By Matt LaPine
I like being popular. As a teenager my desire for popularity caused me much inner conflict. Though I praise God now for parents who cared about my spiritual condition, as a teen I was conflicted over the popularity I craved and the moral boundaries imposed on me. I always knew at the core that certain things about me were going to be different. I had a clear sense of the antithesis, that the church was to stand out against the world. But for me this was torture. I wanted so badly to fit in. For example, I remember very clearly when fitted hats first came into style in my junior high school. Certain painful memories stick with you forever. This memory is painful because I can still picture my classmates in all their “awesomeness” with their white MLB logos just above their eyebrows. And I had nothing. I cannot tell you how badly I wanted a fitted hat. But more than anything I wanted to matter. What is interesting is I eventually did get a fitted hat. But getting the hat did not gain me significance or popularity as I had thought it would. I wanted to matter; but I did not.
If one scans the scene of the contemporary American church, it seems as though it has a similar identity crisis on its hands. Church fads-like trendy coffee, stage lighting, and captivating videos-are coming and going even faster than fashion trends. And yet, other churches have responded differently. Many, no doubt, have commendably resisted the allures of the shifting sands of trendiness. But of those, which ones have powerfully reached their communities with the truth of the gospel? Or further, could it be that many traditional churches are traditional simply out of resistance of anything new? So the question is, Who is right? What are we to make of this issue of cultural relevance? I would like to suggest four general guidelines the churches should consider to promote a gospel-oriented Biblical relevance.
Maintain Intrinsic Relevance
The landscapes of American evangelicalism and fundamentalism are very different from each other. Contrasting the two movements, one can see that they have diverged greatly in terms of how they have approached culture. In a certain sense they have both tried to promote/maintain their relevance. While evangelicals have sought to be on the front edge of technological or cultural advances, fundamentalists have laudably understood that for the church to be truly relevant, it must preserve the essence of its message, a serious message about life, death, sin, forgiveness, and radical faith. When the message of the gospel is preserved, there is a sense in which intrinsic relevance exists regardless of whether it is recognized to be relevant. Insulin is relevant to type-2 diabetes regardless of whether the whole world thinks bloodletting is a better option; the gospel is relevant to the human condition regardless of whether Oprah suggests something different.
For one who is more progressively minded, the warning here is to be careful that-in whatever creative ways he or she seeks to communicate the message of the gospel-that person does not lose the message of the gospel in the medium. For instance, if I were to propose to my future wife by keying the message to her across the hood of her car, the message might be perceived as a twisted joke regardless of what my words were. As Marshall McLuhan has said, “The medium is the message.”[1] We need to maintain intrinsic relevance by not surrendering the gospel or modifying it by our means of expression.
Discern Your Culture
It has sometimes been said that the difference between progressive churches and traditional churches is that progressive churches see contemporary culture as being basically good while traditional churches see contemporary culture as basically bad. Whether this is true or not depends largely on which examples one chooses to evaluate. Regardless, the truth is we must all come to terms with whether our culture is good, bad, or somewhere in between.
There are a couple considerations that must be mentioned. First, I am suspicious of blanket statements regarding culture because they promote less critical thinking, not more. It is easy for one to decide all secular movies are wrong, but if he or she has not developed discernment in the process, how can that person judge the merit of “Christian” movies?[2] Second, it is crucial to decide whether cultural diversity is a product of God’s design or the natural outgrowth of human history. Many have pointed out that Revelation 5:9 and 10 illustrate that diversity will exist in Heaven. The argument goes that if diversity exists at the culmination of God’s kingdom, it must to some degree reflect the character of God Himself.[3] On the other hand, Kevin Bauder argues that cultures “are not the creation of God; they are the creations of humans. Therefore, the Christian can expect to find evidence of both grace and depravity in every culture.”[4]
Both viewpoints have merit. There is probably a sense in which diversity comes from God and a sense in which it is a natural (organic) outflow of human history. The broader point is this: in light of both God’s creation and the fall of man, we should expect all cultures to reflect grace and depravity. We need to develop keener sensitivity to our own cultures to discern what is commendable and what is not. One example comes to mind: Kevin Bauder has also pointed out that there is a distinct difference between the Aragorn of the Lord of the Rings in book form and the version that hit the screens. He says that in the movie, “Aragorn is degraded from a finite but messianic savior-figure into a tortured postmodern, beset by angst and ambiguity.”[5] It is easy to see how these two portrayals suggest vastly different worldviews.
Formulate Your Paradigm
There remains a serious question: What stance ought we to take towards our own cultural setting? H. Richard Niebuhr has famously provided five paradigms of how the church relates to culture: (1) Christ against culture, (2) the Christ of culture, (3) Christ above culture, (4) Christ and culture in paradox, and (5) Christ the transformer of culture. The difficulty with Niebuhr’s categories is that, while they are presented in discordance, at least several of them have serious Biblical warrant.[6] The reason for this discontinuity is that the Biblical record reflects various dispensations and cultural contexts. Elements of several of these paradigms should be incorporated into a Biblical view. For this reason, Niebuhr’s paradigms complicate the issue more than they help. D. A. Carson advocates an approach that seeks to give consideration for all the major epochs in redemptive history. In other words,
That stance is most likely to be deeply Christian which attempts to integrate all the major biblically determined turning points in the history of redemption: creation, fall, the call of Abraham, the exodus, the giving of the law, the rise of the monarchy and the rise of the prophets, the exile, the incarnation, the ministry and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the onset of the kingdom of God, the coming of the Spirit and the consequent ongoing eschatological tension between the “already” and the “not yet,” the return of Christ and the prospect of a new heaven and a new earth.[7]
He argues that “the omission or distortion of one or more of them easily generates a truncated or distorted vision of Christianity, and therefore of the relations between Christ and culture.”[8] It is often said that all heresies are an overemphasis of one attribute of God at the expense of another. This maxim seems to properly apply here as well. For instance, if one were to ignore the Fall, the seriousness and pervasiveness of sin both within our culture and our own hearts would be seriously underestimated.
The controversial suggestion that I wish to make is that we have been guilty of overemphasizing certain aspects and underemphasizing others. The result has been that we have largely taken an antagonistic view toward culture, ignoring aspects of common grace, indwelling sin-the fact that corruption comes from within (Matthew 15:18), and that Christ became low to bestow grace on a world that is comprehensively corrupt. My suggestion for the way forward is not to ignore distinctive matters such as eschatology or Biblical separation, but rather to continue to trumpet these truths while balancing them with a fresh emphasis especially on the Incarnation.
Practice the Incarnation
In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov expresses his simple view/? of acceptance of God. He says, “And so I accept God and am glad to. And what’s more I accept his wisdom, his purpose which are utterly beyond our kin. I believe in the underlying order and the meaning of life. I believe in eternal harmony.” But he continues, “Yet, in the final result I don’t accept this world of God’s.”[9] His rationale? “I could never understand how one could love one’s neighbors. By my mind one can’t love one’s neighbors, though one might love those at a distance. . . . For anyone to love a man he must be hidden. For as soon as he shows his face, love is gone.”[10] He continues to describe several accounts of the horrible torture that people have inflicted on other people, including a story of soldiers who tossed babies in the air only to catch them on their bayonets while their mothers watched. Consequently he says, “And so I hasten to return my entry ticket.”[11]
I sympathize with Ivan. I disagree, but I sympathize. Ivan understands something of the true nature of the world, something that should not be overlooked, its sheer ugliness. Yet in the end, this debase, corrupt, and godless world-a world where babies can be tossed up to be caught on bayonets or scissors can be inserted into their brains before their birth-this world is the same world for which Jesus Christ became man to redeem. So the question hangs, “If Christ became flesh and dwelt among us, in what ways do we reach our world?” The more important question is not, “Is my church relevant?” but “Am I?”
I often wonder as I sit in the car at a stoplight and look at the driver to my right or left, What keeps this person up at night? I wonder if she’s had suicidal thoughts in the last week? Is he addicted to pornography? Has she been abused? Does he feel like anyone in his life loves him? But how will I ever know the answers to these questions? The light will turn green, my foot will press down on the pedal, and more than likely this person will vanish from my life forever. Our lives nudge up against others numerous times a day, and we could never begin to know them all. But my fear goes further. I fear we cannot relate even to those we see almost every day. How many times have we spoken to the coworkers who we work closest with? Do we know even a shred of information about them? How is his marriage? What does she live for? What are his hopes? Why does she vote the way she does?
Why do we not know these things? Who taught us not to care? I want to suggest that relevance is not about putting up stage lights or having a “rockin’ band.” Relevance is incarnating the gospel to people in a way that seeks first to genuinely understand them and hold forth the light of the gospel to transform them through new birth. Relevance happens when we connect their stories and ours with the Biblical story and when we pour gospel refreshment into their parched, dry lips. May God help us to be relevant in that way.
1. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), 8.
2. As a side note, I’m troubled by applying the label “Christian” to almost anything. It’s as if music, movies, or books can experience personal conversion. Too often it seems to be a stamp of approval that removes critical thinking. Music, movies, or books can either cultivate our love for/faith in God or kill it. It seems better to judge them on this basis.
3. Carson gives this warning in Christ and Culture Revisited: “For Christians accustomed to anticipating a new heaven and a new earth with ‘members of every tribe and language and people and nation’ (Revelation 5:9), multiculturalism may be perceived to be something wonderful developing in the culture that biblically faithful Christianity can latch on to. On the other hand, where ‘multiculturalism’ is a sloganeering word associated with left-wing social agendas that relativize all cultural values and all religious claims, except for the dogmatic claim that all such values are to be relativized, the word may bespeak a culture diametrically opposed to the exclusiveness of Christian claims-and in that case Christians will gravitate toward a ‘Christ against culture’ paradigm.” D. A. Carson, Christ and Culture Revisited (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2008), 77.
4. Kevin Bauder states his agreement with this view of T. S. Eliot. Kevin T. Bauder, “A Prelude to a Christian Theology of Culture,” Missions in a New Millennium: Change and Challenges in World Missions, eds, W. Edward Glenny and William H. Smallman, (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2000), 231-44.
5. Kevin Bauder, “In the Nick of Time,” Fundamentalists and Theater: Act Three, Say What? available from http://www.sharperiron.org/2007/01/02/fundamentalist-and-theater-acts-three-say-what; accessed 27 February 2009.
6. For instance, compare 1 Corinthians 9:22 and 1 John 2:15 or Romans 13 and Revelation 19.
7. Carson, Christ and Culture Revisited, 81.
9. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts and an Epilogue, trans. David McDuff, (New York: Penguin Classics, 2003), 309.
