When you talk to baby boomers about their high school and college days, they may get a dreamy look in their eyes as they recall their involvement in the “counterculture.” They are probably proud to have pushed back against the “establishment,” advocating for civil rights and protesting the Vietnam War. The 1960s’ counterculture also permanently changed America by its advocacy for recreational drugs and sexual promiscuity. 

When Eisenhower was president, Christians were in the majority and Christian morality was the norm. Today there is a new normal. Christianity has a far smaller profile today. These days if you advocate publicly for something scriptural, you are part of a new counterculture—going against the crowd and its atheist and agnostic leadership. 

The apostle Paul wants you to think that struggle is worth the stress: “I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed” (Ephesians 4:17-19). 

It’s nice to be in the majority. Today God calls you to stand with him, even when, especially when, it is uncomfortable.

Welcome to the Christian counterculture.