If You Can't Beat 'em, Join 'em

I came accross this article in Relevant Magazine by one of my favorite contributers, John Fischer. The article discusses a topic of great interest to me. Culture. Here is a brief snippet.

A culture war is simply not an effective model for changing culture. A culture war is a negative potsturing toward the world that only creates further resistance. The people for whom Christ died end up aliented by the carriers of the very gospel that can save them. Christians are in this world to spread the good news of God's grace, not to create a culture that is more to our liking or safer for our children. Christians are here primarily to love God and to love our neighbors and to do that within the context of our place in the world, wherever that might be.

Over the last year, God has been teaching me how to be open to the culture I am in. I have spent so much of my life operating in the school of thought that teaches that we as Christians must separate ourselves from the culture around us. We have no part with secular culture...movies, music, social activities. We speak so much about how God "meets us where we are" and "takes us just as we are" yet we as Christians don't embrace this. I believe God wired us to relate to eachother through the common grounds and circumstances of our culture. How often do we fight culture. What is the point. Would our energy be best spent elsewhere?