What’s your perspective?
The way we ask that question implies that we want to know each other’s opinions.
- What do you think about that link I sent you from Twitter?
- About that video our friends liked on Facebook?
- About that story I saw on the news?
But this one word, perspective, carries multiple meanings. Perspective is what we find when we can climb to a higher vantage point and see the bigger picture, the long view. Spiritually speaking, Christians have the best view. Having been raised with Christ, our life is hidden with Christ in God. So we set our minds on things that are above, not on things on earth (Col. 3:1–3). Our perspective doesn’t depend on our circumstances. We see from the perspective of eternity.
Maintaining Perspective
If only we acted like it. Larry Osborne seeks to give Christians this perspective in his new book, Thriving in Babylon: Why Hope, Humility, and Wisdom Matter in a Godless Culture. Osborne, who has served as a senior pastor and teaching pastor at North Coast Church in Vista, California since 1980, likens America to the Babylon of Daniel’s day. The book draws lessons from the life and times of Daniel with a compelling sense for the danger of his position that we often miss in our cartoon images of the fiery furnace or lion’s den. Osborne writes:
It had to be nerve-wracking enough just to watch the Babylonians advance on Jerusalem. But had they known the rest of the story—that the city and temple would be sacked, that they’d be taken captive, carried off to Babylon, castrated, forced to study the occult, given new names honoring demon gods, tossed into a fiery furnace, thrown to hungry lions, and forced to interpret a dream without being told what the dream was—they would have collapsed in terror. (123)
But Daniel and his friends did not collapse in terror, because they maintained perspective. They knew God is sovereign over even the worst circumstances. As Osborne puts it, “God is in control of who is in control” (34). Osborne draws in Habakkuk, who struggled to understand how God could allow an evil nation like Babylon to destroy God’s people and the royal city of Jerusalem (47). As with the Old Testament prophets, Osborne reserves much of his harshest judgment for the “sin in the camp,” especially among professed Christians who live like pagans. Readers learn that Christians can neither minimize the problems in our “godless culture” nor deny our own complicity in the spiritual decline. Tough times ahead will prove the enduring truth of Jesus’s Parable of the Soils (Matt. 13:1–23). Suffering will be painful, but it prepares us to endure and even thrive under pressure. Without learning the lessons of suffering we will not persevere in faith and trust in God.
“Those who walk away from God in anger and disillusionment in the midst of their suffering never do so because their test was too hard,” Osborne writes. “They do so because their faith was not genuine” (63).
No Spiritual Camelot
Readers expecting a screed against the culture may be surprised to also see themselves in the crosshairs of Osborne’s critique. He has no patience for Christians seeking return to a supposedly godlier era, especially the 1950s in the United States. He admits that they were good times for many white, middle-class, suburban families. But black families living under Jim Crow segregation share no such sentimentality. And what happened when the black-and-white 1950s gave way to the multi-colored 1960s and 1970s?
“[I]f those days were really a spiritual Camelot,” Osborne quips, “someone needs to explain to me how they produced a generation of sex-crazed, dope-smoking hippies who grew up to be self-absorbed boomers” (195).
Thriving in Babylon: Why Hope, Humility, and Wisdom Matter in a Godless Culture
Larry Osborne
Thriving in Babylon: Why Hope, Humility, and Wisdom Matter in a Godless Culture
Larry Osborne
We lose much-needed historical perspective because vested interests don’t want us to gain perspective. Fear, anger, and loss make money. These emotions sell books. Media and many ministries rely on the funds that pour in during crises. No one is immune to the temptation. Osborne offers the local church as alternative to such alarmism. As a leader in a parachurch ministry, I even agree with him that many nonprofits see the church as ground for recruiting and fundraising. I wonder, however, if Osborne’s illustrations work against him. As recounted numerous times in his book, the church attracts more than its share of dangerous only-issue lobbyists. If you don’t respond to their URGENT concern in a particular time and fashion, they threaten retaliation. Anywhere Christians congregate, whether after a Sunday service with the pastor or in a Facebook comment section, perspective may be lacking if fear and anger predominate. Churches and parachurches alike need Osborne’s message to work together and meet new and dangerous challenges.
Even in Babylon
The intended audience of Christians worried about the state of the world suggests Thriving in Babylon would be well-suited to small-group discussion. Men’s groups in particular will benefit from the book, filled with illustrations from business, sports, and the military.
One such military section stands out, when Osborne explores the cultural context behind Jesus’ promise that the gates of hell will never prevail against the church (Matt. 16:18). City gates are not an offensive weapon but a defensive stronghold. So Jesus does not imagine the church hunkering down but attacking enemies. This paradigm shift moves Christians out of their fearfulness into hopefulness, no matter how fearsome their attackers. So we need not fear; we know how the story ends. Jesus wins. Panic today betrays the weakness of our faith in God’s tomorrow.
As God rescued Daniel from all his trials, so also Jesus has secured our deliverance in his cross and resurrection. Following in his example (1 Pet 2:21) we face every hardship with hope, humility, and wisdom. We gain perspective. Osborne says:
Courage without humility leads to martyrdom. Humility without courage leads to spinelessness. But together, courage and humility can shake the very foundations of hell, advancing the kingdom of God into the most unlikely of places. Even in Babylon. (145)
Even in America.