Simplicity

Hidden Messages of American Christianity: “We’re Cool, Too!”

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This is the fifth in a series of posts covering the hidden messages that sneak into American churches’ proclamation of the Gospel. For more background, please refer to this post.

High school is the grand social experiment wherein hormonally-driven young people seek to establish a place in the social pecking order. Any keen observer of the high-school scene will easily note the depths to which some teens will sink in order to be perceived as cool or attuned to the latest vibe. CluelessNo one wants to be left out.

Everyone knew (or some of us may have been) that kid who spent every waking hour trying to fit in. The tragi-comedy of the teen years is observing the desperate lengths to which some kids go to keep from being deemed irrelevant to the greater theatrical production. If all the world’s a stage and we are merely players, no one wants to be the understudy.

Hopefully we all move on and grow into maturity. Even then, a high school reunion will expose that handful of people who are still trapped in the “Please look at me! I’m cool, too!” phase.

We can excuse our teenagers for this desire, but we can’t excuse adults who never get over it.

Large swaths of the American Church can’t get over it. There is a desperate longing to be perceived as smart, “hip,” and worldly wise. Step into a few churches today and note that they not only serve you a latte you can take into the worship service, but the coffee is pitched as being free trade, so no one can accuse the church of not being cool enough to be sensitive to economic and environmental issues.

Like the teenager screaming, “Please look at me! I’m cool, too,” American Christians have become obsessed with not being left out of the “be there or be square” party everyone’s attending.

If you’re an American, you had to have been squatting in the bowels of Carlsbad Caverns for the last year to have missed the fact that THE MOVIE is debuting this weekend. All of us having sucked long on the marketing teat behind THE MOVIE, I need not mention its name. You and probably everyone you know are aware of THE MOVIE. Many of us are planning on seeing THE MOVIE either Friday or Saturday for fear we won’t be able to discuss it on Sunday before and after our church services.

After all, we let Hollywood know that we demand more movies like this, movies that cater to us, because hey, we’re cool, right? We have money as well. And we don’t ever want to be left out of what’s cool for fear the world will think less of us. What good is a Church that avoids the world’s party?

In far too many churches in America today, the message on Sunday is that Christianity is cool and hip. It’s a faith that makes cultural demands that need to be met by the world’s power brokers. It cries out for Christian-themed amusement parks, Bibles with dimpled steel covers, and stuffed Aslan dolls that better darned sure look exactly like Aslan (or else we won’t buy it.) It’s a new and improved Christianity that walks with a swagger and demands to be on student council so that popularity is assured. Sure, we may talk about a savior who was killed by crucifixion, or we may espouse ideals of dying to self and to the world, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look cool doing it. Or so the conflicted message goes.

For a lot of churches and the Christians who populate them, the greatest fear is to jammed into a locker and have the door slammed on us. Once you’ve been assaulted in that manner by the school’s alpha jock, you’re relegated to loser status forever.

I seem to remember this Bible passage, though:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
—Romans 8:35-36 ESV

Regarded as sheep to be slaughtered? Highly, highly uncool.

Or how about this:

Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!
—Luke 6:22 ESV

You’ll never be class president if you’re reviled. They’ll vote for that Pedro guy instead.

This one stings a little:

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
—Philippians 1:21 ESV

It’s hard to be a debutante when you’re dead, isn’t it?

Or…

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
—1 John 2:15-17 ESV

I guess the prom is out then, huh?

Or…

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.
—Luke 9:23-26 ESV

But the popular kids like me now!

We’ve got to stop this high school behavior in the American Church. We’re so wrapped up in our image that our main message of the Gospel is threatened with becoming the real hidden message. We’re glorying in worldly acclaim, but that acclaim is worthless. We’re excited about the power we supposedly wield politically, culturally, and so on, but it’s all a façade. We’re high school kids caught up in the social milieu, desperately trying to be cool and popular.

Th result of our dalliances is that we’ve made Christianity nothing more than a check mark on a To-Do list somewhere next to “Get a date for Homecoming” and “Buy more Clearisil.” The transforming power of the Gospel has been replaced by a message that’s a salve for getting dumped before prom night, or strength for revenge against the stuck-up girl who made us look bad in gym class a month ago. Dying to self, loving Christ and others, making disciples, being salt and light—that’s the heart of the Gospel, not all that kiddie stuff.

High school isn’t the real world, folks. “Please look at me! I’m cool, too!” is like…so yesterday. It’s time we American Christians grew up and acted like adults.

{Image of the movie poster from Clueless — Paramount Pictures.}

Hidden Messages of American Christianity: Kneeling at the Altar of Excellence

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The Happy PrinceThis is the second in a series of posts covering the hidden messages that sneak into American churches’ proclamation of the Gospel. For more background, please refer to this post.

Fourteen years ago I sat among the throngs at Willow Creek Community Church and heard Bill Hybels talk about Christian excellence. Taking time to note that all their musicians were professionals, Hybels went on about the fact that unchurched Harry and Mary couldn’t tolerate a church service that wasn’t excellent and just as slick as anything you’d find on TV.

To a student of Christian Education looking to make church programming better, those words were true and right. Too often we church people had put up with off-key singers, monotone Scripture readers, and SAG-card-lacking actors in our church dramatic productions. It was all kind of tacky. Of course non-Christians would flee our little exercises in indulging the talentless.

But then a thought got the better of me.

As a pimply-faced teenager, I’d more than once walked out on stage in my old Lutheran Church and offered up my less than accomplished skills to the people of that church and to the Lord. I wasn’t Buddy Rich back then (or now), but I was encouraged to use my meager drumming ability for the youth productions we put on during Easter and Christmas. I’m almost positive I played way too loud. When I picked up a guitar later, the organist/youth minister encouraged me to play that instrument, too, and to even solo, playing songs I’d written.

Here at Willow Creek, though, they probably had armed guards with M-16s barring the stage from the likes of me. I’d certainly play or sing to the best of my ability, but it would never be good enough for “Christian excellence.”

I can’t really point to a time when Christianity turned professional. Researching older books has not turned up the first occurrence of this idea of excellence. Yet I have to believe that we lose something when we insist that only the remarkably gifted be allowed to share their talents with the family of God.

I also suspect that on any given Sunday, the truly remarkable people are in short supply in most churches. Sure, Willow Creek has a mid-size city’s worth of people from which to draw upon reserves of excellence (or they pay outsiders to come in and do what they do so excellently), but your average church does not. Still, that message that everything has to be perfect continues to trickle down from the brightest and best churches to those that are jealous to mimic churches of excellence.

How many churches today are more stringent in just who gets to do what on a Sunday? Growing up, I had the luxury of people who understood that encouraging youth to perform with the burgeoning talents they possessed was essential to a healthy church. I fear that today more and more churches are loathe to ratchet down their insistence on excellence to allow that.

The doppelganger of excellence is success. Success means reducing failure, and nothing spells excellence more than eliminating mistakes. The inroads that business practices made into our churches through the Church Growth Movement have enshrined success as the be all and end all. The only problem is that now there is no room for true grace for the fallen. Just as a company can’t go to shareholders and confess they had a bad quarter without paying the penalty, so our churches are becoming places where failure isn’t tolerated for very long. (We’ve all heard the aphorism that the Church in America is the only place where we bury our wounded, right?) If recent bestselling “Christian” book Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen is any indication, success is the new goal of the Christian faith. So much for all those martyrs. Horrible failures all.

One of the most moving stories I have ever read is Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince.” Despite his being jailed for debauchery by order of Queen Victoria, Wilde at least understood that the Gospel isn’t pretty. It’s not about success or excellence, but about the bloodied remains of the Messiah nailed to rough lumber. If you are not familiar with Wilde’s lovely story, I would heartily encourage everyone to read “The Happy Prince” at this link (pops) before going on.

The story tells of a gilded statue dubbed “The Happy Prince” erected in honor of a long-dead prince who was known for his lightheartedness. As winter approaches, the bejeweled statue befriends a stray swallow on his way to the warmth of Africa. The swallow is concerned at the statue’s sadness over the plight of the downtrodden in the city, so at the statue’s request, the bird begins stripping all the gems and gold leaf off the Happy Prince and giving them away to the needy. In time, there is nothing precious left of the statue, and the dedicated swallow who once told exotic tales of Egypt to the statue, is chilled and exhausted.

Wilde concludes the story:

The poor little Swallow grew colder and colder, but he would not leave the Prince, he loved him too well. He picked up crumbs outside the baker’s door when the baker was not looking and tried to keep himself warm by flapping his wings.

But at last he knew that he was going to die. He had just strength to fly up to the Prince’s shoulder once more. “Good-bye, dear Prince!” he murmured, “will you let me kiss your hand?”

“I am glad that you are going to Egypt at last, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “you have stayed too long here; but you must kiss me on the lips, for I love you.”

“It is not to Egypt that I am going,” said the Swallow. “I am going to the House of Death. Death is the brother of Sleep, is he not?”

And he kissed the Happy Prince on the lips, and fell down dead at his feet.

At that moment a curious crack sounded inside the statue, as if something had broken. The fact is that the leaden heart had snapped right in two. It certainly was a dreadfully hard frost.

Early the next morning the Mayor was walking in the square below in company with the Town Councillors. As they passed the column he looked up at the statue: “Dear me! how shabby the Happy Prince looks!” he said.

“How shabby indeed!” cried the Town Councillors, who always agreed with the Mayor; and they went up to look at it.

“The ruby has fallen out of his sword, his eyes are gone, and he is golden no longer,” said the Mayor in fact, “he is little better than a beggar!”

“Little better than a beggar,” said the Town Councillors.

“And here is actually a dead bird at his feet!” continued the Mayor. “We must really issue a proclamation that birds are not to be allowed to die here.” And the Town Clerk made a note of the suggestion.

So they pulled down the statue of the Happy Prince. “As he is no longer beautiful he is no longer useful,” said the Art Professor at the University.

Then they melted the statue in a furnace, and the Mayor held a meeting of the Corporation to decide what was to be done with the metal. “We must have another statue, of course,” he said, “and it shall be a statue of myself.”

“Of myself,” said each of the Town Councillors, and they quarrelled. When I last heard of them they were quarrelling still.

“What a strange thing!” said the overseer of the workmen at the foundry. “This broken lead heart will not melt in the furnace. We must throw it away.” So they threw it on a dust-heap where the dead Swallow was also lying.

“Bring me the two most precious things in the city,” said God to one of His Angels; and the Angel brought Him the leaden heart and the dead bird.

“You have rightly chosen,” said God, “for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me.”

When we are in the grips of the message of excellence and success we become like the Mayor and Town Councillors in the story. Our ability to see true beauty in the less than perfect is stymied and along with it the beauty of the Gospel.

Hidden Messages of American Christianity: Classism

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This is the first in a series of posts covering the hidden messages that sneak into American churches’ proclamation of the Gospel. For more background, please refer to this post.

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
—John 17:20-23 ESV

Just another class symbolI was talking with friends this weekend about a minor split that occurred in their predominantly upper-middle class church. Several families, unhappy with the idea that the church was looking into broadening their outreach to some less advantaged areas, took their ball and went home. Or should I say that in a more appropriate vernacular: They started another church.

It’s not hard to imagine the reasoning that went on behind that small exodus. That less advantaged area consisted mostly of people who were “not like us.” Heaven forbid if they actually responded to an outreach program and began attending the church. Who really knows how to minister to them? They’re just…different.

Is it so hard to believe that this was not the thinking that led to a new church where reaching out to the different would never be forced on anyone. Ivory towers have a way of staying ivory, don’t they?

Last year my wife and I were looking for a new church. We were also looking for full-time employment. In a fit of overthinking, I latched onto a fast-growing, wealthy church with the hope of not only finding a good church home, but also excellent business prospects who might be willing to hire one of us. The church had a stellar reputation, and was even in the same denomination as a well-known Reformed pastor I admired.

Our hopes sank quickly, though. In nearly every conversation with other people at the church, things went well until we mentioned that we were both looking for a full-time corporate job. When I discussed my current work as a freelance writer, you could almost see the eyes glaze over. After a few weeks, we found ourselves a party of two; the world of the church buzzed on around us, CEOs and corporate players chatting away with gusto, excluding those of us who were less fortunate. Maybe they were put off by my decidedly non-handmade dress shoes. Or perhaps it was the fact we drove a Toyota Corolla and not a Range Rover. No matter the economic impediment, the message was clear: we weren’t on the corporate fast-track and probably never would be. Instead, we became so much furniture to be walked around on the way to the sanctuary.

We don’t like to think of our churches as little demographic ghettoes, yet all too often the hidden message communicated to those who don’t fit the demographic is “You’re not invited to our little shindig.” The classism that results from our unspoken message of conformity overrides Jesus’ prayer that we all be one.

I suspect our friends’ church is in the majority, especially among white, well-off, conservative churches. Similar churches once anchored the respectable parts of town, but time changed their neighborhoods from upper crust to urban (or even suburban) blight. Unable to assimilate into their changed neighborhoods, they either adopted a fortress mentality or fled altogether.

Who’s kidding whom, though? The residents in that altered neighborhood clearly understood that we didn’t want their neighborhood spice sprinkled on our filet mignon. A vague condescension may even have existed in our outreach to them because they knew that we didn’t truly want them to come to our place of worship, especially if it meant our tried and true Sunday program would be modified as a result. Rather, we just wanted to feel good about doing outreach, even if none of them ever walked into our sanctuary.

This isn’t just a problem in megachurches. Sure, they may have a “Pastor of Demographics” whose main job is to ensure bland conformity in the church’s cultural milieu, but the problem goes deeper. For all our talk as American Christians of unity and “being one,” we really don’t want to push that message too hard, lest we be forced to live with the consequences. The tattooed goth who cracked open a Gideon Bible in his hotel room where he’s staying during his vampyre convention—aren’t we all secretly a little glad he’s from out of town and will be visiting our church this weekend only? For all we know, he might even be a Democrat, too.

I’ve been a part of churches that did it right and others that failed miserably. Several years ago, I attended a church where you were likely to see a Mary Kay saleslady sitting behind a hooker wearing a spiked dog collar. And that ultra-clean-cut Mary Kay saleslady was ecstatic that the hooker was there hearing the Gospel rather than out roaming the streets or plying her trade in a dingy hotel room. On the other hand, I’ve known churches that turned men away because they weren’t wearing a suitcoat.

Christian classism isn’t reserved for the people in the seats, either. We might not say it, but don’t we automatically give the ministry esteem to an R.C. Sproul or John Piper over the nameless Holiness pastor who couldn’t afford to go to seminary? And isn’t the luster just a tad brighter on the doctorate degree hanging on the wall of the PCA pastor than the one on the Pentecostal pastor’s?

Today, I’m at a church that spans classes and occupations. This isn’t to say we’re perfect, but somehow it works. (Yes, we’re too white, but rural areas typically skew that way.) Even then, we still have this idea that people who cross the threshold of our church for the first time have to conform to us ASAP or else we don’t know what to do with them. Thinking like a first-time visitor who’s never once darkened a church doorway doesn’t come naturally to us, nor would I say that it does for most American churches. However, this doesn’t excuse us from making them welcome, even if they are not like us.

Jesus keenly chose a Samaritan for His parable. The Lord ate with the wrong kind of people, too. And when His Church was first started, a vision of a sheet full of unclean animals got through the noggin of the hardest-headed disciple.

What class distinction message are we inadvertently sending out to the lost, to the first-time visitor, and even to our own brothers and sisters in Christ? Do we see ourselves as a Church that can only be sullied by the hordes of “those people” who are dying to get into the Kingdom despite our reticence? Or are we willing to be happy in a church that reflects all races, tongues, and economic classes of people?

What is it going to take to make us one?