Friday, August 07, 2009

Tactics and Strategy (4)

Forming alliances with fellow travellers may not the best tactic. Christians are often tempted to align with a conservative party. Conservatives do resist the next liberal thing, but at the same time they make previous liberal innovations mainstream. While they are in power, they stop innovation, but only for a time. Conservative parties only slow change, they never roll it back.

Christians can sometimes win a victory by taking up an issue where the liberal party has gone too far, and made a change that most people oppose. Christians will get support if they lead the charge against the change. The problem with this approach is that these issues are usually peripheral to the kingdom of God, so people get a misleading view of who we are. Even if we had won the battle, we might have lost the war, if people got a distorted view of the Kingdom of God. This tactic is unwise, as a victory at the operational level, may be a defeat at the strategic level.

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