Christianity does not have to try to reform a corrupt culture.

Russell M. Nelson, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said with too little fanfare last April, “Dispute is a violation of everything the Savior has stood for and taught. … We are disciples of the Prince of Peace. Now more than ever, we need the peace that only He can bring. How can we expect peace to exist in the world when we are not individually seeking peace and harmony?

Christianity does not have to engage in disputes and disputes over reckless efforts to reform a corrupt culture, because that has absolutely nothing to do with the first priority of Jesus Christ. Instead, it has everything to do with being hijacked by secondary culture clashes, deceptively disguised as faithful fights for God.

Christianity is so terribly preoccupied with cultural conflict that it is easily distracted from what Christ made clear as its first priority when he urged his followers to: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well.

Unfortunately, in today’s postmodern Christian hearts and minds, the essential scriptural view of the kingdom of God has been relegated to fantasy – Stupid for the scholars and the sophisticated, who not only no longer seek the kingdom of God first, but they no longer pray for it and rarely even speak of it.

Christ’s invocation, “Thy kingdom come,” has effectively been erased from Christian consciousness for something far more secular and politically expedient. What Christ first prioritized has become irrelevant to Christianity’s obsessive political involvement in conservative culture crusades and the defense of progressive social justice – two heads of the same monster devouring Christianity piece by piece until that there is almost nothing left of his soul-saving self.

For example, while Christianity is deeply obsessed with fighting for its secular rights, it has increasingly detached itself from respecting the power of its sacred rites, expressly dedicated to spiritually transforming hearts and minds to seek truth. , love and peace.

Tragically, instead of devotedly focusing their faith on the sacred, for decades Christians have mistakenly placed their trust in petty political machinations for ill-conceived plots to conquer corrupt culture. All the while, unwittingly destroying the nation of inevitable disruption and division, and reducing a once flourishing Christianity to a visionless and spiritless shell of itself, converting and retaining fewer and fewer, not to mention a whole culture.

Even attempting to arbitrate cultural disputes as a means of securing their secular rights through an elusive political middle course, if ever taken seriously, inevitably exposes would-be Christian arbitrators to reprimands and recriminations from warring parties. Pushing them into further arguments and conflicts, they either naively failed to anticipate, or chimerically chose to ignore.

Yet despite Christianity’s growing infidelity and failures, the kingdom of God must and will, as predicted, arise as a beacon of light, hope and happiness. Not through scheming schemes and alliances with political powers, but through those few allies in holiness, devotedly seeking the kingdom of God first and foremost.

Those who are spiritually endowed with charity, with the power of the pure love of Christ, who are wholly devoted to the Prince of Peace, will be qualified to gather together faithfully under a heavenly shield of safety and salvation to complete the edification of the kingdom of God on earth, with all others fleeing to it for protection, refusing to take up the sword of conflict even in the face of persecution and the blows of martyrdom. Then, and only then, will the kingdom of God prevail, having subdued all its enemies underfoot.

The truth is that President Nelson’s prophetic call for peace and harmony is the crucial providential step for the rise of the kingdom of God on earth – a kingdom established only by and for people of peace, unified with a single eye on his glory.

Stuart C. Reid, former Army chaplain, former religious rights advocate and lobbyist, former Salt Lake City Councilman and former Utah State Senator.