Christians might hope that the government will uphold Christian values and certainly that would be good for society in general. There can only be benefits when the encouragement is to live in accordance with God’s standards.
However, it is not the government’s job to promote Christian values. That is the church’s task which it cannot delegate.
Furthermore, society will never completely reflect Christian values. Those who are not Christians have the freedom to choose a different lifestyle. Sometimes, when Christians are in a minority, the prevailing values in a society will be non-Christian.
The church is then called to provide an alternative – to be counter-cultural – to be an outpost of the Kingdom of God, modelling God’s values.
We might hope that society will fall in line and that the government will support those values. That would make life more comfortable for Christians but there is no reason to believe that will occur. The church must then commit to being faithful to God in an unsympathetic context.
The church today finds itself in a setting perhaps remarkably similar to that of the early church. The early Christians existed as a small minority in a pagan Roman culture. For long periods Christians were misunderstood and hated. Persecution was frequent and severe. And yet the church thrived. The growth of the church in the first three centuries is remarkable.
Being different from society has huge advantages. It is only when the church is distinctive that it offers a genuine alternative and only when it remains faithful to God that it provides a better alternative.