How does the gospel of Jesus Christ help us navigate and think through what's going on in our present culture?

This is a topic that I've taken up this semester in our church's Adult Sunday School class. We've been working our way through the early Church Fathers and Mothers--their histories and writings--to see how their lives and circumstances can help us think through diverse challenges we are faced with today. How does the Church's response to the ancient heresy of Gnosticism help us address our culture's belief that the body is a cage and your "true self" is what's inside, the self that must be liberated? How does Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho (in which he boldly claims that the true people of God are no longer Israel, but the Church, since the Jews have rejected God's Messiah) help us to address the modern-day Christian Zionist movement? You see what I'm getting at. The same principle is what we do as a denomination with the Belhar Confession. 

How can this document, written in the 1980s to address apartheid in South Africa, help us as present-day saints think about the Church's call to unity, reconciliation and justice in a society that's still plagued with racism, segregation and economic injustice? In this confession, we see a directed summary of the truths of Scripture as they relate to the Church's timeless call to unity, reconciliation and justice. We affirm that "Christ’s work of reconciliation is made manifest in the church as the community of believers who have been reconciled with God and with one another (Eph. 2:11-22); that unity is, therefore, both a gift and an obligation for the church of Jesus Christ; that through the working of God’s Spirit it is a binding force, yet simultaneously a reality which must be earnestly pursued and sought: one which the people of God must continually be built up to attain (Eph. 4:1-16); that this unity must become visible so that the world may believe that separation, enmity and hatred between people and groups is sin which Christ has already conquered." 

The Belhar Confession calls and challenges the Church to believe and live the radical good news of the gospel, and to make it manifest in our work and worship. For as Paul writes to the Galatians, "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (3:28). This does not mean that we are called to be "color-blind" or pretend that the differences are not there. But rather, work and worship in such a way that is a living testament to the truth that there is no dividing line between who is worthy and unworthy of God's grace, who is welcome and unwelcome in our church on the basis of their cultural or ethnic heritage. In Christ, the dividing wall of hostility is torn down. If we believe what Scripture says, this will radically change how many of us address the segregation and injustice in our cities. At least, that's my prayer.