The Wilful Sunflower

I was talking to someone recently about the way certain quarters of Christianity are always trying to do stuff to make our message appear more "relevant" to today's society, culture and/or young people. Thankfully, the subject's not such a hot button for me now as it would've been three years ago, but I still have some pretty strong ideas about it. (Opinionated, that's me! LOL)

I sometimes feel that we have bought too much into the culture around us. We try to adapt to it, thinking that this will somehow make our message more attractive to the people who belong to that culture. And maybe that's true, but there's also the danger that we might let the culture influence us rather than be the ones to influence it.

Actually, I'm not so worried about stuff like loud jumpy music in church and so on. It's our values and principles and perspectives that concern me. For example, take this quote from a cell group leader whom fellow blogger Mac Swift spoke with. Mac voiced some concerns about Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life movement, and was told: "If this movement wasn't of God, it wouldn't be so popular and successful."

See, this is exactly what I mean when I say we've let culture influence us rather than be the ones to influence it. Excuse me, since when did "popularity and success" become a measure for whether something is of God or not of God? Hello? Didn't Jesus say, "Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it"? Notice He said that only a few find the road that leads to life... doesn't sound like a wildly successful venture to me. Or at least, not by the kind of standards that cell group leader was using, anyway.

Let me give you another example. We live in a performance-oriented world, a world obsessed with results. In the marketplace, the only thing any sane employer cares about is results. You get results, you get rewarded with promotions, salary increments, commissions, incentives, what-have-you. I think we've unconsciously bought into this mindset -- we've come to believe that results are what matters. And how do we measure results? Why, with statistics, of course. So somehow it has become all about which church has the most members, is the fastest-growing church, manages to procure the most "salvations", and so on. Do we think that God, like our employers, is only pleased when we can roll out impressive statistics and records of great accomplishments?

I don't know about you, but I admit I've allowed this preoccupation with results to spill over into my personal relationship with God, too. I'm all about results. I want to be perfect, and I want to be perfect NOW. I know I'm not supposed to sin, and of course I'm trying not to (at least some of the time), but I'm not too successful at stopping, y'know? So I'm beating myself up that I'm just not getting any results here, and there's a voice whispering, "Hey, you miserable failure! You ain't gettin' no results, man. God is not a happy camper, dude! Why don'tcha just give up? You ain't never gonna be able to get there, man!"

You know and I know that being a Christian is not about results, it is about building a relationship and making a journey. Hey, we keep on falling down, yet God pulls us up again, dusts us off, and continues to walk by our side on the way. But sometimes I forget and I think it's about results and I know I have this horrible track record coz I have never ever been able to give God the results I think He's looking for, and probably never will be able to either. Then I start to despair and let fear get hold of me, before God knocks some sense into my head and reminds me to stop looking at my "results" and start looking at Him.

So you see, to get back to my original point, I believe we've begun to unconsciously subscribe to society's values, which could prove to be a VERY BIG CLUE in explaining why people don't see our faith as being "relevant". I've always thought that the relevance of the Gospel lies in God's ability, willingness and desire to meet our needs -- particularly emotional and spiritual, although He does care about the physical too. Physical needs are probably the most easily met; it's the unseen needs that are more difficult to deal with, right?

I believe that if we, the ones who are supposed to be God's ambassadors on earth, would show others how God can meet their deepest needs, they'd automatically be drawn towards Him. He'd be "relevant" to them.

There's no real necessity to have fireworks and hip, happening music and bright, colourful displays to attract people; love is more than enough. My personal theory is that everybody, deep down, is looking for love... everybody wants to be accepted just as he or she is, to find a place of belonging, to matter.

I'll leave you with a quote from a book I've been reading:

Although we're supposed to ask "What would Jesus do?" what we actually ask is, "What would the Joneses do?" Christians have become just like the Joneses. And it is because we have become indistinguishable from our neighbours that our effectiveness in evangelism has significantly diminished.

"We have become so much like the culture around us," Tom Sine writes, "that we have little to call people to." When he compares us with our non-believing neighbours, Sine says, "We hang around church buildings more than others do. We abstain from a few things. We don't practice hedonism as well as the people around us -- but we sure keep trying."

Should we be surprised then by Christinity's increasing inability to define how we are to live? Should we be surprised that those who don't share our faith, don't think that Christianity has anything worthwhile or relevant to say to them?

-- Marvin K. Y. Wong, Between Friends