“I don’t want to be a product of my environment; I want my environment to be a product of me.”
this was the opening line of The Departed and it got me thinking quite a bit…
why does the church not see itself this way? we certainly get the first part of the statement right… we don’t want to be a product of our environment or culture, so we close ourselves off and create a “holy huddle” free from the influences of the “evil” outside world creating for ourselves a culture that resembles the 1800′s or the 1950′s or the 1970′s—which is very strange because a culture that resembles anything prior to september 11, 2001 is missing out on a whole lot.
take for instance the church that resembles the 1970′s… the vietnam war was still bearing out (ended in 1975), the cold war was still raging on (ended in 1991), and the berlin wall had yet to be torn down (torn down in 1989), that was 7 U.S. presidents ago (Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and G.W. Bush), the Beatles had just disbanded (1970), Apollo 13 had just reached the moon (1970), and Elvis was still alive (till 1977) … the list could go on and on and on… to live in a churched culture that resembles the 70′s, let alone the 50′s or the 1800′s is disingenuous and completely separated from the outside world that we’re so “desperate”* to reach. (and trying to jump into the 80′s, 90′s or even early 00′s isn’t going to cut it either.) how do we expect to understand, connect with, and reach out to a culture that lives anywhere from 3 to 20 decades ahead of us (30 to 200 years!)? we always wonder why we can’t reach the younger generations, the topic that’s constantly the focus of church conferences and books, questionings and conversations… is it no wonder that 30 year old’s and under are absent from our congregations and communities when we live in a time before they were born?
but then comes the second half of the quote: I want my environment to be a product of me. because we find ourselves so concerned with separation— firmly entrenched as separatists— we no longer have the voice that is necessary to change the environment/culture/world around us. is it no wonder people think the gospel is all about stopping abortion, curing homosexuality, and fighting in wars to spread democracy (which is strange because we seem to fight more in the public arena about spreading the hope of democracy by supporting wars, and bicker in the public square about preserving our own rights and democracy than we spend on the actual gospel of Jesus.) maybe if we understood our culture and could communicate like our culture communicates, then maybe people would listen and once again the church would find its prophetic voice—hopefully using it for good instead of apocalyptic visions of grandeur**.
i’m not sure that the church in the U.S. will ever wake up as a whole from its cultural ignorance, but i am finding a surprising number of churches that are waking up to this need and this understanding, and hopefully a new dawn will appear in the history of the church in which the church does begin to bear the fruits of the Kingdom of God here on earth…
——
* desperate is in quotes because we just pay our outreach efforts lip service… we’re not really all that serious about it.
** yes this is a veiled quip against “left behind”
Related posts:
- questions: relationships—outside (or cultural ignorance)
- my love affair with the divine miss winfrey.
- You’ve Got To Be Kidding, Right?
- becoming new now.
- “Jesus accepting gays”
This is exactly what missional church is all about. My struggle is in figuring out how this should look in practice. When, where and how do programs for us end, and mission projects begin (and how can we tell the difference?).
i find that an interesting question: how this should look in practice…
not that i have the answer, but i wonder if sometimes we over think and over spiritualize our praxy making things so much more difficult than they should be—also, maybe if we actually lived in the culture instead of separating ourselves from it, it’d be a whole lot easier to figure out.
For me, the difficult question kind of piggybacks off of “what does it look like”, to “how can I uphold ‘holiness’ while being a part of secular culture?” So far, whenever I try to interact in said culture (ie building relationships with non-christians, performing music at secular venues, etc.), I tend to throw my morals out the door. In other words, I usually end up succombing to some of the patters of the world in order to fully interact in it. Andrea feels the same way about her own life.
Now, you could say that we just don’t have that strong of morals or something, but what if we do and we just find it difficult to exist in both worlds? I completely agree that the church should transform culture, but I think it’s very hard to do that without “bending the rules” a bit. Does this make any sense?
And then, I suppose the real question at hand is not even “how do I maintain holiness” but “what is holiness?” Thoughts?
mmm… those are some good questions…
i think sometimes we get caught up in the notion that holiness equals perfection and as a result we end up getting ourselves all worked up that we cannot be perfect in the culture that surrounds us so we think itwould be better if we just disengaged… but the problem is when we do that we’re not perfect either because we fail in our morals just as much in our own “made-up” christian culture—we just do it in different ways, and ways that are “culturally acceptable” in christian circles. take for instance gossip, or back-bitting, two “culturally acceptable” moral failures that take place frequently within the church.
i think we have to realize that the gospel isn’t about being morally superior or perfect people (i’m not trying to denigrate morality, just take our sole focus off of it) but about being a complete person that interacts in the culture…
i’m not sure if this makes much sense—there are a lot of thoughts swirling around in my head…
maybe if we thought of it in these terms… we are always 2 people. there is the person that you were and then there is the person that you are becoming. i think we’ve got to stop thinking of ourselves as a finished product as if right now we’re supposed to be completely perfect. that’s not the point at all because we are always in process, we are always becoming what God made us and created us to be. does this give us free license to go out and do whatever we so choose and desire? no. but it allows for us to understand and know that living in the world and working to transform culture is going to be a messy thing.
i guess it’s more of an understanding, more of a frame of mind than anything else that gets us away from the guilt trip of perfection.
p.s. ~ don you remember the little children’s song “he’s still working on me, to make me what he wants to be. it took him just a week to make the moon and stars, the sun and the earth and jupiter and mars. how loving and patient he must be, he’s still working on me.” that’s some tremendous theology wrapped up in a few lines that we’ve discarded…