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Why the Culture War isn’t won by power, but influence.

There is a reason that Jesus didn’t call his disciples hunters of men, but fishers. As the Church experiences increasing persecution in America and certain trendsetters and policy makers seek to marginalize us, it is important to know the difference between a hunter and a fisher  — which is the difference between persuasion (or, power) and influence.

In his best-selling book The Art of Influence, Chris Widener uses hunting and fishing to explain the difference between persuasion and influence. When a person hunts, he says, he aggressively pursues his prey and subdues them by means of force  — lethal force. In the same way, persuasion (or, power) is often about expressing aggression in order to subdue others. It is an attempt to secure other people’s actions and opinions through coercion. In contrast, a fisherman accomplishes his purpose, not by coercion, but by attraction. He attracts, lures, and “reels in” his catch. How does he do that? By having really great bait.

This is how influence works. And it is how the Church is supposed to operate.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus used two metaphors to define his disciples. They are metaphors of influence. “You are the light of the world:” light attracts attention and provides guidance. “You are the salt of the earth:” salt not only preserves food, but it draws out its taste  — it makes the food more delicious. In the same way, the Church is meant to influence the nation and culture by drawing attention to Jesus Christ and demonstrating how his life reconciles ours to God. The Church is meant to influence the nation and culture by actions that not only preserve truth, goodness, and beauty, but also bring out their “taste”  — so that others savor them as well.

Some may lament the loss of the Church’s persuasive power in America  — in politics, education, or any area of civic life  — as a sign that the darkest times are coming soon. But a Church that transforms the nation and culture in which it exists is not one of persuasive political power, but of spiritual influence. It is the church that lures and attracts others with the “really great bait” of the truth, goodness, and beauty of Jesus Christ  — and the holiness of our own lives.

In the current culture war, we may very well lose the political battles over gay marriage, abortion, and religious liberty. We may be swept from positions of power, marginalized, ostracized, and alienated. We may have our rights and our freedoms taken from us.

But this does not mean we will lose our influence. In fact, it may well be the opposite.

Think about it: the early Church had no real power. But the early Christians led holy lives that influenced others. In a thoroughly pagan culture, the gospel spread like wildfire. Fewer and fewer people declared “Caesar is Lord!” More and more people proclaimed “Jesus is Lord!” Thousands of years later, the Roman Empire is gone. But the Church is alive and well  — for the “gates of Hell cannot prevail against her.”

By all means, continue to be active in politics. Engage the democratic process. Cast votes for good candidates and legislation that is right and just  — like H.R. 1179, the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act.

But if the ballot box and the Oval Office fail you, “be not afraid.” The hope of the Church to bring about change  — in a nation, a culture, and in a human soul  — has never been in her political power, but in her spiritual influence. It has been in her ability to shine her light on the Light of the World, and to help others savor the taste of the Bread of Heaven.

We are not called to be hunters, but fishers of men  — not coercive power-brokers, but influential citizens. We are called to be saints who attract others to the life and love of the carpenter from Nazareth.

One of my favorite keepsakes is a little 4×6 framed photo of my Grandpop Lotter and me standing together on the boardwalk of Barnegat Light, New Jersey.  It was taken in 1978, I am five years old, bright-eyed, pasty white, and scrawny, but “Pop-Pop” is tan, shirtless and muscular, and—as always—smiling with his eyes. Every time I look at that faded photo, I think of him and his kind, generous disposition, and the time he took me to see The Karate Kid.

The faded colors of the photo, as well as its grainy ‘70’s era quality, always evokes strong emotions of awe and melancholy.  I hold that photo, and I realize that the years go by, seasons of life come and go, but the only things that truly endure are those that are founded upon God and family.  If anyone ever writes a book about me, or I ever write a memoir, somehow that photo needs to make itself into the book.  It is a keepsake in which my soul takes no end of delight.

But just imagine.  Imagine if some ignorant man came along, subjected my keepsake to his cold logic and level-eyed scrutiny, and concluded that my cherished keepsake held no relative value for society.  It served no great function, it met no great need.  And, for this reason, he broke it into pieces and tossed it into the trash.

I would be furious.  And heart-broken.
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The day I graduated from seminary, I was in a foul mood. But my mood changed when I witnessed real love in action—the kind of love that Saint Paul prayed for the Philippians.  And the kind of love we’re supposed to pray for our friends.

It was mid-morning. My parents had taken me out to brunch at a local hotel and, like I said, I was miserable. I was grousing because I didn’t know what the future held. Seminary had been a tough—spiritually challenging—time for me, and I had no idea where God was going to have me serve.

But I was liberated from my pouting when I noticed an elderly couple a table away from us. The man was silver-haired and in good shape, sharply dressed in well-pressed trousers and a tweed jacket.

The woman was another story. While she wore a pretty lavender dress and her hair was neatly styled, she hunched over as she ate. She chewed with her mouth wide open. And her eyes were glazed over.

She was clearly in the advanced stages of dementia.
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Ever seen the classic Reese’s commercial from the 1980’s?

At one end of a street, a man is eating a chocolate bar while listening to music on headphones. On the other end of the street, a woman is doing the same thing—only she’s eating peanut butter.  Of course, they end up colliding.

“Hey,” the man says. “You got peanut butter in my chocolate!”

“Hey,” the woman replies.  “You got chocolate in my peanut butter!”

They take their headphones off, sample the new treat, and exclaim, “DELICIOUS!”

Then the narrator chimes in:  Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!  Two great tastes that taste great together!

That makes me think of human nature, and the question, “what does it mean to be human?”

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My mom once told me that when I was five years old, my parents had been fighting, and that somehow my kindergarten-level brain came to a somewhat surprising solution as to what it would take for them to reconcile.  While they argued, I fiddled around in the kitchen, gathering what I thought were the necessary ingredients for peace, and positioning them on a silver tray.

They continued to quarrel until I entered the room.  That’s when, according to my mom, they turned, looked at me, and immediately felt sheepish and convicted.  Because I had ripped up some slices of Wonder Bread and spread them on the tray.  And I had poured some cold Welch’s grape juice into two small cups.

You guessed it:  I was attempting to serve my parents Communion.

I admit:  when my mom first told me that story, I was a bit in awe of my younger self.  But over time, I was in far greater awe of the gracious gift of the Holy Spirit to impress upon a young mind the importance of the bread and cup–and what they point to:  the body and blood of Jesus Christ, the most important and life-sustaining things in the whole universe.

Lately, though, I have wondered—actually, I have come to believe—that this was the first movement of the Holy Spirit in directing me to a church, the Church, for which the body and blood of Jesus Christ are not just symbolized by, but really present in the bread and the cup.

This coming Easter, I will seek full communion in the Roman Catholic Church.  Although it will come as a shock and surprise to many who know me, several close friends and confidants have known I’ve been on this road for a long time.  My journey is not a snap decision, nor the result of my relationship with Kasia, but is the culmination of nearly six years of wrestling and reflecting on key theological issues.

Some may ask, “Why did you continue to serve as an evangelical Protestant pastor when you were thinking of converting?  Let me answer this way:  I knew the minute I met Kasia that she was the one I wanted to marry.  But there was still a process to undergo, a relationship to be built, and a certain schedule to maintain.  In the same way, I left Grace Baptist—and the wonderful people there—when I was convinced it was the right time for me—and for them—to do so.

I certainly don’t leave Protestantism because I have had a bad experience.  Far from it.  I treasure my upbringing by Christian parents whose spiritual heritage includes the revivalism of Billy Sunday’s “sawdust trail” and the biblical common sense of A.W. Tozer’s Christian Missionary Alliance.  And I would not, in any dispensation of God’s grace, give up my experience at Wheaton College—“the flagship school of American Evangelicalism” and the #1 college in the nation, according to the Roman Catholic journal First Things.

Sorry,  I had to brag about that last little point

I am so grateful for my evangelical Protestant heritage.  I have been taught the importance of personal conversion to Jesus Christ, the paramount importance of God’s Word, and the urgent mandate to preach the kingdom and share the gospel with whomever I meet.  Although I will join the Catholic Church, my heroes will remain great Protestant saints like C.S. Lewis, Rich Mullins, Billy Graham, and John Piper—and I believe the Catholic Church would experience great renewal if she could receive a double-portion of their spirits.

Nevertheless, as Thomas Howard, the Roman Catholic brother of Protestant icon Elisabeth Eliot once wrote, “evangelical is not enough.”  There is a fullness to the Christian faith that I have come to believe can only be experienced in the Catholic Church—the one, holy, and apostolic Church founded by Jesus Christ.

G.K. Chesterton, the Roman Catholic writer whom many consider the spiritual father of C.S. Lewis, once wrote, “the difficulty in explaining why I am a Catholic is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason:  that Catholicism is true.”

I will never be able to defend my decision to join the Church as well as Chesterton, and many of you will no doubt find my logic flawed and my arguments weak.  In those instances, I hope to refer you to a Catholic saint or brother who is wiser and more competent than I—people like Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkein, John Henry Newman, Scott Hahn, Patrick Madrid, Thomas Howard, and Francis Beckwith.

That said, my basic reasons for joining the Church—simply stated—are as follows.  (I will elaborate on them in the future.)

Authority. I want to love Jesus.  So, how does Jesus Christ exercise his Lordship in my life?  Do I study the Bible and, “led by the Holy Spirit” and “sound hermeneutical principles,” determine its meaning and submit to its truth?  As I do this, how do I determine which pastors, teachers, and theologians are trustworthy and reliable guides and helpers?  How do I determine whether the beliefs and practices of other professing Christians are valid?  In the end, do I not just choose those who agree with my interpretations?  Doesn’t this make my own subjective interpretations—and not the objective Word of God—the final arbiter on matters of faith and practice?

This approach—which is basically the one espoused by the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura—is fraught with danger and, in the end, undermines the authority of both Scripture and Christ.  Because the authority doesn’t end up being the Bible at all, but instead the interpretations of each individual biblical interpreter.

The fruits of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura speak for themselves:  divisions in the Church, multiple and idiosyncratic interpretations, and confusion and despair of certainty among God’s faithful.  This much I believe:  Sola Scriptura does not promote the authority of Scripture.  Undeniably, it undermines it.

Instead, I’ve come to the joyful conclusion that God loves us so much he doesn’t just give us a book and say, “figure it out.”   He has given us a book and a Church with a historic, living, reliable teaching authority.

Unity. In John 17, Jesus said,   “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”  The Church of Jesus Christ is supposed to reflect the unity of the Trinity itself!   I have come to the conclusion that this unity was always meant to be real, organizational, visible unity—not the sort of “spiritual, invisible” unity promoted in so many Protestant circles.  “A city on a hill cannot be hidden.”

The sacraments—especially the Eucharist. A sacrament is “a visible sign of an invisible grace.”  It is something material communicating something spiritual.  The Roman Catholic Church teaches the importance of certain sacraments—including baptism, confirmation, marriage, and others.

I have embraced the sacraments because I have embraced what the Bible teaches about my humanity:  I am a unity of the physical and the spiritual.  Therefore, God wants to communicate himself to me through physical things.  The most important sacrament is the Eucharist.

It is not enough for God to strengthen me with “symbols” of his body and blood, because I am not a “symbol” of a man.  I am a real man.  That is, a real human being.  And that is why—among other reasons–Christians from the beginning of the Church have taught that in Communion, Jesus Christ so loves us that he gives us Himself:  his real body, blood, soul, and divinity.  There is only one Church that understands and teaches this:  the Roman Catholic Church.

Reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Honestly, there is so much misinformation out there about the Roman Catholic Church.  When I first read the Catechism—the Catholic Church’s comprehensive statement about what it actually believes—I was floored.  I was inspired.  I was excited.  Do Catholics worship Mary? Does the Pope replace Christ?  Do Catholics believe in works righteousness?  Do they devalue the Bible?  It is difficult for me to believe someone can continue to repeat these criticisms after giving a charitable reading to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

That’s it for now.  More later.

In closing, let me say that I am not unaware of what I am leaving behind.  At many times in life, I may discover that I found deeper and richer fellowship with evangelicals than with Roman Catholics.  In general, I find evangelicals to be more biblically literate, personally pious, and committed to evangelism and God’s word.  But in the last couple of years, I have met Roman Catholics who are heroically virtuous, deeply committed to the study of Scripture, and who understand that, Protestant or Catholic, our only hope is Jesus Christ.

As I write this, the faces of the students I have pastored for the last 9 years come to my mind.  Many of you will be told that I have rejected all that I have taught you.  Let me respectfully say:  this is untrue.

Responses to my decision will be mixed.  If he was still alive, C.S. Lewis would continue to consider me a brother in the Lord. John Macarthur, almost certainly, would not.  I could be wrong about that.  Either way, I still hold him in high regard.

You will meet good, godly people who think I have gone off the deep end.  You will meet some who think my move is brave and meaningful.  You might even meet some who are inspired to follow me.

Whatever the case, I urge you to trust me, to believe that I am the same person you have always known me to be, and that, in the end, I am simply trying to be the best follower of Jesus Christ I can possibly be.  I am here for you and for anyone else who has questions.

One question, however, that should not be in doubt:  do I still believe in grace?  Yes.  Now more than ever.  Because Jesus Christ has given me the grace to come home to his Church.  It is His grace that has “brought me safe thus far” and, I am fully persuaded, “it is grace that will bring me home.”

The peace of Christ to you,

Vaughn

p.s.:  you are welcome to post comments or questions.

In Thornton Wilder’s short play, The Angel That Troubled the Waters, a physician comes to a magical pool guarded by an angel.  After watching others enter into the pool and be healed, the physician approaches the water to be healed of a terrible unnamed burden.  But the angel prevents him:

ANGEL:  Draw back, Physician, this moment is not for you.

PHYSICIAN:  Angelic visitor, I pray thee, listen to my prayer.

THE ANGEL:  Healing is not for you.

THE PHYSICIAN:  Oh, in such an hour was I born, and doubly fearful to me is the flaw of my heart.  Must I drag my shame, prince and singer, all my days more bowed than my neighbor?

THE ANGEL (Stands a moment in silence):  Without your wound where would your power be?  It is your very remorse that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men.  The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living.  In love’s service only wounded soldiers can serve. Draw back.

Recently, I thought of the angel’s words, when a dear friend of mine shared with me that though she was nearly fifty years old, she was still struggling with the feelings of fear and rejection that she experienced in her childhood.  Early on in life, she was the victim of both physical and emotional abuse, and a couple of weeks ago an unpleasant exchange with a co-worker once again aggravated wounds that have never really healed.

My dear friend sent me an email that asked, “why am I the way I am?”  Similar questions would be, “why doesn’t God choose to fully heal our wounds?  Can’t he do that if he wants? Isn’t Jesus called the Great Physician?”

My answer, in part, is that I don’t really know why God often chooses to extend only partial healing in this life.  I do know that the ache of lingering wounds reminds us of our weakness, and Saint Paul is clear that God’s grace is sufficient for us, for “[his] power is made perfect in weakness…when we are weak, then we are strong” (1 Corinthians 12).

I also know, and this is what I told my friend—we’ll call her J—that I can see in her life the beauty that has grown out of her wounds.   Of all the people I have known, she is one of the sweetest and most compassionate.  Though she also suffers from Fibromyalgia, which is physically debilitating, she loves to work out in her yard, and she has an amazing talent for landscaping.  She can transform a featureless lawn into a flowerful paradise.  Though she is in constant pain, she still possesses a gift for beauty.

This seems to be a consistent phenomenon in the history of God’s people.  The greatest, most faith-filled saints often struggled with the most excruciating pain and sorrow.  The great preacher Charles Spurgeon suffered from intense depression and a debilitating case of gout.  The poet and hymn writer William Cowper lived his entire life in a melancholy bordering on mental illness.  And, C.S. Lewis, from whose pen sprang forth Mere Christianity and the wonder of Narnia, met Joy Davidman, the love of his life, when he was fifty-four.  Eight years later, he lost her to cancer.

Why would God choose to inflict such hardship on those who had dedicated their lives to him?  Why would the blood of Jesus heal their sins, but not take away their sorrows?  Well, Charles Spurgeon ended up being considered “the Prince of Preachers.”  His preaching was known for its fire and compassion, led hundreds of thousands of people to Christ, and strengthened the Church both in England and abroad.  Throughout the years, the words of William Cowper’s hymns and poems have been sung and repeated by millions of believers as they lifted their voices to worship God.  And Lewis went on to write A Grief Observed, a mournful but powerful reflection on his experience of death and loss, which has brought comfort and healing to countless others.

So, if you experience pain and suffering, or an ache in your soul or body that simply will not go away, remember the angel’s words to the physician.  It seems he was right:  in love’s service, only wounded soldier’s can serve.