Current events have had my mind swirling with thoughts about the Church, social issues, and politics. Not in a “doom-scrolling” kind of way (though I’ve done my share of that too), but in the way that makes you pause and wonder what’s happening to us. The temperature feels higher than it used to. People are quicker to assume the worst. Every issue feels loaded. Every conversation feels like it’s one sentence away from becoming an argument.
Many Christians are asking what the church should do about politics, social justice, and cultural division, and whether speaking up means losing the gospel. And if you’re trying to walk faithfully, it can feel like there are only two options: either you throw yourself into the culture war until you become angry and exhausted, or you disengage entirely and act as if nothing outside the church walls matters. Neither road seems particularly Christian. One makes us combative. The other makes us cowardly. And both can subtly train us to live more by fear than by faith.
That tension led me to an unexpected place: a lecture by Louis Berkhof, published in 1913, titled "The Church and Social Problems." Yes, 1913. Over a hundred years ago, Berkhof was already wrestling with the same pressure points we feel today. The vocabulary has changed, the technology is new, and the headlines look different, but the underlying question hasn’t moved an inch: What does the Church do when society is unstable, injustice is real, and the world offers rival “gospels” to explain what’s wrong and how to fix it?
1) A Lecture Overview (and Why It Fits Our Moment)
Berkhof begins with a claim that feels almost provocative in our day: the gospel of Jesus Christ is one of the greatest liberating forces the world has ever known. Christianity does not merely rescue individuals from guilt; it reshapes families, communities, and nations over time. But Berkhof is careful not to describe this progress as instant or effortless. The Kingdom of God doesn’t arrive like a lightning strike. It advances more like yeast in dough quietly, steadily, often invisibly at first, but with real transforming power.
That image alone is worth sitting with. We live in an age that is wired for immediacy. We want quick fixes, visible wins, and clean resolutions. But God often works by forming people slowly, and by growing His work in ways that don’t immediately trend.
From there, Berkhof turns to the social turmoil of his own day. He speaks of widespread unrest caused by major historical forces, shifts in politics, the rise of industrialization, the breakdown of older forms of work and community, and the growing appeal of socialism as a promised cure for social misery. His point isn’t to provide a history lesson for history’s sake. He’s trying to show something we often forget: social problems are rarely isolated. They’re connected. They multiply. And they become fertile ground for new movements that promise salvation.
What makes Berkhof especially valuable is that he refuses to minimize suffering. He doesn’t pretend poverty is imaginary, or that injustice is simply the complaint of ungrateful people. He sees exploitation and misery as real evils. But he is also unwilling to accept the world’s proposed remedies as if they were automatically righteous simply because they sound compassionate.
In fact, Berkhof presses down to the root: the problem beneath our social problems is sin. Sin isn’t merely personal weakness. It is a power that bends our loves, corrupts our leadership, twists our systems, and stains even our best efforts with pride. Because of that, Berkhof argues that the ultimate solution cannot be merely political or economic. It must be redemptive. It must be gospel-shaped.
One of his most direct lines still lands with weight:
“The method of Christ was and of His Church should be, to change society by changing the individual.”
That statement isn’t a retreat from public life. It’s an insistence on spiritual realism. When the human heart remains unchanged, we do not solve our problems; we simply reinvent them. We replace one tyranny with another. We demand justice with our lips while keeping vengeance warm in our hearts. We promise liberation while quietly building new ways to exclude, shame, and devour.
And if we’re honest, we’ve seen that pattern play out again and again. This is also where Berkhof gives a subtle warning to the Church. When the Church becomes indifferent to social pain or loses her moral clarity, something else will rush in to disciple the people. The world always has catechisms. The question is whether the Church will be the one forming her members in truth or whether we’ll outsource that formation to whatever ideology is loudest in the moment.
In our own day, those systems often come dressed in the language of justice, liberation, identity, power, and oppression. Terms like Marxism, critical theory, and CRT have entered everyday conversation. Whether people use them precisely or loosely, they point to something real: a growing instinct to view society primarily through categories of conflict, where groups can only be healed through struggle, reversal, and the reshuffling of power.
Many of these frameworks do identify real wounds. But they often promise a salvation without forgiveness, a moral vision without mercy, and a future with no hope beyond this age. That is not the mind of Christ. And it is not the Church's mission.
2) What Do We Do About It? (Practical Application for the Modern Church)
Berkhof is helpful here because he doesn’t call pastors to turn the pulpit into a sociology chair. In fact, he warns against it. The minister is not called to solve every complicated economic question from the pulpit, and he should not pretend to have expert answers about every policy debate. There’s a kind of preaching that becomes ridiculous because it trades biblical authority for cultural commentary.
But Berkhof also refuses another error: preaching that is so “spiritual” it becomes detached from real life. Scripture is not silent about the shape of human society. The Bible speaks plainly about oppression, partiality, greed, theft, slander, exploitation, dishonesty, envy, and pride. Those are not merely “political topics.” They are sins, and the Church has been commissioned to call sin what it is and to proclaim Christ as the only Savior of sinners.
So what should the Church do? First, the pulpit must remain Christ-centered and Cross-shaped. The Church does not have the power to reform society by moral lectures alone. We are not saved by “doing better.” We are saved by the crucified and risen Christ. The Church must preach sin and grace with enough clarity that people are actually converted, humbled, forgiven, and changed. In every generation, the Church’s greatest social contribution is still this: the creation of saints.
Second, the Church must recover moral formation as a real part of discipleship. Many believers today have sincere faith, but their moral instincts are being trained by outrage machines rather than Scripture. They know how to argue, but not how to forgive. They know how to denounce, but not how to repent. They know how to spot hypocrisy in others, but not how to mortify it in themselves.
The Church must patiently re-train conscience in biblical categories: creation, fall, redemption, and new creation. Truth and love. Justice and mercy. Repentance and forgiveness. Sin and grace. The Church must teach people how to think like Christians again, not merely how to react like partisans.
Third, the Church must become an alternative society. In a world addicted to division, the Church should feel like a foreign country. Not because we’re strange for the sake of being strange, but because the fellowship of the saints is supposed to be real. It should be one of the only places left where confession is normal, forgiveness is practiced, mercy is personal, and people aren’t reduced to categories.
This matters more than we often realize. When the Church is healthy, she quietly undermines the false gospels of the age. She becomes living proof that the world’s way is not the only way. She shows that unity does not require uniformity, and that peace does not require pretending sin isn’t real.
Fourth, mercy must be more than a talking point. Some Christians avoid mercy ministry because they fear being co-opted by political agendas. Others pursue mercy ministry in a way that slowly replaces the gospel with activism. But the answer isn’t to retreat. It’s to obey Christ with wisdom. Mercy is not a PR strategy. It’s discipleship. It’s love.
Real mercy looks like bearing burdens. It looks like knowing people, not just debating them. It looks like helping with rent, food, job loss, childcare, crisis seasons, and loneliness, not as saviors, but as servants who have been served by Christ.
Finally, Christians must be sent into their ordinary lives as witnesses. Society won’t be renewed by Christians merely posting better opinions, but neither will it be helped by Christians going silent when truth and justice are at stake. The Lord calls His people to live like Christians, repenting quickly, speaking truthfully, working honestly, forgiving freely, practicing hospitality, and loving their neighbors in tangible ways. That kind of life inevitably touches the public square, including the political and social questions of our day. But we must engage as those who belong to another Kingdom: thoughtful, courageous, and unafraid, without treating politics as ultimate, or confusing any earthly victory with the reign of Christ.
The world is loud right now. Everything feels intense. But Berkhof’s lecture reminds us that the Church’s calling hasn’t changed. Christ is still Lord. The gospel is still powerful. And the Church is still called to live in a way that can’t be explained without grace.
“But God, being rich in mercy… made us alive together with Christ.” (Ephesians 2:4–5)
May the Lord make His Church faithful in our generation: not reactionary, not silent, not worldly, but full of truth, full of mercy, and fixed firmly on Christ.
Bibliography:
Berkhof, L. The Church and Social Problems. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans-Sevensma Co., 1913.