The Freakishness of Christianity
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I encourage you to click on the link (above) and read the article by Moore before reading my response below. What I wrote may not make sense to you unless you read the article. The author is Russel Moore, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptists.
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There is no doubt that Americanized Christianity has some serious struggles and I kind of like the “freakishness” idea of living out our faith in a real world. While it is obvious that we live in a world that is thoroughly messed up, we talk and act like it is not – and like it has not been that way at times in the past. We think our journey is to “fix” things and get them back to the way they used to be. It seems that people and culture are trapped in the curse and I would agree that simply defending a certain set of values is like divorcing morality from Christ. The result would be “moral-ism” with no underlying foundation.
Living in, but not being consumed by, the culture has been both confusing and self-destructive for most Christians. We keep vacillating between the extreme of isolation, or retreat, and indulging in it. In this we have not only become part of the culture, but advocates of perpetuating the sinful environments that the world has created. We are in that phase were we are desperately trying to make God and Christianity popular, rather than standing on the cutting edge of His Word speaking into the darkness of our sin and depravity. Frankly we seem to want to save the culture more than we want to see people saved. Hopefully It sounds like a huge reversal of some traditional world views of many church denominations. If he hopes, however, that Christians will abandon the idea that the benefit of Christianity is to make me happy, give me a good job, and have these define the nature of its success…
That’s the million dollar question, the definition of successful Christianity, and it always seems to be in flux – at least from a cultural perspective. As soon as someone feels like they have it figured out, someone else comes along and destroys the picture and exposes the flaws.
As Christians we are not supposed to be in retreat or be a retreat for like-minded people. As J. Warner Wallace stated, “We need to stop teaching and start training people.”
Not a bad idea.
Pastor Brad
