Thread by @sometimesalight

A few quibbles, but this is helpful grid to understanding how different facets of (conservative) evangelicalism respond to cultural challenges. Still, it's essential to recognize that each is a *response.* What would it look like for the church to lead in cultural formation?

https://twitter.com/RevKevDeYoung/status/1369256981412864002

Obviously, this includes rightly assessing

1) where we are
2) where we need to be and
3) ethical ways to get there.

But I wonder if the biggest cultural challenge evangelicals face is simply a failure of imagination.

A significant part of the division we face is b/c the questions themselves are unresolvable w/in modern, contemporary paradigms. We are at an impasse, a dead end, not simply b/c we don't understand each other but b/c our resources & imagination are limited.

We are too busy responding to the established narrative instead of challenging & changing it. We are operating in flawed paradigms & we're stuck in them.

The way forward must involve questioning the paradigms that have been delivered to us. Asking how all of us--conservative & progressive alike--have been trapped in unwinnable, unresolvable debates.

In a conversation yesterday, I remarked that Christianity is a kind of parallel universe that's breaking into our own. Christ's Kingdom is way of thinking & imagining. It is not fundamentally reactionary. It is not simply a response to the kingdoms of the world.

Part of our calling as Christians is to imagine a better way. To be creative & forward thinking & embody the realities of heaven here on earth. We're not aiming at utopia. But we do have deep resources of imagination, hope, grace, & abundance that our world desperately needs.

We are of little good to anyone if we simply respond to the culture as it exists & operate w/in its established paradigms. Our job is to break the paradigms. To proclaim new & better ways of being.

But to do this, we must know these ways ourselves. We must understand the deeper magic. We must have our imaginations cultivated by first principles. We must recover an understanding of faith & gospel that goes beyond our cultural iterations of it.

B/c part of reclaiming & cultivating Christian imagination means recognizing the degree to which *our* own thinking has been shaped by cultural categories. We must understand that both left & right are swimming in the same polluted stream. Even if in opposite directions.

I'm convinced that the only way forward in these "hot button" issues is through recovery of first principles & cultivating prophetic imagination. An imagination that can look beyond what *is* to what should & could be.

Certainly we must deal with the realities of this moment. We must see things for what they are & speak truthfully about them. But we do this in order to move toward true goodness.

As long as our goal is to respond to cultural challenges, we will be forever locked in debates b/c the paradigms delivered to us are unsolvable. (Which is why we resort to force & dominance to "win.") But what if we could reframe the Qs? What if we could imagine a better way?