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Attack of the Precious Moments:
Does the Christian sub-culture advance the cause of Christ?
American 20th century Christianity is an aberration in the historical flow of the faith. At no other time in history has there been such a broad range of things connected with the biblical faith in one way or another. From fishes on cars and business cards to WWJD bracelets and shoelaces to entire television networks run for purportedly evangelical purposes, the culture of Christianity is inescapable.
As a Christian, I long for Christ's message to go to the ends of the earth and for everyone to have chance to know his Creator. However, I have my doubts that the substance of these messages is the same as that which Jesus brought to us two millennia ago.
One of the curses and blessings of maturity is seeing shades of gray where once there was only black and white. Though it used to be that anything in a "Christian" bookstore seemed inherently worthwhile to me, I find myself having doubts about much of what I now see there. More than that, however, the very idea of Christians being in a carefully crafted world of their own seems not only outside of Jesus' message, but actually contrary to it.
IN THE WORLD/OF THE WORLD?
The first and most obvious example of this tension is one of Jesus' commands: "Be in the world, but not of it." Like most of His commands, this one is hard to obey -- harder than it at first appears. It's easy to be of the world and in it; most of us have been. Somewhat more difficult is to be out of the world and not of it, which is the life of many monastic orders and communes. Jesus tells us to do the hardest thing of all, and then sets us an example: to live in the world in all of its fallenness, to relate to it and those who have been hurt by it, to never withdraw from the stench it puts up, but to remain unstained by it, to stand even while the evil-saturated world tries to pull us down.
By building up a whole world of "Christian" activities, places, and purchases, we have stopped short of obedience. By going to our "Christian" jobs, our "Christian" bookstores, and the Quick-E-Lube that has the fish on its yellow pages advertisement, we have effectively withdrawn from the world. We've managed to hide a city set on a hill by picking it up and moving it into the unpopulated desert.
Jesus, while he walked the earth, was known as a "Friend of Sinners". He is shown in the company of prostitutes and lepers (the social equivalent of AIDS sufferers today) far more often than that of the religious folk. How ironic that we have turned that on its head and so often question another's sincerity based on the company she keeps. Propriety mattered far less to Jesus than did people's hearts.
A victim of the withdrawal of believers to our fish-emblazoned microcosm is evangelism. I don't mean the knock-on-the-door where-would-you-go-if-you-died-tonight kind of evangelism, which is still present in abundance, but the kind by which most of the believers I know have come to faith: friends talking about their experiences. If we tell people about the gospel out of the blue, they have no more reason to listen to us than to the Hare Krishnas or Baha'i folks. God does work in those situations at times, and the truth of the message occasionally gets through. In most cases, however, far more can be done by building friendships with people and telling them about your faith when they express an interest. Your words have much more weight with someone who knows you than with someone who doesn't. By caring about people, not as evangelical prospects, but as people, we earn the right to be heard.
Another concept that is firmly embedded within the collective consciousness of American Christianity is a distinction between "Christian" and "Secular". The idea that anything can be neatly classified as one or the other bears examination. Robert Leahy in "Is it Christian? Or..." points out that the terms as they are commonly used aren't meaningful or consistent. I would add that they are a symptom of our desire to compartmentalize a faith that destroys the containers we put it in and refuses to be confined to just a part of our lives.
Why do we ask "Is it Christian?" I believe it's because we want a shortcut to determine if it's something that brings glory to God. As Mr. Leahy points out, "All of humanity will glorify God forever. Some of us will glorify His mercy in heaven; some will glorify His justice in hell." He makes two good points: anything that's honest can point toward the divine, whether it intends to or not; and things don't glorify God -- people do.
What we're trying to ask when we come up with these categorical questions is "Will it help me to glorify God?" When we finally ask what we mean, we can see that there isn't an answer as simple as "Yes" or "No"; it always depends on who is doing the asking. Petra may encourage spiritual growth for some people by reminding them of God's love. Marilyn Manson may encourage spiritual growth for others by fostering a healthy fear of evil. When we shortcut this process of discernment by asking "Is It Christian?", we avoid the responsibility and effort of thinking for ourselves, and look to someone else for answers that only we and the Almighty can provide.
This idea that there are separate categories for things "Christian"
and "Secular" is not, in fact, 
a Christian idea
so much as a Platonic one. Plato's theory of ideals holds that for every
object in the real world, there is an "ideal" of that object in
another realm. Real chairs are good chairs to the degree that they approximate
the ideal of a chair. This "upper story" (the realm of ideals)
vs. "lower story" (the realm of the physical) thinking was assimilated
by early Christian thinkers. Their variation on it was to draw a distinction
between spiritual and secular things in life, to say that kneeling in church
was somehow more godly than rolling in the leaves. The fallacy is that one
can kneel in church without having a thought for the Creator, and roll in
the leaves to God's glory. In reality, all of life is sacred. Every thought
is to be taken captive for Christ, including those about bank statements,
football, and cleaning the gutters.
Cultural Christianity causes me concern another way: it simply makes things too easy. The church is nowhere more vibrant than where it's under persecution. Nearly any church meeting in communist China will be more exciting than most in the United States, simply because the people who are present have given something, have risked something, to be there.
College professors will tell you that their favorite students are the 30-somethings that have returned to school, paying their own way, because it's what they want to be doing. It's not easy for them to be there. It's not the course of least resistance, and it's certainly not the cheapest way they could be spending their time. When people have to sacrifice to get something, they value it more highly than if it's given to them for no better reason than their birthplace or family of origin.
Finally, can a faith based upon a Person who is described as a scandalous rock over which people will stumble and fall ever become a mass movement? The gospel, in its truest form, is offensive before it's comforting. Saying "I'm a sinner" and meaning it with every fiber of your being is a terrible thing. We want to believe that we can rely on our own merits. Admitting that nothing we can do has a chance of gaining God's favor is a huge blow to our pride.
When the "Christian Community" births products that depend on popularity, such as television networks or wall plaques with religious sayings, it does so at its own peril.
Targeting Christians as a market sets up conflicting motives from the start: represent the gospel accurately, and thus offend many people, or dilute the message, so as to create a best-seller. Focus exclusively on the Precious Moments, or represent life accurately with all of the questioning moments, the loving moments, the tragic moments, the tender touch of God, the hard questions, the blazes of glory, and the blazes of hellfire.
Honesty demands nothing less.
1/17/99:
Subject: Precious Moments
Wow. This article has beautifully articulated what I have been thinking for a while now: honesty, not sugar-coating, should be characteristic of Christianity. The author is right about the gray areas that show up as we mature in our faith. It is important that we try to sort them out with courage, rather than whitewash them with "warm-fuzzy" feelings.
Melanie