March/April 2003
Escape from the Planet of the Pagans
by Greg Albrecht
| Are Christians Retreating From or Engaging in the Culture? |
John Fischer isn't happy with the current state of Christianity, but not for the reasons you might think.
It's not because Christians are "backsliding." It's not because they are becoming more "worldly." It's because they seem to be fleeing from the world in record numbers.
As evangelical Christians have found themselves increasingly at odds with the world around them, they have formed their own little subculture, where they can avoid temptations to sin and challenges to their faith.
But is this what Christians are called to do? No, says Fischer, a recording artist, musician, author and speaker who has entertained and educated a variety of audiences for over 30 years.
Fischer asserts that Christians are called to take their faith into an often hostile world. In his recent book, Fearless Faith -- Living Beyond the Walls of "Safe" Christianity,
Fischer implores us to embrace the danger of living in a dangerous world. He reminds us that any "safe" Christian subculture we construct is only an illusion. We can only rely on our Savior to protect us -- not any subculture we construct.
It's time for Christians to leave the illusional safety and comfort of Christian culture and go home -- to the world where Christ has given us a job to do.
We agree with John Fischer and share the following excerpts from Fearless Faith. We hope his words will challenge you to reexamine your calling and renew your efforts of bringing Christian love and service to a world that needs it.
-- The Editors
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I can still remember when as a small child I fingered a little sculpture my parents used to keep on a shelf over the kitchen sink. It was of three monkeys. One had his hands over his eyes; one had his hands over his ears; and one had his hands over his mouth. "See no evil; hear no evil; speak no evil" was the message it conveyed. This thinking was very popular among Christians at the time, and it helped justify our separation from the world which took on the form of cultural abstinence (no movies, clubs or theaters) and behavioral taboos (no dancing, card playing or makeup).
We were to keep ourselves separate from the world in order to be fully committed Christians. Scriptural sayings such as "come out from among them, and be ye separateand touch not the unclean thing" (2 Corinthians 6:17, KJV) and "abstain from all appearance of evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:22, KJV) were constantly being employed to justify a separatist lifestyle. Little did I know that these verses were being quoted out of context and that the three little monkeys were speaking for Confucius and not the Bible.
In fact, Jesus taught that it was not what goes into someone that defiles them, but what comes out, because what comes out comes from a heart that is deceitful and desperately wicked. I believe now that the power of these pharisaical controls are hard to resist.
We will always gravitate to an easily defined external spirituality rather than to a more ambiguous, internal judgment that makes us all personally responsible for our own decisions and conclusions. I still feel this struggle today. I still squirm when a Christian college student responds to a talk I give on personal responsibility in cultural matters by the inevitable question: "But where do you draw the line?"
A separate world is an easier world. It places more responsibility on others to come up with what is acceptable and what is not. It's also a safer world.
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We want to be safe in a safer world; God wants us safe in an unsafe world. We want to protect ourselves by removing ourselves from danger; God wants to protect us in the middle of danger.
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This retreat from the world turns into a sort of cultural catch-22. The more we remove ourselves from the world, the worse the world gets in the absence of a Christian influence and the stronger the argument becomes to stay away from the world.
If we were training our children to understand and critically examine the world's popular art, literature, music and film instead of limiting them to safe Christian versions of these things, we might have a different world waiting for us in the next generation. But it may not be too late for us to rethink our approach.
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We all need to think through why we are here and what our faith is for. By its very nature, faith is dangerous.
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The world is now marketing us to ourselves -- a kind of cultural cannibalism -- and picking up the profits along the way.
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Christians are not dumb, but if there is inadequate support for a higher level of critical thinking among the Christian community, what's to keep us from getting dumb and dumber about our faith?
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I bet there are a lot of people who would be Christians if they didn't have to become a Christian to be one.
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The world now sees Christians primarily as moralists who are out to reform society and take away the rights of unbelievers.
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As popular culture grows more blatantly decadent, we undoubtedly will see this justification for contemporary Christian institutions and products becoming more and more commonplace -- the building of a Christian subculture, not as a message-bearer to the world, but as a safe haven from it. In the last few years we have been experiencing a general exodus of Christians from the world's culture and institutions to a safer alternative Christian culture sporting its own growing market and infrastructure.
I have been speaking regularly in Christian colleges across the country for more than 20 years and have noticed this trend manifested in the attitudes and habits of current students. It was not even five years ago that Christian colleges were struggling for new admissions. Not so now. Children who have been in school during the popular Christian school and homeschool boom of the '80s and '90s are now reaching college age.
It stands to reason that parents who have used the Christian school to protect their kids from the world would look to the Christian college as their last bastion. As a result, Christian colleges have never enjoyed such success. Many have to turn away qualified students because of limited space and resources. Every college I've visited in the last few years has a building expansion program in place, already fully funded or close to it. Other institutions, that ten years ago were on their last leg, are now thriving.
Many of the students I meet in these colleges listen to nothing but Christian music. These are the same kids that struggle with some of the required college-level reading, as well as with social and scientific theories they need to learn for a liberal arts degree. Their former schools steered clear of controversial literature and modern theories due to the questionable content, language and unbiblical philosophies they contain. And yet even Christian colleges realize that a transition to the wider world is imminent and that these cultural realities must be faced -- better sooner than later -- while the support of a Christian environment can guide the deconstruction and reconstruction of faith that is necessary for personal ownership.
I consistently find the students of these colleges to be far more conservative in their cultural views than their teachers. Faculty members tell me they worry greatly over their students' ability to carry a zealous, but untested faith into the larger, unforgiving culture. Would that there were a Christian world these students could graduate into, but, alas, there is not.
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As Christians in the world, we are to be focused on people in the world and their need. This is not a time to be focused on ourselves -- even on our holiness. Jesus is our example in this. Certainly no one was more holy than he was -- the true Son of God who embodied all the fullness of his Father (Colossians 1:19) -- and yet we also see him fully enmeshed in a sinful, worldly society.
As a friend of sinners, you can believe Jesus got an earful and an eyeful. You don't hang out with sinners without seeing and hearing about their sin. Of course, this will bother you -- it must have bothered Jesus -- but you simply figure out a way to get over it because this isn't about you. A case could be made that this was, in fact, the attitude of Jesus, who gave up his right to be God and took on the form of a servant because this wasn't about him. It was about us (Philippians 2:5-8).
Remember Lot? He was Abraham's nephew who lived in Sodom, that sinful place from whence we got our word "sodomy." He was the one whose wife was turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back at the burning city as the rest of her family escaped God's wrath upon Sodom.
Poor Lot. We rarely give the guy a fair shake -- probably because he went into a deep depression after losing his home and his wife and drank himself into doing some pretty stupid things. And yet, in the New Testament we find out that "living among them day after day, [Lot] was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard" (2 Peter 2:8).
Lot had a righteous soul? You'd never guess that from reading the Old Testament account. You would think he would have been pretty happy about escaping Sodom and having God torch the place. Instead, he wanted God to spare the city. Yes, Lot was bothered by the evil around him, but this wasn't about him. This was about a city full of sinners, some of whom were his friends.
If it seems hard to imagine some of the people of Sodom being Lot's friends, we need look no further than the friends of Jesus. This is not about becoming insensitive to sin; it's about overcoming what bothers us about sin because we care about sinners.
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The way I see it, there are only two ways to look at this. We can condemn the world and hope God gets us out of here before it burns, or we can take the more dangerous route and stick it out here and learn to love sinners -- seeing in them our own forgivability and loving them unconditionally, the way we are loved by God through Christ.
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I believe that if we members of the Christian subculture were to spend half the time and money we spend supporting our subculture and use that time and money to pay more attention to our unsaved neighbors, we would reach a whole lot more unbelievers than we are reaching now.
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It's time to break up the party and send everybody home. Time to scatter and make our way out into the places in the world where our faith makes a difference. Time to break out of our own Christian media commune into other media communes via great writing, great journalism, wonderful movies, creative new T.V. shows, popular songs, stimulating university professorships and believable politicians -- professional people of all kinds who happen to be Christian, though our faith may not be the first thing people know about us.
Our address is here, in the world. Though it is temporary, with respect to eternity, for now it is where we live. It is our neighborhood, our housing development, our apartment complex, our workplace.
It is the place where our Christianity rubs up against the real world. It is the place where you can't deal in Christian words because no one knows what they mean. It is the place where you have to deal in meanings and experiences and connect with shared human needs. You can't simply be a smiling Christian painter. You must be a painter who can put his faith in human terms to connect in a meaningful way with those unfamiliar with Christian words and phrases.
This world is where the lost are, and the heart of Jesus has always been with the lost. Just listening to his stories of the lost coin (Luke 15:8-10), the lost sheep (Luke 15:4-7) and the lost son (Luke 15:11-31) should make evident the heart of God. The kingdom of God has always been in the business of finding the lost.
The Christian subculture, on the contrary, seems more interested in taking the found and turning them into a business enterprise. In other words, while the shepherd is out trying to find that one lost sheep, a Christian cottage industry has set up a booming business in the sheep corral, marketing to the other ninety and nine. It's my hunch that the shepherd isn't coming back to the corral anytime soon, except to drop off a few newfound sheep and go back out for more.
We need to get back into the world where the lost are. The world is our address. We don't live on Christian Street anymore. We never did. There is no such address. It is only a way of thinking that makes us believe we are more Christian if we separate ourselves from the world. But we are Christ in the world, and the world needs Christ. This is no time to sequester ourselves in a subculture.
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God is already out in the world, and he has his people there, too, although many of these people are difficult to recognize as Christians because their faith is not worn on their sleeves.
I am reminded of Elijah lamenting to God about being the only prophet and all that, and I can imagine God telling him, "Relax, Elijah. What you don't know is, I have 4,000 people who have not bowed their knee to any idol."
Now where do you suppose God was keeping those folks? And why didn't Elijah know about them? If we only knew who God has out there, I think we would all be surprised. These believers have a faith based on the inner realities and beliefs that transform one's character and are made evident in a natural, gradual way. Real Christians in the world tend to be quieter on the surface, but are more powerful over the long haul.
The concept that God is already out in the world is a challenge to some of our cherished justifications for a Christian subculture. It also explains why our Christian witness is often so ineffective.
If God is here (in my subculture) and not over there (in the world), then I do not have to concern myself with God when I'm in the world. It's expected that he is not going to be there. This is very convenient for the lazy believer. I have to think of God only when I'm involved in Christian things, and what's more, I have a subculture to do some of my thinking for me.
This all changes if God is present in the world. We don't get to write the world off. The world is not as god-forsaken as we'd like to imagine. If God is in the world, then I have to be a Christian all the time. I am not excused from thinking about him and finding him in the course of my life in the world.
It's the difference between being a part-time and a full-time Christian.
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Is Christian materialism better than secular materialism? What would Jesus do about all this Christian stuff? I'm not sure, but I bet he wouldn't wear a bracelet that asks that question.
Fearless Faith -- Living Beyond the Walls of "Safe" Christianity, by John Fischer, published by Harvest House, is available at your local Christian bookstore.