The thing about culture is that it is always changing. That’s because culture is in a very real sense, created by humans. It’s the result of what we think, what we imagine, what we change, what we legislate, what we invent, what we relate to, and all kinds of other human experiences.

There are some moments however in which the changes are deeper and wider, the shifts in culture more fundamental. Many sense we’re living in such a time where the changes that have taken place over the last several decades have been substantial, to say the least. My friend Os Guinness calls this a “civilizational moment,” where society isn’t just at a critical crossroads in twenty-first century America. It’s instead at a critical crossroads for Western civilization itself.

Of course, history tells the story about civilizations, how they rise and fall. There are rules to civilizations, and if those rules are broken, then those civilizations no longer have a future. What Os means when he calls this a civilizational moment, is that we’re at a time when our future is unclear. Will Western civilization be renewed? Will it enter a time of revolution? Or will we continue in irreversible decline?

It’s important as Christians to always remember that the decline of Western civilization is not the decline of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God both predates and will long outlast the history of Western civilization. However, its decline will be significant indeed because so many of the ideals of the Western world were shaped and formed by Christian beliefs—specifically those beliefs about morality and about human dignity. Such ideals aren’t found in other civilizations that have long since been swept into the dustbin of history.


But here’s what Christians can be sure of, whatever the future holds for Western civilization: we belong to an even bigger story. In fact, given the biblical account of reality from Creation to new Creation, from Heavens and Earth to new Heavens and new Earth, the history of this civilization is more like a moment.

And that’s the thing about moments that can only be properly understood in light of stories: you can never fully understand a story from a moment, but you can make sense of a moment from the perspective of the larger story. In God’s grace, that’s precisely what He has given us: The Story of reality, capital “T,” capital “S.”

He’s also given us the truth about who we are and what it means to be a human being, which, of course, is something that has shifted dramatically in these latter decades of Western culture. Untethered from these ideological roots that made Western culture what it was, the future for this society is indeed unclear.

But there’s good news. The most important thing we can know about this civilizational moment is that Christians don’t find ourselves in it by accident. Scripture reveals something very interesting and important about God himself, which is that He is chronologically precise. In other words, we’re in this time and in this place by His intention . . . we’ve been called to it. So then, as Francis Schaeffer and later Chuck Colson asked, how now shall we live in the knowledge of this?

The only way to do that is to get our hands, our minds, and our hearts around four fundamental realities of the Christian worldview, starting with hope. Scripture says that Christians are people of hope, but that means we must fully and rightly understand what hope is and not misdefine it as some sort of wishful thinking. Jesus is our blessed hope.

We must also wrap our minds, hearts, and heads around what is true, not just the individual truths of Christianity, as important as those are. We must not just know the moral truths of how we ought to behave, but the truth of the Christian story and how that story is so radically different than all the other worldviews that are vying for our hearts and minds right now.

A proper understanding of identity is another key point to navigating this civilizational moment. The Christian worldview offers the only accurate definition of what it means to be human, made in the image and likeness of God. We must know exactly what it means to be “made in the image of God” and how that impacts our relationship with the world around us, with God, with others, and with ourselves.

And finally, we need to have a clear sense of calling. Especially in a time like ours, it’s easy to feel like victims against the forces of history. We feel as if we have no say in where civilization is headed. But remember, we have been called to this civilizational moment, and we have the truth about reality and about the human person at the ready in Scripture.

If Christians can be clear on these four things of hope, truth, identity, and calling, that’s a pretty good roadmap for this civilization. The next Lighthouse Voices event will explore these guidelines with our “A Christian’s Guide to this Civilizational Moment” lecture. The Lighthouse Voices series is a joint project from Focus on the Family and the Colson Center designed to help Christians think well about the culture they live in, especially when it comes to those issues that intersect with family.

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