with the love of Jesus. But a reading of the gospels pretty quickly shows that this love isn’t always warm and fuzzy). And scripture does not teach that “good” people go to heaven. Jesus himself said “No one is good – except God alone” (Mark 10:18, Luke 18:19). Instead, scripture teaches that those who accept and believe (a belief that involves the act of dying to oneself) in Jesus’ atoning sacrifice for their failures and sins will find passage to heaven (John 14:6). Now, that’s viewed by many as kind of a harsh and exclusionary statement from Jesus. But believers must resist any worldly instinct to soften it.

To be fair, I can’t completely fault church-goers for not being able to discern between biblical truth and pop-psychology-style theologies like MTD. Solid expository preaching from scripture isn’t practiced from a lot of pulpits. And even among those who do use expository preaching, an increasing number are using texts that are essentially a deconstruction of God’s word (such as the New Testament translation of David Bentley Hart). And it’s a practice that began some time ago. In the early 1900s, theologian Abraham Kuyper noted a trend of Biblical criticism being replaced by Biblical vandalism, carried out by theologians and professors who claimed to be seeking God’s truth, but whose hearts were hostile and defiant towards God’s word.

At any rate, those who recognize the trivialization of the true Christmas story in our culture, and are genuinely saddened by it, appear to be few (and becoming fewer, even among self-professed Christians).

And on an even deeper and broader level, if current cultural trends continue, those who hold to orthodox Christian beliefs – about the authority of scripture, about sexuality, about where we take our cues for our beliefs and attitudes, etc. – won’t just be in a minority. We are going to increasingly be on the “outs” in our culture. Called names. Reviled. And according to Jesus’ own words, that’s to be completely expected.

I think that’s why, lately, I’ve come to appreciate the Biblical images of God’s people as exiles. The prophet Jeremiah, speaking to the people of God as they were being carried off into captivity in Babylon (in this case, as punishment for their disobedience) admonished the people as they were getting ready to begin their lives as exiles: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile”.

The apostle Peter talks of God’s people being exiles scattered among the provinces. Foreigners. Strangers in the land.

It strikes me as an apt metaphor for orthodox believers today. Live as exiles. Hold the Word of God in the highest regard. Read it, study it, and keep it as your guide and rule. Do not adopt the values of the culture. Yet at the same time, seek to be a blessing to that culture – even if the culture reviles you.

So that’s going to be my mindset in the coming days and years.