They Feel Like Christians and Think Like Secularists

This is it, isn't it? We now have a developing generation of culture clones whose upbringing was nominally Christian, but who are so plugged in and turned on to their culture that they only feel some loose ties to the historic Christian faith, residue of their family heritage; but they also have been wholly reprogrammed to parrot the superficial thought patterns of this decidedly vapid, and decidedly postmodern, culture.

It shows itself in the ideas sitting just below the Christian veneer:

1. We must not judge anyone, or the modern variation, "keep it real!"

Usually a very pious condemnation of the judgmentalism and the exclusivity of some Christians accompanies this austere proclamation--perhaps the only thing we are truly serious about. Who are we, who struggle with lust or anger or greed, to condemn homosexuality or divorce or... anything at all? If everyone knew our secret sins, we would clearly not be so quick to speak of everyone else's sins. In point of fact, our awareness of our own sins, and their awareness of theirs, should keep us all effectively quiet about ALL sins.

Now it seems to me that the scriptures call for a very different strategy when it comes to shared human sinfulness. We are to confess it, acknowledge it for what it is, in ourselves first, but also in others, and then repent. The Church is to be a place of intense accountability while the world is a place where the Christian instructs concerning sinfulness so that he might offer the gospel. But the gospel is largely meaningless if there is no sense of the seriousness of human sin.

2. Love the sinner and hate the sin.

I still struggle to make sense of this. God is apparently only appalled with my deeds and not with me. Fixing me is apparently only a matter of behavior modification. Apparently all I lack in my "lovely" state is greater consistency in doing the good. There is nothing really all that wrong with me. My evil actions keep erupting from some quantum vacuum of the will. I can't be blamed for that. I am lovely. God loves me as I am. All I need is a little work.

Really? This is modern Christian theology? Where is the doctrine of depravity? Where are the people who have read ANY theologians of repute of any age? Where are the Christians who have read Paul with attention to at least some detail? Again, they feel some affinity for Christianity, but they don't know what it is!

By the way, this silly idea reveals itself in the gay marriage debate. We, as Christians, are counseled to "love the sinner and hate his sin." The problem is that the gay person loudly proclaims, "this is me! I am gay!" It is not merely one of his behaviors. It is his sexual identity. The sinful action cannot be abstracted from the person doing it. So, Christian, tell me how you are going to separate his sin from him when he can't? When it comes to 2nd or 3rd tier questions, slogan theology is not going to get the job done. Of course, grace still speaks to any man in his sin, but it speaks a better language, a more deeply invasive language, than this.

3. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Is it true? John Mark Reynolds has suggested that this sentiment is the gateway into other forms of cultural relativism. I think he is right. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then Yosemite is only beautiful if enough people agree. Am I ugly if enough people say so? And let us remember that just because beauty is diverse does not mean that it is merely "in the eye of the beholder." I've said elsewhere that just because beauty is subjectively appraised does not mean that it is subjective in nature. For example, I may not be a mountain person, but does that make Yosemite any less beautiful, in reality? If you say yes, then you grant a person license to deface half dome in the interest of making it more beautiful "to him."

It really is a short journey from, "I say this is beautiful," to, "I say this is true." Once one forgoes the development of a world view for a "self view," then everything will be made only an accessory of the individual's perspective. Once that happens, there is no longer any meaning to beauty or truth. There is only the white noise of opinion.

4. Religion is an affair of the heart and not the mind.

I'm convinced that many Christians cannot handle the core scientific, intellectual and philosophical challenges to the Christian faith, but they must address the cognitive dissonance that comes. They are not fools, and so they must deal with the constant flow of information that challenges the Christian faith. Many of these people have such strong emotional ties to Christianity that almost nothing can unmake their faith. But they also don't have the time, perhaps, or the interest, in studying well enough to come to a place of intellectual confidence in the faith. Thus they lapse into fideism. That is to say, they are content with a psychic break in their lives. The mind is for the business of their careers or daily business, etc., and the heart is nourished by the life of faith. But to try to make sense of the Christian faith is silly, because no one can really know these things anyway.

5. The Bible is a difficult book, and everyone has his or her own interpretation.

Bible studies everywhere ask a person, "what does this passage mean to you?" The Bible is an ancient book, written at a particular time. It is a reflection of the culture as much as it is a statement to our culture. Surely what matters is how it touches my life and not what the Greek says, right?

In my estimation, the single greatest step toward a secularized Christianity is the simple subtle shift from believing that the Bible is a book sent into the world to critique and inform me to the perspective that I must critique and inform the Bible. There are a lot of reasons for this change, such as higher criticism, scientific advances, deconstructionism, on and on. But at bottom it really is nothing more than unbelief under a disguise of cleverness. Many self-professing Christians really don't believe there is a concrete, irreducible truth to be found in the Bible, and that that truth demands that everything in the universe be adjusted to it.

Christians today are like secularists in this regard. They read the Bible as though human reason is the final arbiter of its claims, as though it must make sense to them or speak to them. Vanished is the perspective that the Bible is a call to something higher than human deliberations or human interpretations or human perspectives. If it really becomes nothing more than a human book, then we are humanists. If it is not the light of God striking down into history, then it is nothing more than the vapors of elegant mythology lingering only to provide ambiance amid the disintegration of all things, including any unitive sense for the text of the Bible.

6. The Church has to be relevant to the culture.

My home church (the church where I grew up in San Diego) has become a circus. Everyone is so professional, in the cruise ship, infomercial sense, and yet everyone is so overtly relational and overtly "authentic." Everything is so bloody contemporary and relevant to the culture. It just feels like a place desperately groping for cultural legitimacy. The band is perhaps not as good as Maroon 5, but they do have the tattoos. The pastor is not quite as engaging as Leno, but he is an acceptable Christian substitute. He is the saccharine for those attempting to cut down on all the cultural sugar. But one does leave church with that unsettling aftertaste. And have you noticed what the typical person looks like who drinks diet soda? And don't even get me started on the youth pastor--soul patch, sandals, manicure, tattoo, Abercrombie shirt and all. Then there are the hipsters in the youth crowd as the cultural counter-balances. Perhaps they all come to the youth group to enjoy the line of 10 or so X-Boxes attached to the youth center wall (I wish I was kidding... the place looks like a best buy store), or perhaps they come to discuss music in the cafe.

Search as I might during my last few visits I could find no older people, or older theology. But this is not a place for old things. It is new for the sake of being new. It is retro and vintage because retro and vintage are the new old things; they are the old things the new up-and-comers approve, thus making them new. The irony is that in attempting to keep up with the culture it has fallen behind the culture and has alienated itself from the historic. It is a church in isolated mid-life crisis, oblivious to both the past and the future. In short, it is neither culturally relevant nor is it the spiritual and theological unity of the historic Christian community. It is a bad concert and a thin motivational speech one hour out of the 168 in the week. It is not even a speed bump in the runaway mass of traffic hurdling towards hedonism, nationalism, postmodernism, materialism and secularism. But it is successful because the crowds keep coming. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Of course, the crowds that come are themselves thrilled that the Church has accommodated to their secular "needs," or at least it is trying. And give it an "A" for effort. Perhaps encourage the effort with a few bucks once and awhile. Quality needs to be funded if the Church is to keep pace with the secular world.

Is the Church really trying to keep up with the culture, with Hollywood, with all the relevant people? I can think of a day in my youth, growing up in that terribly relevant church, when I really felt this way--that the Church better do more to engage people, like Christian comedy, or it was all going to die. Apparently a lot of people agreed. For now we have an incredibly entertaining but hopelessly impotent Church. One can't change culture by becoming a merely sanitized version of it. There is no leverage to move the river when one is happily floating along with everyone else within it and merely shouting "Jesus loves everything."

Where is the Church that is openly antithetical to the culture? Where is the riddle and offense of the cross? Where is the Church that once led in the transformation of culture?