Standing Faithful When Culture No Longer Listens

After a week with family spanning differing ages from young adults, married and unmarried, to my age as an 83-year-old deacon, I was torn by the vast differences in cultural norms that differ from the culture I grew up in. I was troubled not simply because it has changed—cultures always do—but that it now feels overpowering and impervious to influence. It feels like an overwhelming force like a heavy blanket surrounding me that keeps me warm on a cold night, but is so heavy it feels like it can never be removed. Today’s culture feels less like something we participate in and more like something imposed: vast, impersonal, technologically driven, and economically motivated. It seems to move according to forces far beyond my influence. My Orthodox Christian way of life seems secondary, ignored, and sometimes even ridiculed.

This raises a quiet temptation: despair or listlessness. If culture cannot be influenced, why resist it? Why not just adapt, accommodate, withdraw into private comfort, and just surrender to current norms? Yet this is precisely where my Christian calling becomes clearer—not easier, but clearer.

Christ never promised that His followers should try to shape culture, nor that the world would welcome the values of the Kingdom. In fact, He warned us of the opposite. The Gospel does not depend on cultural dominance to be true, nor on social approval to be life-giving. Christianity was born not as a cultural force, but as a faithful witness—often small, often resisted, yet anchored in eternity rather than history’s shifting winds.

The Gospels teach:

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it hated you.

“If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world… therefore the world hates you.” John 15:18–19

“And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved. Matthew 10:22

“My Kingdom is not of this world. If My Kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight…” John 18:36

“Enter by the narrow gate… Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” Matthew 7:13–14

 “Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.” 2nd Timothy 3:12

I gain clarity when I reflect on these passages along with the witness of the early Christians who lived within the Roman Empire, a culture built on power, order, and domination, where human life held little inherent value. The empire worshiped many gods, and even emperors claimed divinity—but these were not gods of love; they were reflections of human power and ambition. Yet this deeply entrenched culture was transformed—not by force or political strategy—but by a small community living faithfully according to the Gospel. Within a few centuries, the spiritual imagination of the empire was reshaped. By the fourth century, the state entered into cooperation with the Church, later described as symphonia, a harmony between Church and government. This change did not arise from coercion, but from the quiet witness of Christians who lived without fear of death, vicious persecution, or cultural threats. With certainty of the life to come, they understood this life as preparation for eternity—and it was this unwavering faithfulness that ultimately changed an empire. Their aim was not to change the culture but to simply live true to their faith.

I realize that I can make a mistake when I assume that faith must win culturally in order to be meaningful. The aim of faith is not to change our culture but to become united with Christ, to live truthfully according to all His teachings. My calling as a Christian must never be to control or change the culture, but to remain faithful within it.

Culture today feels like an immense pressure. It catechizes constantly—through media, economics, entertainment, and technology—striving to train us to see loving relationships as optional, commitments as burdens, and identity as self-constructed, our personal needs and desires as most important. Against this tide, our individual resistance can feel futile. And yet, Christian faith has always resisted this mass influence indirectly. I have learned that this is a way of life that must begin in the heart, overcoming self-centered desires, lived in the Church, experienced in family, embodied in the parish and the sacraments, and sustained through Christ’s love and the comforting work of the Holy Spirit. It involves a way of life based on love, worship, prayer, sacrifice, spiritual disciples, continual study of the Gospel truth, teaching of Church Fathers, and the Church.

To live faithfully today is not to wage a culture war, but to focus on our own life, learning to live in harmony with all of Christ’s teachings:

• to honor our marriage when it is challenged,
• to nurture our family when bonds are weakened,
• to love sacrificially when convenience is offered instead,
• to live for eternity when everything else points only to the moment.
• To keep Christ in the center of everything we do.
• Repent daily when the mark of perfection is missed.
• To live in His divine presence through His Church.

This kind of faithfulness rarely looks impressive. It does not trend. It does not go viral. It may even be ridiculed. But it is precisely this steady, often unseen faithfulness that Christ calls us to. This is the lesson of the early Christians. The Kingdom of God does not advance through cultural force, but through transformed individual lives lived in His Church, rooted in His love.

With new, powerful technological advances like AI, culture may grow louder, faster, and more aggressive in reshaping humanity according to its own image. But it cannot erase the never-changing call of Christ, nor can it extinguish the eternal truth that love, sacrifice, and communion are at the heart of what it means to be human and to grow in the likeness of Christ and be prepared for eternal life.

I must accept that I may not be able to influence culture as I had once hoped. But I can still strive to live truthfully within it. And in doing so, I will bear witness—not to a passing age, but to a Kingdom that does not fade.

Faithfulness, not success, has always been the measure of the Christian life.