Cultural Christianity

If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it’s because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that’s the most revolutionary insight of all. - Erica Jong

So I give my new blog this pretentious name and promise blogtrocities in the name of faith, and what do we have so far: an intro, snark, and a recipe. Well my dear readers, all three of you, I have a bit to say on a topic theological and will now share my disjointed thoughts with you.

This topic came up recently in a forum for student ministers that I post on fairly regularly. The subject was on the fairly new policy of some schools to allow co-ed dorm rooms. I’m a pretty easy going guy, I think, and while I wouldn’t want my (theoretical) children to live in a room with a member of the opposite sex, I’m not dead-set against this rule as some are.

As a person who works in student ministry, particularly in the high school and junior high school ages, I don’t much care for it when people refer to teenagers as “kids”. Sometime after World War I, we decided, as a society, to give young people a sort of extended grace period in their transitions from youth to adulthood. Like all changes, there were some trade-offs in this, some good, some less so, but as a whole, I believe that it’s better for young people to have more time to figure out what it is that they’re supposed to do with their lives while we as a society have the capacity to allow them to do so. What this essentially means is that teenagers are not adults (as they essentially used to be little more than a century ago), nor are they children (as many still seem to insist that they are). So what are they? Something in between, and thusly should they be treated. The problem is this: so long as we tell teenagers to act like adults, but expect them to act like children, we’re going to be fighting an uphill battle. Ask any psychiatrist, drill sergeant, or leader of people and they will tell you that people have a tendency to become what those most influential in their lives expect them to become. So that’s my stance on the issue, okay? We all clear on that? Good, because the next thought should come to you very naturally: if high schoolers aren’t kids, then college students sure as hell aren’t. And frankly, it’s high time that we stopped treating them as such.

If you asked me if I thought that Christianity, as Jesus taught it, was good and true, I’d answer “yes” without hesitation. If you asked me If I thought whether what the average Western culture Christian church practiced was good and true, there’d be a lot more hesitation, and the “yes” would likely be some time in coming. Don’t get me wrong, the Christian church has done quite a bit for the benefit of society (the abolishment of slavery in Western cultures, the social elevation of women from property to citizens, and appropriately for this essay, the concept of higher education among those things), but here in America at least, we still have a very Puritanical view of sex. (Much more so that the Puritans, in fact, but that’s another rant.) And modern Western Evangelicals in particular have an almost jihad-like fervor to force these views on the general population, whether the general population wants/needs them or not.

While I believe that the Gospel is good and true, as I said before, one of the major factors that I see in the teachings of Christ is that you must come to Him yourself, and more to the point, Jesus taught that no amount of legal adherence could save a soul. No, the work of Christ is about wiling submission, and if a person does not decide themselves to acknowledge the deity of Christ, then no amount of rule following is going to make them change their mind. When the voters of Michigan decided a few years ago to legally define marriage as a union between “one man and one woman” there was not a surge of homosexual individuals who said “well, shoot, now I can’t marry my lover; I guess I’d better become a Christian”. People are not convinced to look into Christianity by being forced to follow our rules, they are drawn to Christ when they see those of us who claim to follow Him demonstrate His love and compassion for the hurting.

In the midst of all of these arguments, somebody pipes up with the comment that even if no sexual relationship is going on between the students, this is still the “appearance of evil”. For those of you not fluent in Christianese, the bit of doctrine alluded to comes from a single verse: 1 Thessalonians 5:22 which says, conveniently, “Abstain from all appearance of evil.” There. That’s nice, isn’t it? One small problem, it’s only the King James Version that uses the word “appearance” in the passage in question.

The King James Version of the Bible is pleasant to read aloud, but in terms of textual accuracy, translational reliability, and simple cultural relatability, it’s a mess. I checked several other translations (notably the NIV, the NKJV, and the NASB), and the result is the same: the passage tells the reader to simply abstain from evil itself, not its appearance.

As usual, I am predicting that I’ll need to clarify here what I’m not saying here. I am not saying that it’s a good idea for Christians to simply not care about how we are perceived by society, but if we are concerned about not appearing evil, then being involved in a sexual relationship is pretty far down on the average person’s list of what evil looks like. If we wish to avoid the appearance of evil, then I have a suggestion: the next time you’re thinking of how to deal with a particular issue, don’t think of it as an issue, but think instead about dealing with a single individual.

Individuals have a way of mucking up our pre-conceived notions. If instead of saying that X is bad, we ask ourselves “How would Jesus deal with a person involved in X”, or even better, “How would Jesus want me to deal with a person involved in X?” The answers that we would arrive at would often fly in the face of the way that we actually behave. Jesus advocated and demonstrated compassion and mercy in dealing with sinners and the people whom He had the least patience with were the religious muckity mucks who were full of themselves and thought they had it all together.

If we wish to know Him and make Him better known (and in the process, appear less evil, even appear good), then we must do the same.