Category: Culture

The Trouble with Meme Activism: Sometimes to Speak is Not to Speak

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ 2 Comments

In the past couple of years, I have noticed that periods of social unrest are often accompanied by a corresponding outbreak of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I am referring, of course, to the accompanying blizzard of memes on Facebook and Twitter that display a quote famously (and probably incorrectly) attributed to Bonhoeffer: “Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

In most cases where it appears, the quote stands as a comprehensive indictment of anyone who has not yet expressed public outrage over some event that has captured the attention of the current news cycle. The meme is a cultural syllogism: A terrible thing has occurred. You have not said that it was terrible on Facebook or Twitter. You are a terrible person. The reasoning seems to be that if you have not publicly condemned it on social media, you are complicit in its terribleness.

I suppose we should not be surprised by such reasoning. In the age of social media, it is not enough to possess moral convictions. There are no longer any unpublished thoughts. We are now expected to leave a public record, especially of those things about which we disapprove. Public statements, especially in social media, are now considered to be a form of social action.

But in most cases where quotes like this appear, they are usually something less than meaningful action. They are merely a form of virtue signaling intended to place social pressure on those who do not hold the “right view” of whatever incident prompted the post. Of course, social pressure like this is nothing new. Nor is it necessarily bad. Public expressions of disapproval have always established the boundaries of right and wrong. The lessons begin in infancy and continue throughout our entire lifetime. In social systems, both large and small, the rules of acceptable behavior are taught by suffering the frowns and slights of others. Shame works hand in hand with acceptance to bind people together. And to get them to do the right thing.

The real problem with meme morality is its tendency toward reductionism. What is intended as a manifesto proves only to be a cliché. It is a statement of the obvious. We think we are thundering like God on Sinai when in reality we are only expressing a mundane truism. War is bad. Racism is evil. Be nice to others. Treating such assertions as a form of social activism reduces moral behavior to mere sentimentalism. It is the kind of speech that James 2:16 condemns–the digital equivalent to “be ye warmed and filled.” It makes a demand without offering any corresponding action that will address the problem.

Sentimentalized language is trite. It states the obvious but so broadly that it offers no real help to the reader or the listener. Sentimentalized speech is characterized by what Wendell Berry calls “the sickly beauty of generalized emotionalism.”[1] This sort of vagueness is a common feature, not only of social media but of bad preaching. Such preaching paints with a broad brush. Its target is so large that it aims at nothing at all. It may make us feel, but it will not help us to act.

There are, of course, contexts where the mere assertion of an idea is an act of bravery. To speak the truth aloud lies at the heart of the Christian act of preaching. Speaking can be a form of activism, but for that to be the case, it must be speech that goes against the grain. There must be a potential cost to the speaker, as well as a genuine interest in the welfare of those who disagree. Without these, it is cheerleading at best and the voice of the mob at worst.

We should not be surprised to find that many confuse sentimentalism with activism. Croatian sociologist Stjepan Mestrovic has observed that emotions are the primary object of manipulation in postmodern culture. “Today, everyone knows that emotions carry no burden, no responsibility to act, and above all, that emotions are accessible to everyone,” Mestrovic writes.[2] One result of this is something Jeremy Begbie has called “conspicuous compassion,” an emotional expression that becomes an end in itself and produces “very little in the way of positive, practical action.”[3]

Emotion can be a wellspring of action, but it is not always necessary. It is possible to act apart from feeling or even contrary to feeling, a condition that is sometimes called duty. Like Jesus, we are at times called upon to do that which we would prefer not to do (cf. Luke 22:42). Or we may refuse to do what we would like to do (Col. 3:5). Sentimentalism believes that feeling by itself is action. More than this, for the sentimentalist, emotion is an end in itself. The aim is to feel, and feeling is enough. “Sentimentalists typically resist any challenge to their way of life,” Begbie observes. “They are much more often moved by strangers than by those close to them, since the former require no personal sacrifice.”[4]

True activism not only seeks to change the situation but also aims to change thinking.

Meme activism often fails on another critical level. It tends to be coercive. The aim of such statements is not to engage, debate, or persuade but to silence. True activism is persuasive rather than coercive. It not only seeks to change the situation but also aims to change thinking. To do this, the language that accompanies activism must seek to elicit rather than impose the desired response. Speaking that is coercive throws off the persuasive responsibility of speech and employs language as an instrument of brute force. Theologian Joseph Pieper rightly calls this form of communication propaganda and notes that its use is not limited to the official power structure of a dictatorship. In his essay “Abuse of Language–Abuse of Power,” Pieper explains, “It can be found wherever a powerful organization, an ideological clique, a special interest, or a pressure group uses the word as their ‘weapon’.”[5]

An essential component of propagandistic speech is the element of implied threat. But Pieper notes that the threat can take many forms. In this category of threat, he includes “all the forms and levels of defamation, or public ridicule, or reducing someone to a nonperson–all of which are accomplished by means of the word, even the word not spoken.”[6] It is not its strength of statement, the fact that it may disagree with the viewpoint of others, or even its emotional tone that renders such speech abusive. It is the desire to squash all opposing viewpoints merely by force of statement alone and to demean those who disagree. “The common element in all of this is the degeneration of language into an instrument of rape,” Pieper explains. “It does contain violence, albeit in latent form.”[7]

Today’s public discourse is not only inclined toward coercion; it is addicted to flattery. By flattery, I mean more than the practice of empty praise. That is indeed a form of flattery. But more broadly, flattery is the habit of telling others what they want to hear in return for gain. It is speech, as Joseph Pieper, explains, whose main objective is one of “courting favor to win success.”[8] Pieper wrote his essay a decade before the birth of the internet and nearly two decades before the founding of Facebook. Yet he anticipates the era of social media, observing that this craving for approval may reduce theology to mere entertainment whose primary purpose is to gain a following. Flattery in this broad sense is the language of choice for all whose primary objective is to gain a large audience. It is especially the lingua franca of social media, where being heard is often a function of likes and shares.

The pandering that is a mark of flattery may seem far removed from the bullying of coercive speech, yet they are actually two sides of the same coin. Both are the stock and trade false prophets and false teachers. The apostle Paul criticized the Corinthians for being smitten by false apostles who sought to use them to build their platform. He observed, “. . . you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you or puts on airs or slaps you in the face” (2 Cor. 11:20). The pandering of these false teachers catered to the audience’s expectation not only in the content of their teaching, which avoided those aspects the Corinthians found offensive but in their manner and mode of delivery. In this case, the audience wanted to be treated in a demanding and arrogant way. A manner which they mistook for authority.

Whether or not Bonhoeffer said the quote attributed to him makes little difference. It is often true. To speak is to act. But it is equally true that our speaking may also be acting in the theatrical sense. We are not trying to change anything. We are trying to build a platform. We are curating an image. We are seeking an audience. We are collecting likes and shares the way we hope to collect crowns in heaven.

[1] Wendell Berry, Standing By Words, (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 1983), 33.

[2] Jeremy S. Begbie, “Beauty, Sentimentalityand the Arts,” in The Beauty of God: Theology and the Arts, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2007), 53.

[3] Ibid., 54.

[4] Ibid., 52–53.

[5] Josef Pieper, Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power, (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992), 32.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid. 28.

Jesus and the Cult of Nice

~ John Koessler ~ 1 Comment

Every generation seems to have its own idol. Each one represents the spirit of the age, a false god who shapes the ethic of the culture at large. All too often, these idols find their way into the church. Sometimes they are brought in intentionally by those who fear that the church has become irrelevant. More often, they are introduced unwittingly by Christians who have absorbed the ethic from the culture in which they live. They do not learn it in a formal sense, by thoughtful examination and critical analysis. Rather, it comes to them through the atmosphere, the way the smell of smoke clings to one who has been near a fire even when they try to keep their distance. These spirits are never introduced to the church as idols but as scholarship or forward-thinking or some “new” and “enlightened” understanding that somehow shows that what Jesus really meant by what He taught is in line with whatever our modern prejudice happens to be.

These days the idol of the age is best represented by what I would call “the cult of nice.” Nice is a quality urged upon us by mothers, who advise us that, if we can’t say something nice about someone, we shouldn’t say anything at all. Unfortunately, those who attempt to enact this philosophy rarely opt for silence. If you have ever had the unfortunate experience of working with such people, you have discovered that they tend to be fundamentally dishonest when it comes to their assessment of others. They dismiss bad traits and inflate those they deem to be good, even when they are merely an affectation. Such people would probably find something positive to say about Satan himself if he were a member of their team.

These days the idol of the age is best represented by what

I would call “the cult of nice.”

The cult of nice is a code that shapes ethics and whose appeal springs from its disarming simplicity. The basic rule of the cult of nice can be summarized in this sentence: “Whatever does not spring from niceness is not of God.” Part of its appeal is that it has a kind of Johannine ring about it. We find several statements that sound something like this in John’s writings. For example, in 1 John 4:16, the apostle says, “Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” The cult of nice identifies itself with this principle but restates it: “Whoever is nice lives in God, and God in them.”

However, it only takes a modicum of common sense to recognize that niceness and love are not the same. To say that God is love is one thing (1 John 4:8, 16). To say that He is nice is something else. The problem is that “nice” is essentially a cultural trait. What seems nice to one may not seem nice to another. What is more, the Jesus portrayed in Scripture–the same one to whom those who worship in the cult of nice appeal so often to justify their ethic–often behaved in ways that the acolytes of nice would find abhorrent. It only takes a few examples to prove my point.

For example, Jesus used harsh language when referring to those who disagreed with His teaching. He called them “fools,” “blind guides, “snakes,” and “vipers’ (Matt. 23:16–17, 33). Jesus was also divisive. He said things that He knew would outrage those who saw matters differently from Him. When Jesus contradicted the teaching of the Pharisees, His disciples complained. “’Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?’ He replied, ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.’” (Matt. 15:12–14).  In other words, Jesus wasn’t just untroubled by their outrage. He was openly dismissive of it.

Perhaps rudest of all, at least by the standards of today’s cult of nice, was Jesus’ tendency toward exclusion. One of the cardinal doctrines of the cult of nice is that to be truly Christian, we must be inclusive.  Inclusion is their Ockam’s razor–the test they use to sift through traditional teachings and decide what to reject as erroneous or obsolete. Jesus was inviting but exclusive in that invitation. He said that His way was narrow instead of broad and warned that “only a few find it” (Matt. 7:14). He claimed to be the way to God to such an extent that He said, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). He even taught that a brother or sister who sins and rejects the repeated appeals of other Christians to turn from their sin should be expelled from the church (Matt. 18:15–17). This is so far from the current culture of nice that even churches that agree with Jesus in principle rarely practice His teaching on this point.

Nice isn’t listed among the attributes of God, yet neither is mean. Like nice, mean is one of those fuzzy words that can be taken several ways. It came from Middle English and was initially used to speak of what two or more people held in common. It developed into a word that spoke of one who was ignoble or base. But these days, we use it mainly to refer to those who are unkind and spiteful. A common complaint of children is that someone has been mean to them.

Nice isn’t listed among the attributes of God, yet neither is mean.

There doesn’t seem to be a single biblical equivalent to the modern vernacular when it comes to mean. Like nice, mean is culturally defined. What seems mean to one person is perfectly fine to another. It is also a movable standard which we usually manipulate in our own favor. Just as those who often criticize others for not being nice fail to condemn the same behavior in themselves, mean people never seem to think that they are mean. They tend to see themselves as stern, businesslike, or no-nonsense sort of folks who are practical and refuse to suffer fools gladly. But the suggestion that their treatment of others is mean is baffling to them.

This is especially true of mean leaders, who are convinced that those who criticize their meanness are merely soft or lazy. They view those who offer such critiques as namby-pamby bleeding hearts who are overly concerned about hurting the feelings of others. More often, they take no notice of them at all. But merely plow ahead without regard for those who disagree with their agenda. They do important work informed by a grand vision. Why should they trouble themselves over such objections when they are so obviously right in their judgments? Not only do they think that they represent God’s interests in their plans, they believe they mirror His character in their actions. This conceit is equally true of those who belong to the cult of nice.

In reality, mean is merely a selfish and distorted imitation that mistakes God’s sovereignty for impassiveness and confuses arrogance with independence. Likewise, nice is an insipid distortion of grace that fails to make the essential connection between God’s compassion, grace, patience, and faithfulness with His holiness and justice (Exod. 34:5–7). A nice god might not lower the boom on you for your sin. But He wouldn’t do anything to help you out of it either. For that, you must look to a God who is more than nice.  One who cares enough about you to ignore your preferences and sensitivities and who will tell you what you are really like. To find practical help with your sin, you must look to a God who will not mince words about your foolishness or the desperate state of your condition. More than this, you will need a God who is willing to go beyond words and do something about it because He knows that you can do nothing for yourself.

In short, to find any real help for your sin, you must go beyond nice to truth. You must go beyond winsome or pleasant or amiable to love. Because only love is willing to stand in your place. Only love is strong enough to bear the brunt of the whip and the weight of the cross. Only love will allow itself to be taken by wicked hands and slain. And love alone, after being laid in the grave, is able to stand up again on the third day with arms open in invitation to the ones who put it there. God is not nice. God is love.

Uncivil Discourse: Why Our Speech Matters

~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

Ken Myers has observed, “The Christian tradition has long placed great value on care about speech.” He notes that the sacred importance of language is signaled by the fact that two of the Ten Commandments are concerned with speech. One of them has to do with the way we speak about God. The other, not surprisingly, deals with the way we speak about others. It seems that the tongue is the primary instrument we use to fulfill the two Great Commandments, to love God with heart, soul, and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matt. 22:36-38).

We don’t usually think about our words. We open our mouths, and they just seem to come out. When we do give thought to the language we use, it is out of a detached, almost scientific concern. We think of the connection our words have to the concepts we want to express. But the Scriptures (God’s words) warn that the relationship between our speech and ourselves is far more organic. It is also dangerous. The tongue, James warns, is “a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell” (James 3:6). One of the surest ways to discern corruption of the soul is through speech. James echoes the words of Jesus, who warned the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart and defile us (Matt. 15:18). The tongue is both a muscle and an organ. It is not only something we use to express our thoughts. In some measure, the tongue is us, or at least a part of us.

In the same way, Jesus makes it clear that our words are just as intimately connected to our hearts: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” (Matt. 15:19). Our words serve both as a sign and a diagnosis. The character of our speech is evidence of the state of our hearts. But this connection means that the problem with our discourse is more than a matter of poor word choice. According to Jesus, corrupt speech proceeds from an evil heart. The examples Jesus gives of the nature of evil thoughts that spring from the heart greatly expand the definition of corrupt speech. The Christian tradition has tended to define such language rather narrowly, limiting it to what we used to call swearing. Taking the Lord’s name “in vain,” coarse language, and vulgarity are a form of corrupt speech but the lowest form. Just as lust is the only the first and lowest of the deadly sins, common vulgarity hardly exhausts the full scope of sinful speech. All the categories of evil thought that Jesus mentions and the multitude of sins that he does not ultimately find their expression in the way we speak to one another.

Our most corrupt speech is often the most commonplace, expressing those sins that we have learned to tolerate in ourselves. This is because our thinking about sin tends to be backward. We believe that small infractions are less concerning than large. We think the problem with these “little” sins is that if we let them go unchecked, they will develop into something larger. Anger will accelerate into murder. Lust will take control and lead to adultery. According to Jesus’ teaching in the sermon on the mount, sin moves in the opposite direction. It does not start small and increase. We usually treat those sins as minor infractions, when in reality they bloom from the same root as those we think of as large. They are not the cause but the symptom. Sinful anger springs from a murderous heart, not the other way around (Matt. 5:22). A lustful gaze is the offspring of an adulterous desire (Matt. 5:27–28).

The same principle is at work in our speech. Corrupted speech includes coarse language, but it also gives evidence of a deeper evil that springs from unchecked desire, selfish-ambition, rage, envy,  and pride. The result is a deadly and self-reinforcing ecosystem of corruption as sinful motives infuse our thoughts, which shape our words, which justify and further reinforce our motives. George Orwell described this deadly cycle in his famous essay on politics and the English language when he observes that effects become reinforcing causes that produce the same result and intensify it. “A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks,” Orwell observes. “It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

We don’t usually think about our words.

The fact that Orwell identifies this as a trait of political speech is especially significant because it indicates that what is true of the individual is also true of society. How could it be otherwise? Civilization and its institutions are made of and made by its people. If the cells are diseased, so is the body. It cannot be any other way. Speech, by its very nature, is a communal act. It presumes the existence of another. In his book entitled Abuse of Language–Abuse of Power, theologian Josef Pieper notes that human language and human words accomplish a two-fold purpose. “First, words convey reality,” Pieper explains: “We speak in order to name and identify something that is real, to identify it for someone, of course–and this points to the second aspect in question, the interpersonal character of human speech.”

Pieper observes that public discourse, when it is separated from the standard of truth, creates an atmosphere where tyranny thrives. The primary abuse of language in such an environment is propaganda. Peiper notes that propaganda does not necessarily come through the official power structure of a dictatorship: “It can be found wherever a powerful organization, an ideological clique, a special interest, or a pressure group uses the word as their ‘weapon.’” Of particular interest is Pieper’s further observation that the threat from such words “can mean many things besides political persecution, especially all forms and levels of defamation, or public ridicule, or reducing someone to a nonperson–all which are accomplished by means of the word, even the word not spoken.” Especially poignant for this particular political moment, is Pieper’s citation of the German philosopher Karl Jaspers, who: “counted among the forms of ‘modern sophistry’, as he calls it, also the ‘lingo of the revolution’, which, ‘intent on fomenting rebellion through agitation, singles out one isolated instance, and focusing its spotlight on this, makes everyone blind to all the rest’.”

The worry that corruption of speech will lead to cultural corruption is more than the concern of a frustrated grammarian. It is the conviction of philosophers, theologians, and God’s word itself. The problem is not a matter of style but truth. The need for our words to correspond with reality is what lies behind the command not to bear false witness. Regard for truth is the root concern of the command not to take the Lord’s name in vain, a prohibition that cautions us not to use God to make cheap promises that we do not intend to fulfill. Truth is also in view in all the Bible’s cautions about the dangers of flattery and slander.

Such concerns are understandable when we consider that speaking is also a divine act, since language originated with God. God spoke the first words ever uttered (Gen. 1:3). By that word, all things are made. This original word shows the power of language not only to describe but to shape reality. The fact that sin also entered the world through speech is proof that words can destroy as well as create. The temptation that drew our first parents down into sin was a distortion of something God has said (Gen. 3:1-5). When they fell, they carried all of creation with them. We have not lost our ability to speak. But that capacity has been sorely damaged by the entrance of sin into human experience. This harsh reality prompts James to lament that “no human being can tame the tongue” and to call it “a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:8).

Orwell believed that the degradation of speech could be reversed. “Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble,” he explains. “If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.” But Orwell is only partly right.

The rudeness and violence we see in contemporary political discourse are, unfortunately, not an anomaly. Uncivil discourse is the norm in both popular and social media. It is as characteristic of the church as it is of the secular culture. Orwell may be right in saying that the way we speak to one another could improve if we gave it more thought and applied ourselves to discipline. The resulting change would be no small improvement and a desperately needed relief. But if what Scripture says about us is true, the difference would only be cosmetic. Our problem is deeper than our choice of words or even our tone. According to Jesus, our inability to engage in civil conversation is evidence of a poisoned heart.

Ill at Ease in Zion: Why You Don’t Fit in at Church

~ John Koessler ~ 6 Comments

The first major challenge I faced after I became a serious follower of Jesus in the 1970s was that of telling my friends and family that I had “decided to become a Jesus freak.” The second was the decision to start attending church. I navigated the first fairly quickly because I knew that if I didn’t, I would never follow through on my commitment. With the sea at my back, I burned all the boats, along with a few relationships that I later came to regret. I was brash in my new found faith and a touch obnoxious. To be fair, the obnoxiousness was not a necessary component of my new Christian identity. It was a feature of my personality that was already there. I merely baptized it and put it to use for the sake fo the kingdom.

The decision to attend church took longer. My lifestyle was not especially conducive to the practice. I normally worked midnights and tended to stay up to the early hours of the morning on those days when I didn’t work. The thought of getting up early on Sunday morning to attend church seemed impossible. Besides, going to church had never been an especially important feature in my life. My family didn’t go to church when I was growing up. My neighborhood friends who did attend, forced to do so by their parents, did not seem to enjoy it. Besides, this was the anti-establishment era. Institutions, in general, were under fire and the church along with them. Jesus had bad things to say about “the traditions of men,” which seemed to me to be a pretty good description of church life. And hadn’t Jesus’ enemies mostly come from the religious establishment? I had the Bible. I was spending time with my new Christian friends. Why should I ruin it all by adding the church?

When I feel out of place in the church, I’ve noticed that it is usually the result of one of three factors: treatment, style, or identity.

Two things changed my mind. One was the patient and loving invitation of Mike, one of my new Christian friends. The other was a growing desire to preach. A preacher needs an audience, and the best place to find one was the church. Of course, I didn’t attend church one Sunday and then preach on the next. My first task was to try to fit in.

In a way, fitting in was easier than I might have expected. The people in that little church were glad that I came. They didn’t seem put off by my long hair or blue jeans. If anyone was stand-offish, it was me. I tried to fit in. I learned to say “Praise the Lord” and to call people “brother” or “sister.” But the music was strange, and at times the people seemed even stranger. I could tell that this was all familiar territory for them. They seemed comfortable. But it was an alien landscape to me. Even though I wanted to fit in, I often felt like I didn’t belong.

The Challenge of Fitting In

That was almost fifty years ago. major challenge I faced after I became a serious follower of Jesus in the 1970s was that of telling my friends and family that I had “decided to become a Jesus freak.” The second was the decision to start attending church. . I have learned the words to the songs, figured out the dress code, and discovered the secret handshake. I’ve also listened as the music styles have changed several times over, seen the dress code grow so casual that I’m wearing pretty much the same kind of clothes I was in 1972 (though with considerably less hair and no bell-bottoms), and learned the new secret handshake. I know that I belong. I am still going to church, but there are times when I am still ill at ease. I don’t always feel like I fit in. When I feel out of place in the church, I’ve noticed that it is usually the result of one of three factors: treatment, style, or identity.

Sometimes we feel like we don’t fit in because of the way others treat us. The church is not always good at making people feel welcome. During my years as a pastor, I served in a small farming community. There was a plaque in the town hall which celebrated the beauty of small-town life. High on the list was the way people cared about one another. But in our first week there, my wife Jane and I took a walk down the main street to get a feel for the place. A little girl who was playing in her front yard stared at us. As we drew near, she turned and ran to her mother. “Mommy, I don’t know them!” she said. When we walked into the local diner, we were greeted by the same kind of stares and sidelong glances.

Every church is a small town. A congregation is a cultural eco-systems as well as a spiritual institution. They have their own customs, lingo, and tribal structures. Sometimes we feel like outsiders in the church because culturally speaking, we are outsiders. It takes time before things feel familiar to us. We may need to figure out how things work. Who makes decisions, and how are they made? What is the path to involvement?

Cliques and Culture

People sometimes complain that the church is full of cliques. This isn’t a new problem. The first major conflict the New Testament church faced was the cultural clash between two sub-cultures (Acts 6:1). A clique is really just another word for a tightly knit but closed community system. Some churches are better at creating on-ramps for those who are new to the community, but every church has cliques. The same dynamics that make a church’s culture “sticky” for insiders will erect walls for those who come in from the outside. This is the catch-22 for any tightly knit church. The closer the church, the harder it is for newcomers to find their place within it.

Membership classes, Bible study groups, affinity groups can all help. But they probably won’t work without a Barnabas to help people make a personal connection.

Paul had trouble finding a place in the church at Jerusalem because of his personal history as a persecutor. Things changed after Barnabas took Paul under his wing as a kind of sponsor and introduced him to the community of believers (Acts 9:26-27). Most newcomers to a church need someone who is already established in the community to help them find a place. These community gatekeepers explain the culture, teach them the secret handshake, and help them make connections with other people with whom they can bond. Intentional structures are often needed to help outsiders become insiders. Membership classes, Bible study groups, affinity groups can all help. But they probably won’t work without a Barnabas to help people make a personal connection.

Tightly knit subgroups are not necessarily wrong. Indeed, they are the glue that is necessary for creating a cohesive church culture. But they can also be sinful. Sometimes the church is responsible for making people feel like they don’t really belong. James 2:2-4 warns of the danger of practicing discrimination by showing favoritism: “Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, ‘Here’s a good seat for you,’ but say to the poor man, ‘You stand there’ or ‘Sit on the floor by my feet,’ have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” Class, race, gender, age are all areas where the church is vulnerable to this sin.

Is there anything we can do if we sense that the church’s culture has relegated us to outsider status? Acts 6 may provide us with a helpful model. First, talk to the church’s leaders about it. Many churches are not self-aware. They may think they are opening doors when in reality they are building walls. Second, take initiative to connect. This may mean trying to form your own affinity group within the church. Or it might mean making an effort to join those that already exist. Join a small group. Invite someone out to lunch. If the walls are impermeable and deliberate, you may find that you need to look for another church.

Differences in Style

Style is another reason that people sometimes feel out of place in the church. This is really a subset of culture. Churches do not all have the same style of worship. Some are expressive, while others are more reserved. Some use set forms and liturgies while others are informal or spontaneous. There are churches that prefer a classical style of worship, others like contemporary, and some try to blend the two. The same is true when it comes to preaching. Sermon styles differ as do the personalities of those who preach them.

Not every style resonates with everyone. What is more, our tastes and our needs often change. When I first started attending church, it was in a context where the worship style was casual and expressive. We clapped, lifted our hands, and shouted, “Amen!” Although it was meaningful to me at first, after a while, I began to feel like I was performing, not just for God but for the people around me. Eventually it no longer seemed genuine to me. I felt out of place.

The church member who struggles with the feeling that the church “just isn’t like it used to be,” has a decision to make. How much discomfort are they willing to tolerate?

It can be traumatic to church members when a church suddenly changes its style. Churches usually do this because they think it will attract newcomers. If it works, long-standing members often feel disenfranchised. All too often, church leaders respond to this understandable discomfort with impatience. The church member who struggles with the feeling that the church “just isn’t like it used to be,” has a decision to make. How much discomfort are they willing to tolerate? We may grow to like the new style with time. But in most cases, a decision to stay is also a commitment to endure. Such a commitment is easier to make if it is values-driven. We might stay for missional reasons because we hope the things we don’t like will help the church grow. Or we may decide that the friendships we already enjoy or the ministry we have in the church are more important than those aspects of style that we dislike.

Doctrine as Style

Doctrine is another element that can make us feel out of place in the church. When I include doctrine in the elements that make up a church’s style, I am thinking here of those secondary doctrines that shape a church’s theological identity. Some doctrinal differences are more important than others. Foundational doctrines are those non-negotiables that are essential to the faith. Doctrines like the deity of Christ and justification by grace through faith are so foundational that without them, you no longer have Christianity. But there are also doctrinal differences that aren’t as consequential. They are not exactly unimportant, but they are differences we are willing to agree to disagree about.

There are some doctrines that aren’t exactly fundaments but we deem them to be important enough to warrant differences in practice and sometimes even fellowship. We would still consider those who differ with us on these matters to be Christians but they are imporant enough to the church’s theological identity that we might make agreement about them a pre-condition for membership or ministry.

If a church champions a doctrine that does not agree with the theological views you hold, sooner or later you’re going feel like you don’t fit in. You might enjoy the worship and love the people. You may agree with 90% of what they teach, but if the difference is significant enough, sooner or later, it’s going to create a rift. The church is unlikely to change its views. If you try to make it your mission to change the church’s theological identity, you’re only going to create division. If it is that important to you, then you  probably need to find a new church.

Feelings of Inferiority

When I first started attending church, I had a lot of rough edges. I didn’t know it at the time. But I began to sense differences in values and behavior almost immediately. I felt a little intimidated by those who had attended the church their entire lives. They knew where to find the books of the Bible. They knew the songs. They seemed more comfortable with the whole experience. In Paul’s case, the church in Jerusalem felt nervous about his history as a persecutor. But it often works the other way around. We can be embarrassed by our moral past, or we may be frustrated with our status as a newbie in the faith. In such cases, it is not the church that makes us feel like second class citizens in the Kingdom of God. We do it to ourselves. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Paul thought of himself as the worst of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). He readily admitted that he did not deserve to be called an apostle because of his past (1 Cor. 15:9).

How should we respond when we begin to feel like we don’t deserve to be numbered among the saints because of what we’ve done in the past? We can begin by admitting that this is indeed the case. It is true of everyone who is in the church no matter what their background is. Like all struggles that have to do with identity, we need to let the Bible shape the way we think about ourselves. Belonging in the body of Christ is not a function of feeling. It is a result of Christ’s work. By His death and resurrection, Jesus Christ has secured our place in the church. We may feel out of place, but that feeling cannot undo the work that Christ has done on our behalf.

What is more, 1 Corinthians 12:24-25 says that “. . . God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.” Belonging isn’t just for those who look good, feel good about themselves, and have all their rough edges smoothed out. It is as wrong for me to think that the church doesn’t need my presence as it is for others to make that judgment about me (1 Cor. 12:15 & 21).

The only way to deal with feelings of spiritual inferiority is to take God at His word.

The only way to deal with feelings of spiritual inferiority is to take God at His word. Not only do I belong, but I am necessary. The language Paul uses when dealing with this erroneous thinking is strong. He says that “those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable” (1 Cor. 12:22). The apostle’s example has to do with spiritual gifts but it applies equally to those who feel they don’t belong based on their moral past, spiritual background, or social class.

The discipline that has probably helped me the most in grasping this truth has been the regular observance of the Lord’s Supper. Every time we participate in the church’s meal, we not only remember the Lord as Jesus commands, but we are reminded of who we are. This is what Paul meant when he warned the Corinthians about the importance of “discerning the body of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:29). In the context, the sin of the Corinthian church as they observed the Supper, wasn’t the way they treated the elements but the way they treated one another (vv. 20-23).

We are not the best judges of the value we add to the church. Ultimately, it is our union with Christ that gives us the right to belong. When we trust in Christ, we are united with Him in His death and resurrection (Eph. 2:5-6). Union with Christ also joins us to every other member of the church. This is true whether we like them or not. It is just as true whether we like ourselves or not.

John’s latest book Practicing the Present: The Neglected Art of Living in the Now (Moody Publishers) is now available. Order your copy today.

The Christian Art of Incivil Discourse

~ John Koessler ~ 2 Comments

John Calvin and Sebastian Castellio used to be compatriots. Until they weren’t. Calvin was initially so impressed with Castellio that the iconic Reformer invited him to serve as rector at the college of Geneva. Things changed when Castellio started to disagree with Calvin. The two Reformers began to take aim at one another, with Castellio publishing tracts that criticized aspects of Calvin’s theology and Calvin answering him in kind. One of Calvin’s responses was entitled A Brief Reply in Refutation of the Calumnies of a Certain Worthless Person. The first line reads, “There has come to my notice the foolish writing of a worthless individual, who nevertheless presents himself as a defender and vindicator of the glory of God . . . .”

I thought of Calvin’s essay recently, when the furor over John MacArthur’s dismissal of Beth Moore’s ministry erupted. When MacArthur was asked what he would say to Beth Moore in one or two words his answer was, “Go home.” MacArthur’s remark was relatively tame compared to Calvin’s, at least when you consider that in the Reformer’s day theological disputes often ended in prison or even death for those who disagreed. I guess we live in a kinder and gentler age by comparison. But that doesn’t make disagreement more comfortable for us. Especially when it is between people that we look up to. Listening to Christian leaders that we admire when they disagree with one another can be like listening to your parents fight. We aren’t sure whose side we should take. We just want it to stop.  

Listening to Christian leaders that we admire when they disagree with one another can be like listening to your parents fight.

In our digital age, where it only takes a click of the mouse to enter the fray, it is easy to turn a disagreement into something more. Like players pouring out of the dugout to protest a bad pitch, each side piles on the other using their words as fists. The fact that our theological brawls are mostly verbal may not be as much of an improvement over the old days as we thought. It is true that we no longer burn people at the stake. But we do occasionally burn one another in effigy via social media. Words can be weapons. “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment,’” Jesus warns in the Sermon on the Mount. “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”

 I suppose it might be different if our verbally violent exchanges led to mutual agreement. But they do not. How can they, when the views in contention are mutually exclusive? Neither side can capitulate to the other without compromising their convictions. Each finds it equally difficult to speak in moderation. The greater the conviction, the stronger its expression. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that both will eventually agree to disagree, but neither side can say that the other is right.

Don’t misunderstand me. The tone certainly matters. 2 Timothy 2:24–25 warns that “the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth.” In other words, if we are going to disagree, and we are going to disagree, we need to learn to disagree like Jesus. But what does that look like? Is it the gentle Jesus of the children’s hymn, who is meek, and mild? Some envision a Jesus who never said a harsh word to anyone. But that is not the Jesus described in the Gospels. The Jesus of Scripture called those who rejected His teaching “blind fools” and “hypocrites” (Matt. 15:7; 23:17). He grew angry when the religious leaders tried to accuse Him of Sabbath-breaking for healing a man with a shriveled hand (Mark 3:5). He made a whip of cords and used it to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple courts (John 2:15).

Some envision a Jesus who never said a harsh word to anyone. But that is not the Jesus described in the Gospels.

Likewise, the same apostle Paul, who wrote that the Lord’s servant must be gentle, is the one whose disagreement with Barnabas over ministry personnel was so sharp that the two of them went their separate ways (Acts 15:39). Was their dispute a sin? I guess it might have been, but the Scriptures don’t call it that. Paul also said that he wished those who were preaching circumcision to the Galatians “would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!” (Gal. 5:12).

If we look beyond the New Testament, we can find other examples of strong disagreement expressed in passionate language. There is Moses, the Psalms, and the prophets, of course. When the returned Jewish exiles compromised their lifestyle, Nehemiah rebuked them, called down curses, beat some of them, and pulled out their hair (Neh. 13:25). I am not saying that moving forward we should adopt Nehemiah’s behavior as a pattern for our disputes, only that we shouldn’t be so shocked to find believers with opposing views expressing themselves with conviction.

For those who already agree with his views, MacArthur’s remark was simply a tersely stated biblical correction. For those who disagreed, it was a case of mean spirited bullying and prejudice.  But given the nature of MacArthur’s convictions, it is hard for me not to see the resulting outrage as somewhat disingenuous. How could MacArthur have said any different, given what he believes? Of course, he might have said nothing at all. I suppose that would have been more polite. But when he said that Beth Moore should “go home,” I suspect he meant it literally. Likewise, I think Beth Moore was right to be equally dismissive of John MacArthur’s suggestion. Her implied response to him, posted on Twitter, stated, “I did not surrender to a calling of man when I was 18 years old. I surrendered to a calling of God.” In a subsequent tweet, she added, “Whether or not I serve Jesus is not up to you. Whether I serve you certainly is. One way or the other, I esteem you as my sibling in Christ.”

The real rancor in this dispute didn’t come from MacArthur or Moore, so much as it did from their followers and other observers who piled on via social media. Those who took issue with MacArthur criticized his tone, but what they ultimately objected to was his view. Would they have felt any better if he had expressed his remarks with a sweet smile and a soft-spoken explanation, supported by extensive Scripture references? I doubt it. What was really at issue for them was not whether he should have used a different tone, but whether he had the right to hold his convictions at all. The same is true on the other side. In the end, both sides in the controversy essentially share the sentiment that MacArthur expressed. Each would like it better if the other would go away. Neither is likely to do so anytime soon.

In the end, both sides in the controversy essentially share the sentiment that MacArthur expressed. Each would like it better if the other would go away.

So how should we manage disagreements like this in the church? We can start by recognizing that complete agreement is unlikely, if not impossible. Our differences matter and they are not always able to be reconciled. If merely holding the opposite conviction is incivility, then incivil we must be. But it may help to recognize that not every doctrinal disagreement is a matter of life and death. It has helped me to sort through these matters by drawing a distinction between three levels of doctrine. First, there is a basic shortlist of fundamentals. These are the truths that are foundational to the Christian faith. They are so essential that if you eliminate them you no longer have Christianity. These are the truths that show us which hill we should die on.

Second, there are those truths over which Christians disagree and which are important enough to warrant a separation in fellowship or practice. These doctrines are essential to one’s theological identity or express convictions which shape essential ministry practices. But we would still consider those who hold views different from ours to be Christians. The difference between MacArthur and Moore falls into this category.

Third, are doctrines that we might call disputed matters. These are doctrines about which we will agree to disagree. We cannot all be right about them. Perhaps we are all wrong. But we will fellowship and minister together in spite of our differences. These truths are important, but they are not so important that tolerating those differences does damage to our identity or compromises our practice.

Of course, distinctions like these, which look neat on paper or in a diagram, are always messier in practice. One person’s disputed matter is another’s distinctive and sometimes even their fundamental. We will not always agree. Where convictions are strong, we should expect that their expression will be equally strong. Beth Moore is right when she observes that even in our differences we remain siblings in Christ. And anybody who has taken a long trip in the family car knows that siblings don’t always get along.

Anti-Hero Worship

~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

Everybody needs a hero. When I was a small boy, Superman was mine. I dashed around the house with a towel tied around my neck and my arms stretched out in a vain attempt to fly. When I realized that I couldn’t leave the ground, I asked my dad to teach me how. He told me that he didn’t know either but I refused to believe him. Although I had never actually seen him “slip the surly bonds of earth” on his own power, I was certain that he could. I was convinced that it was a secret he was keeping for himself.

When I got older, I abandoned Superman for heroes who were more flawed. By that, I mean that I stopped reading DC Comics and started reading Marvel. I admired the way they combined angst-ridden insecurity with wisecracking bravado. It appealed to me, perhaps because this was the way I wanted to see myself. I felt like I lived most of my life hidden behind a secret identity. Underneath my ordinary exterior, I was sure there was some kind of greatness just waiting to burst forth. Someday everybody would be surprised.

These days there doesn’t seem to be any real difference between DC and Marvel. All our comic book heroes are flawed (with the possible exception of Wonder Woman). Meanwhile, although our flesh and blood leaders have the patter down, they lack the necessary skills. The bravado is there but without the superpowers and corresponding humility that is required to wield them safely.

Now that I am old, I see myself in them too and find the identification less than alluring. My secret identity is a secret no longer. It seems that myopic vision, insecurity, and a mild-mannered demeanor were my true nature all along. There is no inner superhero waiting to burst forth. I’d say something clever and dismissive about being in such a predicament if only I could think what it might be.

In Amazing Fantasy #15 the Spiderman origin story ends with the narrator’s observation that, in this world, great power brings with it great responsibility. But I think the narrator is wrong. That is how things are in the world of fantasy. In this world, great responsibility is usually shouldered by those who are ordinary…or even less. We are all anti-heroes now.

Real Authentic

~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

When I ask my students what matters most to them in worship, they don’t have to think long before they answer. “Authenticity,” they say immediately. “Worship must be authentic.” However, when I ask what they mean by authentic, it’s another story. Apparently, authenticity is one of those things that is hard to define but easy to spot, at least in the negative. We can’t exactly say what it is, but we know when it’s not there.

On the whole, I think authenticity in worship is probably a good idea. But I doubt that my vision of authentic is the same as my students’. Sometimes my authentic self is the one who would prefer that woman two rows up to stop waving her arms around while we sing about God’s reckless love. It would also prefer to stop calling God reckless. The real, authentic me would rather be somewhere else doing something else.

My pastoral students feel that authenticity is important in ministry too. Most tell me that authenticity is foundational to the pastoral task. But if I ask them how they know whether a pastor is authentic or not, their answer is just as vague. When I press for an example, they usually describe someone who isn’t afraid to talk about their failures to the congregation.

This definition of authenticity seems somewhat problematic to me. In the old days, we used different language to speak of a pastor who told you what to do and then admitted that he himself was unable to live that way. I believe the term is hypocrite. But of course, that is not at all what people mean when they talk about someone being authentic. They mean real. No masks. The public persona is the same as the private. Fair enough. But the truth is, we really don’t want the pastor to be authentic. Not completely authentic. Just authentic enough to make us feel comfortable with our own failure.

Despite what we say we want, in actuality, the fabric of human civilization is largely held together by a set of behavioral codes that teach us to be inauthentic. We call them manners. They include rules and responses which basically amount to socially sanctioned lying. You say you want the truth? As Jack Nicholson famously declared, “You can’t handle the truth.”

Imagine that one evening you are visiting someone in their home. You’ve been having a good time but you notice your host yawning. “It’s getting late,” you say. “I really must be going.” “Do you have to?” they reply. “Won’t you stay a little longer?” Most people know that this is really code for “You should have left an hour and a half ago.” The few people who don’t know this are the ones whose visits you dread.

Several years ago, one of my students wanted to introduce me to his fiancée. I really liked this student. He was the kind of kid I would have wanted my daughter to marry if I had a daughter. So I was looking forward to the meeting her. She was nice enough, I suppose. But I’m glad that afterward, he didn’t ask me for an opinion. The authentic answer would have been, “I think you could do better.”

People often tell me that my preaching is authentic. They also say that it is prophetic. I think what they really mean by this is that I am irritating. I suppose I could ask them to clarify. But I’d really rather not. I suspect they’re just being polite.

The Last Whole Earth Catalog

~ John Koessler ~ 2 Comments

Sometime in the early 1970’s, I stumbled across the Whole Earth Catalog. It was expensive. It cost five dollars, a lot of money for someone in my income bracket in those days. The edition I purchased said that it was the Last Whole Earth Catalog, which made me wonder what had happened to the others and why I had never seen it before. But I had to have it. It was the cover that first caught my eye, a huge color photograph of the earth as seen from space. I was even more captivated by the content that covered its pages. In a way, this giant volume functioned as a kind of Sears catalog for the counter-culture of the late 60’s and early 70’s. But it was really much more than that. The Whole Earth Catalog was a kind of manifesto. To someone like me, in my late-teens and creeping reluctantly toward adulthood, it seemed like a revelation. To use the vernacular of the day, it blew my mind.

I was intrigued by the design and the scope of the project, which somehow managed to seem both carefully crafted and haphazard at the same time. But it was the utopian ethos of the catalog that really gripped me. This was an Edenic vision of a future marked by community, sustainability, and peaceful coexistence. I read about Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the geodesic dome and saw pictures of resources that were meant to enable people to live off the land. I lived in a working-class community in the heart of the rust belt. My father and most of my relatives worked for the automobile industry. I did not want to work in a factory. Indeed, I did not really want to work at all. I wanted to live on a commune, where we grew our own food and with people who spent their time having deep conversations. I did not know anybody who lived this way. It did not occur to me that living this way, if such a thing was even possible, would probably involve more work than any factory job I might get.

I also did not realize that I had come of age during the closing days of 60’s counterculture, which was starting to look more like a failed social experiment than a cultural revolution. I doubt that I could have articulated this at the time but I could sense it. From a distance, the freedom which the counter-culture reveled in was starting to look more like squalor. Love was hard to differentiate from debauchery. Too many of the kids who left their families looking for utopia found homelessness, addiction, and a lifestyle of grifting instead. By the time I was fantasizing about joining them, the smell of decay was already in the air.

Was it the protection of Providence or simply a lack of courage that kept me from following? Perhaps it was a little of both. I fantasized about moving to the West Coast but couldn’t bring myself to take the risk. Besides, by the mid-1970’s I had decided to become a Jesus freak. They seemed to possess a similar utopian vision, although it was one tinged with apocalyptic flames. There was no commune but there was a kind of community. They addressed each other as “brother” and “sister.” They talked about the peace of Christ. It all seemed so familiar. So much like the Whole Earth Catalog but without the Eastern mysticism, drugs, and sex. Maybe it felt safer to me.

I won’t say that this Christian vision of community was borrowed from the counter-culture of the 60’s and 70’s. But it certainly was influenced by it. It was no accident that many of the Jesus freaks I knew had initially been part of the counter-culture and had grown disillusioned with it. I met more than one who told me that their first encounter with Jesus had come during an acid trip. Also, like the utopian vision of ordinary freaks, the idealized community of the Jesus freaks never really realized its full potential. This was not because of drugs, debauchery, and grifting but as a result of something far more mundane. We got older. We got married and went to work. We had children. We ran for the school board. We left the coffee house and joined the church.

Looking at it from the distance of age, it seems to me that there was something infantile in the utopian vision that first attracted me to both these movements. Was I looking for some version of Neverland, a place where I would never have to grow up? Perhaps I was searching for an alternate family, one that felt less broken than my own. In his book Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer warns that utopian idealism is the enemy of community. “Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream” he notes. “Only the fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy, and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it.”

I confess to feeling a certain nostalgia for the golden vision of those early days. But if the gates of Eden are closed to us this side of eternity, the reality of community is not. The Christian community is an earthly community in every sense of the word, one that is as earthy in its limitations and its failures as it is in its location. It falls short of the vision I had for it more often than it fulfills. There are times when I consider walking away from it. On those occasions I remind myself of Bonhoeffer’s warning: “A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of the Christian community.”

They lose it, not as a punishment, but as a natural consequence. What they call community cannot survive because it is a vision that is not grounded in reality. “Sooner or later it will collapse” Bonhoeffer warns. Either the vision will collapse under its own weight, as a result of the imperfections of those who espouse it, or it will dissolve into the mist like the mirage that it is. The church, however, will survive. When the old earth is remade the church will be remade with it. I realize that this is still a kind of utopian vision. What has changed is the point of origin. It is no longer a community that we create for ourselves but one that comes down from above. It is still earthy in terms of its location. But its foundations lie elsewhere. It is the city whose builder and maker is God.

Strive for Mediocrity

~ John Koessler ~ 5 Comments

At the school where I teach I have a colleague who likes to tell us that we are the best at what we do. It gets on my nerves. I think we’re pretty good. Maybe we are the best. Yet I can’t help feeling that there is something unseemly about saying such a thing out loud. It’s a little like a pretty woman or a handsome man telling you that they are good looking. If it’s really true, it should be obvious. Besides, what if the people who hear you say such a thing aren’t so bad looking themselves?

A few years ago we invited someone from another school with a mission similar to ours to give a series of lectures. This colleague of mine was running through his usual litany, saying that we were the premier school in this speaker’s particular discipline. “You know, we don’t do so badly ourselves” the speaker finally replied, in that patient but slightly irritated way people have when they are reminding you of the obvious.

I realize that I am saying here is out of step with the culture. We live the age of vision and confidence. We have been told since childhood that we are unique and above average. We are all destined for greatness. I often see this in churches and Christian organizations. I have yet to find one that says that it’s just run of the mill.

I can see that the same is often true of me. When I was a pastor, I could never understand why some people who visited our little church would choose to attend anywhere else. They certainly wouldn’t find better preaching there. I am always astonished when a publisher rejects my idea. I feel hurt when a student drops my class. I usually figure that the problem is with them. They just don’t recognize greatness when they see it.

There is an ancient word for this kind thinking and it’s not confidence. It is what the ancients called hubris or pride. Instead of being the secret to success, the ancients considered hubris to be the fountainhead of all other sins. Of course, to modern ears this kind of talk sounds like a return to worm theology. We don’t want to view ourselves with contempt. We don’t think it’s healthy. Spend too much time talking like that and in twenty years you’ll find yourself in therapy working on your adequacy issues. But I suspect that a little self-contempt might actually be good for us. If not contempt, then at least we might leave room for just a smidgen of self-doubt.

Years ago Avis, the car rental company, launched an advertising campaign built around the idea that they weren’t the best in the business. Their slogan was, “We’re number two; we try harder.” I don’t know how it made their employees feel but as far as marketing went, it was a stroke of genius. There was also a measure of wisdom in their slogan. The trouble with being the best is that it removes any room for improvement. What is more, being the best at something is usually a moving target. Ask any record holding athlete who has seen their accomplishment surpassed by some up and comer. In a way, when you’re the best, you’re never really the best. Somebody is always gunning for you. Sooner or later they will overtake you.

Oh sure, being the best has some value when it comes to ego. But if we are being brutally honest with ourselves, we will have to admit that it’s probably not a realistic assessment for most of us. Being the best is certainly not a good position to be in, if you are aiming for significant improvement. If you really are the best, well then, I suppose the most you can hope for is to maintain the status quo. Either way, we should probably opt for a new goal. Here’s one to consider: strive for mediocrity. It always leaves room for improvement.

Baptists Gone Wild

~ John Koessler ~ 2 Comments

The first Christian movie I ever saw was called A Stranger in My Forest. I don’t know when it was made but I watched it in the 1970’s. I was attending a Baptist church that wouldn’t let its members go to the movies. But films like this one, along with Moody Science Films, were considered a righteous alternative. It was New Year’s Eve. I guess they were trying to keep us off the streets and out of the bars. The thought of watching a movie in the church felt like living on the edge. This was our vision of Baptists gone wild: sing a few hymns to organ accompaniment, watch the movie, then end the evening holding hands and singing “Blest be the Tie that Binds.” We were home by 9 pm.

The plot of Stranger in My Forest was your basic reworking of Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son. I had never heard of any of the actors and the production quality of the movie was a little lower than cheap television. If I am remembering correctly, the turning point in the story’s plot was a car accident, which was also the occasion for the film’s only moment of graphic violence. It was a zooming shot of the shattered paws of the little dog who was killed in the wreck. There was an invitation to believe in Jesus at the end of the film.

The most famous Christian film of that era was A Thief in the Night, a movie about the rapture of the Church. This was before Left Behind became a cultural phenomenon. For those who don’t know, the rapture is a term that some Christians use to speak of the church’s being caught up to be with Jesus Christ in the end times. The word puzzled me in my early days as a follower of Jesus. It sounded too much like the title of a Christian romance novel. Not Baptist’s Gone Wild exactly but maybe something like Rapture in the Pews. They could have made a movie based on the book and showed it in church on New Year’s Eve.

I soon learned that most of my Baptist friends were ignoring the church’s rule about not going to the movies. I eventually broke the rule too, when the first Star Wars film came out. I can still remember hearing gasps during the opening scene when the star destroyer first comes into view. I think I actually ducked. I had never seen anything like it before. Certainly not in any Christian movie. The film’s underlying pagan philosophy didn’t bother me too much. I was mostly interested in the explosions.

Now those original Star Wars look a little like A Stranger in My Forest to me. Sort of quaint and outdated. Low production quality. Or at least, lower production quality than we usually see today. Meanwhile, the Baptists are making films for the movie theater. They often star actors whose names you actually know. I think Billy Graham started it all with The Prodigal, a film that was loosely based on Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son. Graham actually appeared in the film somewhere toward the end and gave an invitation to believe in Jesus.

The other night I rented a Christian movie from the video store. You might have seen ads for it when it was first released in theaters a few months ago. The movie had at least one major star in it. If I told you his name, you’d recognize it. The acting was pretty good. The soundtrack was full of popular songs. You really couldn’t tell a difference from any other Hollywood film, except that there was no swearing or sex in it.  Also, Iron Man, Thor, and Wonder Woman did not appear in any of the scenes.

There wasn’t any graphic violence either, except for the one scene where someone breaks a plate over someone’s head. There was some implied domestic abuse. The plot was a basic reworking of the parable of the prodigal son, only Jesus was hardly mentioned in the film at all. The movie was really more about the Christian music industry and the importance of following your dreams. There was an invitation at the end to call a phone number, if you had any problems with domestic violence.

Baptists gone wild.