At a certain point we must all decide whether we are more interested in allowing the text to shape us or if we are simply looking for a weapon to fight the culture war.
Being a white evangelical male, I was trained in the ways of culture war in my youth and am still close with many who view the essential practice of Christianity to be the "defense of the faith" against the four-headed monster of post-modernism, the liberal agenda, Hollywood, and Bill Nye. Not-too-surprisingly, my friends who have invested the majority of their spiritual energy scouring the Bible in search of passages that defend a 6,000 year old universe, traditional view of Christian marriage, and the superiority of free-market economics weighed in with their disapproval both publicly and privately*. The most interesting critique I received claimed that Jesus was the original culture warrior, that Jesus changed the culture of his day and that it was a struggle, if not a fight for him. And for the last four days I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about this exact question, "Was Jesus the original culture warrior?"
And I think the answer is no, but am open to correction if someone has a more compelling argument.
The way I see it, Jesus wasn't changing the culture of first-century, Roman-occupied Judea. This is precisely why the crowd that gathered chose for Barabas to be released--they believed that Barabas offered the better opportunity to wage the cultural crusade against Rome. Jesus wasn't the cultural messiah they were looking for, so they went with a different option.
To put the original Jesus movement in context, the messianic Jewish movement of Jesus probably consisted of less than 200 people at the time of the crucifixion. By contrast, Chabad messianism was the largest faction of Hasidic Judaism at the time of Rabbi Schneerson's death with more than 300,000 people.
While culture has been changed, somewhat organically by the spread of Christianity, the power of the Gospel has never been focused in its ability to change culture; rather, the love of Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit changes hearts. There is actually some compelling evidence that suggests that when the church starts warring with culture, that the life giving good news of Jesus is drowned out by the noise generated by worldview crusaders
According to Kinnaman and Lyons, the public perception of Christianity is increasingly informed by the charged rhetoric of the culture warriors and has led to the millenial perception of the church (and by extension Jesus) as being anti-homosexual, judgmental, hypocritical, anti-intellectual, and overly political. It is significant that almost no Christians, even those most committed to fighting the culture war, would ever characterize their faith as essentially anti-homosexual or essentially anti-intellectual. But in the same way that when our technology outpaces our ethics horrendous things happen; when our commitment to orthodoxy surpasses our commitment to orthopraxy we can become real jerks. And ultimately that has been the legacy of the culture war. The followers of Jesus living in the west have all the 'right' answers, but the lack of love, especially for the outsider, has painted Jesus and his followers as homophobic, biggoted, selfish jerks who care more about winning elections than transforming the world.
* (Now, I should be clear here, believing in a 6,000 year old universe is within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy and many intelligent, sincere, informed people believe just that. Likewise, believing that marriage is designed as the union of one woman to one man in covenant with a Holy and transcendent God is also thoroughly Christian. I would even go so far to say that while the Bible doesn't advocate for any modern economic system, free-market principles were at play during the writing of the Bible and historically principled free-markets have been the most equitable economic system we have seen.)
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