Christian sub-culture

I'll be honest. This is one of my favorite things to rant about, but I'm going to try and reel it in a little bit because my ranting is probably not going to be very productive. I don't really know how we, as the church, got to this place. I think it might be so close to where we are right now that not too many people have looked back to see exactly how we ended up here. Where is here? The place where somehow it became okay for Christians to separate themselves from the world. Now, let me explain what I mean by this before I send anyone wrong signals. I believe that we as a people are to be "in" the world but not "of" the world. I think in recent decades this has been misinterpreted though. Somehow it has come to mean that we should let the culture of the world decay into even more depravity while we create our own sub-culture (a mere shadow of the regular culture)and disappear into it. The reason that this is a misinterpretation is that it is trying to make this saying a physical reality instead of a state of mind, or a description of us as a people. Somehow it has come to mean that we have christian coffee shops as opposed to secular coffee shops, christian music as opposed to secular music, christian mints (yes there are such things), ect. The list could go on. What it boils down to is "christian" being used as an adjective instead of a noun. In some cases this might not be bad, but in the context of this blog I think it is. If in order for someONE to be a Christian they must profess Christ as their Savior and follow Him accordingly (nutshell), how can someTHING be Christian? Things are not capable of making these decisions. The fact is it is about MARKETING! If you label something as Christian it is guaranteed that someone will buy it because of this sub-culture that we have set up. It is destructive to creativity as well as destructive to our witness to the world. The fact is that perhaps twenty years ago, we needed Christian book publishers or other things like that in order to get things published that other publishers were not willing to publish, but in all honesty such things are not needed in today's society with the internet around. Christian bookstores for example are rotting from the inside out. It really has become about marketing, not content. Most of these things have little to no christian content outside of the name, and the tendency is to sell what makes people happy because it means more money, or trinkets and things that don't really serve any purpose or anybody.

Anyway, I think I started rambling a little bit. Here is the point: We need to stop thinking that our own culture will ever trump the culture around us. There is a saying that Christian culture is always 20 years behind, and this is one of the cases where it is true. The church can never trump the culture around us because we are a part of that culture. Trying to separate ourselves from it is ridiculous. We just end up looking silly because we start trying to Christianize something while the world has moved on. The fact is culture and all of its trimmings don't matter. Spreading the word of Christ and living lives obedient submission to Him is what changes people, and the more people that the Holy Spirit grabs, the more culture changes. This is a fact. Culture can't be changed by giving alternatives to it, culture changes when people come to have a saving faith in Jesus Christ. Take Rome for example, I don't think the Christians of that time were interested in having a culture war. I think they cared about people and were trying to share the gospel with them and so many people got saved that subsequently the culture started to shift (for better or worse). So I think we need to stop the sillyness. Stop dressing things up as Christian that are not. There is no such thing as a "Christian" bookstore, there is only a bookstore, a business, that sells books that express ideas influenced by Christian faith. There is no such thing as a "Christian" band there are only musicians who have come to saving faith in Jesus Christ and express the change in song. And finally, there is no "Christian" sub-culture. There are only Christians who have replaced fear of God with the fear of man. Yep, it's true. I think christian sub-culture comes from a fear of man and a lack of trust in the God of the universe. We get scared of how much culture influences us, but we should be scared of how much God does not influence us sometimes.


*Note: I'm speaking in general terms here. There are places where a sub-culture needs to form. Christian theology for example needs to stay rooted in the bible and things that make us different will form a unique culture. The point is that these things are naturally occurring and are not forced, they come from following in obedience.

social interaction online as compared to interaction in physical reality

A while ago I was thinking alot about social networking. Facebook, myspace, ect. in regard to how it affects the way we communicate in real life. Today I randomly started thinking about it again, and I've been thinking that it might have more negative effects than we realize. I'm not talking about issues of saftey as in do you really know who you are talking too, I think all of us are fairly aware of that. I'm talking more about how we interact with eachother. I think it is changing for the worse because of social networking. Why is it easier to text or chat with someone online than it is to talk to that person face to face? Why can we say something to someone online that we would never say to them in person? I think a lot of it has to do with the loss of the physical connection. Online, there is no phyiscal connection, even if you know the person and see them everyday. Body language is a key element of human interaction that cannot by mimicked in cyber space. I think excessive amounts of chatting with people online makes us forget how we are supposed to interact with people in real life. I mean in casual relationships it won't matter so much, but I think if we start spilling our guts online to other people and exposing the deep layers of our hearts with the pseudo-anonymity of the internet, we become less capable of doing so one-on-one in person. There are different rules in physical interaction than there are on the internet. This is hard to explain, but a while back I was reading about mediums, not people who talk to the dead, but the ways in which we express our ideas to other people, anyway, I forget what I was reading but the guy was talking about how there are different mediums for different ideas we are trying to express to others, for example you can't smell something through a television (the most basic level). Different levels of human interaction are needed to express different levels of ideas. I think that we are trying to shove interactions between humans that need to take place in person onto the internet.

Example: On the internet I can express an idea but I cannot act the idea out. I can tell a girl that I like her and am interested in her, but this is the only way I can show my interest in her online. While, in the real world I can actually do things with this girl and try to get to know her while keeping the "im interestedness" of it inside, perhaps where it needs to be in order to cultivate a base for the relationship.

This gets even more complicated in social interaction where there is both online interaction and physical interaction. Where do you draw the line. In my opinion I think matters of the heart MUST be confined to physical interaction in order to be regarded as sacred (not in a religious sense but in a sense where we know that it is not something cheap or free.) We talk online to plan for things where we physically interact with eachother, we have to realize that online interaction has limitations and rules just like physical interaction.

Anyway, these are just raw unprocessed thoughts. What do you think? lets have a discussion.

#2- Bible Study

Honestly, Prayer and Study of Scripture should both be @ 1, but I wanted to address them both seperately. In regard to bible study it is a lot like prayer where it should both be done individually and corporately. The scripture tells us what is required of us in regard to being a light in our community. We are to be a pure people that is "in" but not "of" and the bible presents many good examples of people who have invested in the kingdom. I think it would be beneficial to have a bible study to see examples of how men and women in the bible changed the community around them through faith in Jesus Christ. Also, examples of unfaithful people should be looked at too to see how that changed community.

#1- Prayer

I think the best way to start pursuing living out the gospel in our community is prayer. I want to start getting a group of people together every week to pray for the school, the community, our church, and that we will be faithful in our walks with God. Last year Simeon and I did this for a while and I felt like it was a good thing to do, and honestly I have no idea where to start with this action thing I've been ranting about lol. Also, Jonathan mentioned the great commission in relation to my other post and I thought that was a GREAT place to start too. So I think that should be the main theme of these prayer meetings, how to fulfill that commission best in the EMPOR!

All you do is talk.

"Help yourself don't say a thing
Your love won't show in anything at all
If all you do is talk"

Can't say anthing new.
I'm stuck on this because it's important.
Words don't mean anything apart from action.
This is the key word for the new year: do.
Let's not worry so much about getting it wrong or right: do.
I'm not talking about the "out there" type of doing either.
You know what I mean, Christian camp, isolation movements.
It needs to be done here. It needs to be lived in the moments
where it is impossible to live it.
The more we see Christ "out there" the harder it is to see Him here.
I read this great article the other day about anxiety and how we need
to give it up in order to be humble. We have to stop thinking so much
about what people think of us or how they will respond. It doesn't
matter. Nothing matters except the gospel of Christ.
But you've all heard it before, I've heard it before.
I'm tired of hearing it. Let's think of practical ways
to do and then do them. No more discussion. Only action
allowed. If you are into that idea let me know, and
lets get started.