Cultural Christianity

A YouTube algo inspiration

Mar 06, 2025

This article was inspired by a video episode posted on Mike Winger’s YouTube channel about 6 months ago. [here is a 1 minute excerpt relevant to this article]

The YouTube algo served me this Mike Winger episode today. I thought it was a timely delivery because I’ve been thinking about a variation of that very subject for over a year now and wanted to think through my personal feelings and as an extension (perhaps addition) to Mike’s opinions on the matter by writing about it here.

In the video Mike has eloquently articulated my very thoughts and observations on the subject much better than I could ever hope to.

He speaks briefly about politicians, cultural Christianity and the followers of the Christian faith.

His preamble to the video is intended to serve as a warning to his viewers (mostly Christians) about the “two-edged sword” of subscribing to “cultural Christianity”.

He touches on the difference between these ideas and for his followers (and in a subtle, possibly indirect way) asks that they exhibit some level of discernment when it comes to their ideas about faith and politics.

One of the many reasons why this subject is important to me is because I’ve stopped having conversations with my friends and family about politics over a year ago, which until that point was something that I really enjoyed doing with them and we had political discussions often.

However, over the last few years, I’ve noticed that politics have become more of a dogmatic, group think phenomena, in which party delegates are primarily subscribed to and parrot the elementary talking points of one of the two political camps in America.

One camp believes the other side is simply composed of the racist policies and ideas of red-neck, rural America. While the other camp believes the opposing side is largely composed of urban, Champaign-sipping communists.

While I don’t consider myself to be a deeply credentialed scholar on matters of politics or religion, more specifically, the Christian faith, I do value conversations on these subjects that have a little more depth and nuance than what we are currently exposed to in mainstream discourse.

Nuanced discussions on topics such as;

How inflation contributes to corruption in Government and the funding of never ending wars.
How gender and sexual confusion in a society might affect an already declining birth rate and how that will impact our society in the next 50-100 years.
How vacillating, party-centric immigration policies will impact the voter demographic in communities across our country a generation or two from now.
How public policy is contributing to the decay in the quality of our public educational institutions and how that may impact our society and American culture a few generations from now.
The revolving door policies between elected officials and the private business sectors and special interest groups and how these behaviors are often a conflict of interest that lead to systemic corruption in our government bureaucracies.

These are just a few of the many topics I’d like to explore with friends and family or hear others discuss for public consumption and consideration. I’m baffled at how fast these dynamics can change, within a family, within a community.

Back to Mike’s points, there are many self-identifying Christians that are not believers in the core tenets of what it means to be a follower of Christ’s teachings. The path to God’s Kingdom is a narrow one and simply living as a “good human” does not automatically grant us access to that Kingdom.

There are the attributes of a Christian which may be observed and mimicked by members of a community. Attributes such as kindness, love, generosity towards others and so on.

However, to be a Christian is to place Jesus and his teachings at the center of all that behavior and understanding how and why his sacrifice was required in order for us to gain access to his Father’s Kingdom. The latter part of the idea of “being a Christian” often goes unacknowledged or even outright rejected, by many self-proclaiming Christians.

Simply put, we all want a piece of the cake but many of us are not interested in making the cake. Furthermore, It seems to me in most cases we forget the core incentives that drive our modern day elected officials.

It’s my opinion and not something Mike touched on in his video.

That is to say our politicians are firstly interested in getting elected and re-elected. Secondly, they want to make money for themselves. Everything else they say or do follows these two chief desires.

I feel that as a nation, we have lost sight of this and fall in love with our elected officials, institutional leaders and favorite media influencers.

“Politics is downstream from culture”.

Most politicians (the smart ones anyway) observe what the public wants to hear and see and as a reaction to what they’ve observed, build their platforms on top of the ideas and sentiments which they think will be consistent with what culture demands or expects at any particular point.

At this stage of our nation’s maturity, it seems the culture for the most part wants the “attributes” of Christianity within their respective communities. They are not demanding their elected officials be students of Jesus’ teachings.

The positive side of that double-edged sword that Mike references in his video is that Christian culture might deliver kindness, generosity and love for one another. The product of that is (possibly) a seemingly healthy community on the surface during our fleshly time on earth.

But the negative side of that sword is when we pass on to the afterlife. Where does our soul end up after we die, God’s Kingdom in heaven or in Satan’s kingdom in hell?

Most of us fail to understand that spiritual warfare is real. Satan’s agents are cunning and their designs are not on our fleshly lives for the 80+ years on earth (if we’re lucky), but rather Satan's design is for our souls in the afterlife FOR ETERNITY.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on all matters of Christianity. Because I am but a toddler in my faith just learning to walk and still far from the footsteps that Jesus has placed before me as the example. But I’d like to think, I at least have this bit of being a Christian clearly understood.

That is all and thank you for reading.

If you enjoy Faith In The Fast Lane, I would be incredibly grateful for your support. Consider using one or more of the links below.

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?