Category Archives: Christian Culture

The Christian Workarounds

Posted on by jbyas

In my work as a communications adviser, one of my primary tasks is to help people let go of their workarounds. Sure, it takes 10 extra steps, 3 more documents, and 1 sacrificed squirrel to get it done – but it’s what they know, it’s comfortable, and change is scary. I totally get it. I hate change too.

What I recognized early on as a pastor is that Christians have these workarounds too. At a “book study” one night at my house going through whatever popular Christian Living book we were using at the time, a new Christian asked: “Is it really this hard to be a good Christian?” She was referring to all the “simple steps” articulated in the book. Why does being a “good Christian” take reading all these books?

I had had enough. I looked at my group and said, in my overly brash/arrogant early 20s way, “No. It’s not that difficult to understand. Jesus says, “Love your neighbor. Defend the poor. Give up all you own.” But that’s terrifying. It requires actual sacrifice. So Christians in America have spent the last 50 years developing dozens of workarounds, ways to be “good Christians” without actually having to do the hard things Jesus talks about.”

Was I arrogant? yes. Was I wrong? I don’t think so.

As Kierkegaard says, “Being alone with God’s Word is a dangerous matter. Of course, you can always find ways to defend yourself against it: Take the Bible, lock your door – but then get out ten dictionaries and twenty-five commentaries. Then you can read it just as calmly and coolly as you read newspaper advertising. Can’t we be honest for once! It is only all too easy to understand the requirements contained in God’s Word. The most ignorant, poor creature cannot honestly deny being able to understand God’s requirements. But it is tough on the flesh to will to understand it and to then act accordingly. Herein lies the problem. It is not a question of interpretation, but action.” – For Self-Examination & Judge For Yourself 26–35

Some of us evangelicals have more of an academic bent, so we tend to create workarounds that involve defending esoteric doctrines that no one has ever heard of. Others of us evangelicals have more of a contemplative or pragmatic bent, so we tend to create workarounds that involve those aspects of our lives.

Are these bad practices in themselves? Probably not. As always, it’s about the heart.

Why do we defend doctrine rather than the poor? Why do we grow in learning to be kinder and more patient but not growing into solidarity with people who make us uncomfortable? Because the former increases our comfort and control while the latter decreases our comfort and control.

But to admit that we just don’t know how to love well would be devastating, our fragile egos often cannot handle it. So, we create a workaround. We create a new system where Jesus doesn’t really mean what he says and where defending doctrine is a wonderful substitute for defending the poor. All the reward without any of the sacrifice.

It’s like the Christian version of the diet pill, putting money in the manufacturers’ pockets & helping people find a solution for their dilemma of wanting to change without the pain that change causes. Sounds like a win-win. Is that bad? I am not interested in right or wrong, good or bad. I’m just saying that if we want to be like Jesus, increasing comfort and control doesn’t seem to be a good tactic. There is no Resurrection Sunday without the Death of Good Friday.

3 Christian Arguments Against Gay Marriage & Why They’re Inconsistent

Posted on by jbyas

In full disclosure, I am a Christian who supports gay marriage. An evangelical even. I’m also a professor of philosophy & ethics. That means, at least in part, I’d like to think I think pretty logically. So when I hear some of the arguments from Christians as to why they are against gay marriage, I often scratch my head. These are 3 arguments that, if taken to their logical conclusion, end in inconsistency, at best, and hypocrisy, at worst. At least, in my opinion.

1. The “It’s a Sin” Argument

This is probably the most popular. The argument is this:

I believe gay sex/marriage is morally wrong because the Bible is against it.
I do not think the government should allow what I believe to be morally wrong.
Therefore, I do not think the government should allow gay sex/marriage.

The problem with this argument is that it’s hypocritical. How so?

According to this argument, if I am going to be against gay marriage, I should also be against the freedom of religion.

Why? Because the freedom of religion says that anyone can worship any god they choose in this country. And what does the Bible have to say about worshiping other gods? Well, let’s put it this way, there are 11 instances (if we’re really generous) against gay sex and over 250 instances where idolatry is condemned. Oh yeah, and pretty much all of Israel is destroyed because of it. So, you’re okay with allowing our country to endorse something condemned over 250 times in our Bible but not something condemned 11 times? Of course, the main difference is that the former affects you & benefits you while the latter doesn’t. Sounds like textbook hypocrisy.

2. The “The Bible is Clear that Marriage is Between A Man & A Woman” Argument

Many people like to start in Genesis, as though God creating Adam & Eve and telling them they’re perfect for each other, now go have sex (which, interestingly, we aren’t told they do until after they are kicked out of the Garden), is somehow the beginning of the institution of marriage. But if the Old Testament counts as what God had in mind for marriage, gay marriage might be more at home there than in our culture. After all, the most common pictures of marriage we have are

One Husband + Many Wives (Polygamous Marriage) – This list includes Lamech, Abraham, Jacob, Esau, Gideon, Saul, David, Solomon, Rehoboam, Elkanah, Ashur, Abijah and Jehoiada. There are a lot more but they were the “bad guys” so I’m assuming they don’t count as much.

One (Dead) Husband + One Widowed Wife + One Brother-In-Law (Levirate Marriage) – the brother-in-law of a deceased husband should impregnate (Ruth & Gen. 38:6–10) the widow so that she has an heir.

One Husband + One Wife + One Slave – Abraham, the Father of our Faith (Gen. 16:1-6) & Jacob, his grandson (Gen. 30:4-5).

One Husband + One (or more) Wife + Some (or hundreds) of Concubines – Nahor (Gen 22:4), Abraham (Gen. 25:5-7), Jacob (Gen. 35:22

Do you notice how many of these are from the same book as Adam & Eve? What gives? Why don’t these count as “foundations for modern marriage”? After all, the Fathers of our Faith practiced almost all of them, with not a word of condemnation from Genesis.

But that’s not all. If we follow the law, which, after all says that gay sex/marriage is an “abomination to God,” then we should also adhere to the following laws regarding marriage.

One Husband + One Prisoner of War – Deuteronomy 21:11-14

One Rapist Husband + One Victim Wife - Deuteronomy 22:28-29 describes how an unmarried woman who had been raped must marry her attacker.

Of course, there is also monogamous, heterosexual marriage in the Bible, especially if you like arranged marriages.

3. The “Procreation Argument”

This argument is as follows:

Marriage was intended for procreation (making babies)
Gay sex/marriage can’t produce babies
Therefore, gay marriage is wrong.

Welp, okay then, time to condemn those poor couples who can’t or won’t have children.

What’s my point? I guess it’s that unless we are willing to be an opponent of the freedom of religion, to account for which examples of marriage in Genesis we should still hold to today, or deem illegitimate the couples who cannot have kids, we shouldn’t use these arguments.

Why I Stand for Gay Marriage as a Christian

Posted on by jbyas

It’s been a year since I first wrote why I was an Evangelical in support of gay marriage. This week seemed like a good time to reiterate my reasons.

So many Christians will use this time as an opportunity to “stand up for their faith,” while I will use it as an opportunity to stand up for people without rights. We will both have our arguments and our proof-texts. We will likely never agree. And that’s okay. We’re still family. But here are a few reasons why my faith in Jesus compels me to support gay marriage.

Number One: To Love is to Empty Ourselves of Power. We cannot legislate people into the Kingdom of God, we cannot politically strong-arm people into becoming Christians. To think we can is to misunderstand the emptying of God in Jesus Christ, the most powerful one who shows his power in powerlessness, the one who was God in his very nature but didn’t take advantage of that power but instead emptied himself and became a servant (Phil 2), even to his betrayer, even to the point of dying as a traitor to his state. Does love mean legislating a person’s morality according to a worldview they do not share? That does not sound like love, that sounds like a paternalistic power trip.

I would rather show people the love of Jesus by supporting them in their fight for equality, to stand with them, even if they are gay, hell, even if they are my enemies. My main goal as an evangelical Christian is to reflect the resurrected Christ and his Kingdom, not put it into law. It is to invite people in, not force them in against their will.

And while many Christians believe the “Christian” thing to do is to keep Christianity in power, I believe the “Christian” thing to do is empty ourselves of power, to give up our legislating and to take up our cross. I believe Jesus is on the side of those without power and his kingdom is one of equality, where no one is a second-class citizen, whether that be conservative Christian, drug addict, GLBT, atheist, or politician. We all bear God’s image in this story.

Number Two: When in Doubt, Go with Equality. Not many Christians realize that we were, for the most part, on the wrong side of the slave issue and, to a much lesser extent, the civil rights movement. The Bible was used regularly during the Civil War to support slavery as morally acceptable. It was so “obvious” that the Bible supported slavery. . .

And, lest we forget, it was a Christian culture that kept women from being able to vote until only 100 years ago. I am ashamed that a “Christian” culture didn’t support or even acknowledge the equality of women until . . . well, in some Christian circles, they still don’t. By the way, in many circles, the same oppressive structure presents itself with women as with gays. We love you emotionally and even personally, but not enough to actually give up my privileged position as the man/straight in power.

Number Three A: My Bible Compels Me. The way I see the text of the prophets, the life of Jesus, and the trajectory of the New Testament, I would much rather be held accountable to God for fighting for someone to have the same rights I enjoy (sorry God, I assumed I should fight for the rights of those who didn’t have them) than to be held accountable to God for excluding rights from people for the sake of religious rules (sorry God, I thought I was supposed to tell the world how sinful they are and that my government should privilege Christian culture at the expense of other people). For those who are thinking, “Yeah, but the Bible is against gay sex,” keep reading.

Number Three B: Supporting Gay Marriage is not Supporting Sin. I know it is hard to grasp, but this matter has nothing to do with whether or not homosexuality is a sin. If it did, then I still have to question your reasoning since you are very likely being prejudiced and inconsistent considering the fact that there are lots of things that Christians consider “sinful” that they do not legislate against. For instance, if God wants us as a nation to live by his laws, why are we okay supporting the freedom of religion? Shouldn’t we be out trying to ban other religions? If we are okay with freedom of religion,which is a law that basically mandates that our country allow for idolatry (according to the Christian), aren’t we being hypocritical?

Now, if this were about gay folks in church leadership or even church membership, we would have to address whether or not gay sex is a sin (which is another issue entirely on its own). But Paul seems to make it very clear that Christians have absolutely no place to judge the behavior of non-Christians:

9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral . . . . In that case you would have to leave this world. 11 But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sisterbut is sexually immoral . . . 12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13 God will judge those outside. . . .” -1 Corinthians 5:9-13a

Instead of focusing on “judging those inside” and creating a “city on a hill,” evangelicals are very good at making sure people who are not Christians know that they are “breaking the rules” of Christianity. And as such, we have gained the reputation for being judgmental, a moniker well-deserved for the most part. It is God’s place to judge the world, it is our place to love it. And just like the story we find in Adam & Eve, when we put ourselves in God’s place, we make a mess of things.

I might be wrong. We all might be. I am well aware of that and take responsibility for it. But for now that’s a risk I am willing to take for the sake of people knowing that there are Christians who stand with them in their struggle to be seen as equals in the eyes of their government.

If the Church wants to keep marriage between a man and a woman because of their religious convictions, so be it. But I will not support using the government’s power to coerce powerless non-Christians into behaving like Christians. That, to me, seems thoroughly un-Christian. It is the Spirit of God who transforms the heart, not the laws of the powerful.

As always, I welcome all critiques and dissenters. I do ask that you present actual arguments rather than just emotional rants about how wrong I am, but I will read those as well if you feel you must.

On Chick-Fil-A, Starbucks, Gay Marriage, and Jesus

Posted on by jbyas

Last year, there was a media kerfuffle when Chick-Fil-A COO Dan Cathy said he supported “traditional marriage,” the codeword for being opposed same-sex marriage.

Well, believe it or not (<–sarcasm), there has been another media kerfuffle around a company’s stance on gay marriage. This time, it’s Starbucks, for being “committed to diversity,” the codeword for being supportive of same-sex marriage.

What I have witnessed around these two instances is just another affirmation that Christians have been drinking the Kool-Aid of American media polarizations. In response to the Chick-Fil-A stance, conservative Christians held “Support Chick-Fil-A Days,” where they would support a company’s stance on gay marriage by eating a lot of chicken nuggets (doesn’t that seem strange to anyone else?) and where progressive Christians boycotted Chick-Fil-A, protesting by not eating a lot of chicken nuggets.

The same cry has gone out this week. “Forgo your daily latte for the cause of traditional marriage!” “Learn your Starbucks-speak & order a tall, skinny, double latte for the cause of marriage equality!”

Leaving aside the fact that we live in a strange world where activism is reduced to whether or not we click a button a social media site, eat chicken nuggets, or drink lattes (#firstworldproblems), I am also troubled by how we are only presented with these two options, how polarized we are as a Christian community. Instead of the voice of conversation, dialogue, and a heart willing to listen and engage with people we disagree with, we just throw a tantrum, pick up our ball, and go home. Something tells me that’s not what Jesus meant when he said we should love our enemies.

Instead of engaging with the Other, we are told that the “righteous” thing to do is not to support people who disagree with us. Don’t give them our money. Don’t buy things from them. Forgive me if I am missing something really simple, and I mean that sincerely, but why not? I thought I was supposed to love my enemy, not try to hurt their business? Or, to put it another way: how is hurting the business of my enemy loving them? Why can’t I disagree with someone in a way that shows the world what it means to love our enemies? Why is the godly thing to do to give them the cold shoulder, economically and relationally?

I do not think that is the way of Jesus.

And so, I have decided, I will have my latte and eat my chicken nuggets too. Not for the cause of traditional marriage, gay marriage, or any type of marriage, but for the cause of Christ.

And yes, I do realize that might be the most bombastic, overly dramatic, two sentences I’ve ever written.

Gay Marriage & Our Young People

Posted on by jbyas

The numbers are in. The latest poll, conducted by the Washington Press/ABC News, says that 58% of Americans now believe we should legalize gay marriage in this country.

But there is another number.

“Among young adults age 18 to 29, support for gay marriage is overwhelming, hitting a record high of 81 percent  in the new poll,” says the Washington Post.

81%.

For many conservative Evangelicals this points to a failure on the part of the Church to educate our young. It points to biblical illiteracy and being too relaxed about the biblical moral code. It points, in essence, to a problem.

But for me, it points to possibilities. That perhaps God is up to something new and people too young and too idealistic to know any better, are following in God’s wake.

Sometimes God acts in ways that make us uncomfortable, as we see in Acts where it took literally an act of God for the Jewish Christians to see that maybe those unclean & pagan Gentiles could be the beloved of God. It took the Spirit of God working in the hearts of people who followed the letter of the Law to take a detour down the road of grace.

Maybe this is a moment for us to let go of our fear, our need for certainty, and see that there are people in the world who need good news. As I’ve said in the past, allowing gay people to get married doesn’t have to mean you “accept” their behavior, it just means we believe in equality, that we are made in the image of a God who “allows the rain to fall on the just & the unjust,” and that we follow Paul’s advice not to judge the behavior of others outside the church.

So for these 81% I say as Paul did to Timothy:

“Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faithand in purity” (1 Tim. 4:12)

Lead on young people. Bring fresh eyes and open hearts to a nation with a history of oppression and privilege, a nation that claims to follow the God of the stranger, widow, orphan, and foreigner. Do not give up following a God who breaks the rules to create spaces of belonging by giving up his own power and privilege in the person and work of Jesus. Do not give up!

On Brainwashing Our Kids with Religion*

Posted on by jbyas

How do you teach your kids about Jesus but also teach them to think for themselves?

Christians are often accused of brainwashing their kids by atheists. Yet atheists seem to think they have escaped this indictment. But that’s an illusion.

I read an article a few years ago about a summer camp for atheists, an alternative to the religious camps that Christians go to every summer. They interviewed the woman who lectures the campers daily on religious history and she said, “I feel really strongly these kids shouldn’t be indoctrinated.” Many of the campers, who range in age from 8 to 17, “don’t know what they are” yet when it comes to beliefs.”

So what exactly is she doing in her lectures every day? Isn’t teaching the doctrine of “think for yourself,” with its often anti-religious tone, indoctrinating the campers? I am not here to judge. Just say that se can’t help it. “Brainwashing” is inherent in every act of communication from every system of authority.

We will all “brainwash” our kids in some sense. As humans, we are mimetic; we imitate. There is no way around it.

And lately, I have a growing number of friends who feel tricked by Christianity, feeling they were duped into believing that things are black and white when they are often various shades of gray. They still love Jesus but they don’t want to do that to their children. They don’t want to brainwash. A very noble goal.

But in their attempt to protect their children from the deceit of the religious system, they often swing the pendulum the other way by “not indoctrinating” their children. They want their kids to “think for themselves,” and so do not teach them about their own values.

But that’s the nature of kids. They do not have their own values, so they imitate. So “not indocrinating your kids” really means either allowing someone or something else to indoctrinate them (peers, family, or culture in the form of television and advertising) or indoctrinating them with a doctrine of “no doctrine.”

Recognizing this, we have decided to indocrinate our kids with a religion that involves critical thinking and a love of diversity.

Maybe we are making a mistake, but for our family, we have decided that we are Christians and that we will raise our children as Christians. But along with our personal beliefs and the Christian tradition, we will indoctrinate them with a Christian faith that (1) respects religious diversity, (2) respects Christian diversity, and (3) humbly accepts they might be wrong.

First, we teach our children that not all people are Christians. I am not sure why Christians parents don’t often teach their children about other religions. Perhaps it’s out of fear that Christianity won’t be as attractive or perhaps it’s just out of ignorance of other religions. But we want to make it clear to our children that there are religions out there besides Christianity. And we should respect and learn from every belief system. We are Christians because we choose to be and because we believe it’s the truest story, not because everyone who is not a Christian is evil. That is, we want to teach our kids a Christianity that has respect for religious diversity built into it.

Secondly, we teach our children that not all Christians believe the same thing. We want to expose our kids to the beauty of Methodism, Presbyterianism, Evangelicalism and Catholicism. We want to them to learn to appreciate the tradition of the Eastern Orthodox and the innovation of the non-denominational. Most importantly, we want them to love all of their family members in Christ, no matter how different their practices or beliefs may look.  We all worship the same Christ.

Thirdly, we teach our children that our beliefs are always changing. We don’t have all the answers, which is why we need wise people, the Scriptures, and our own relationship with the Spirit of God in our lives to constantly be challenging us, changing us, humbling us. We want to teach them the beauty of reading the Bible carefully, not being afraid either of questions or of the “I don’t know.”

How else do you try to raise critically thinking and respectful Christians who are both firmly rooted in the Christian tradition and yet freely challenge that tradition?

5Love God, your God, with your whole heart: love him with all that’s in you, love him with all you’ve got!  6-9 Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates.
-Deut 6:5–9, Msg

The Evangelical Hangover

Posted on by jbyas

“People are watching you. They know how Christians should act.”
- The 4 different drunk middle-aged men & women
who have confronted me at different times about being a pastor in a bar
when I have visited my family in TX.

The more I write this blog* and the more experience I have living in different communities that are in different parts of the country (18 years in small town Texas, 7 years in Philadelphia, and 2 years in Phoenix) the more I observe what I call the “Evangelical Hangover” in certain communities.

What I mean by that term is this: in some communities (largely in the Bible Belt & Midwest, though that’s overgeneralizing) there seems to be an inherent cultural peer pressure to be a “good Christian.” In many of these communities, if you are going to hide something, it’s going to be your disbelief in Evangelical dogma, not your belief in it.

But in other communities (see the blue states for a broad geography) this peer pressure is absent. If anything, if you are going to hide something, it’s going to be your belief in Evangelical dogma, not your disbelief.

My point is that to we have to understand the difference and how it affects our representation of God in our communities.

In most communities in the South, “being a Christian” comes with a complex of concepts like: “doesn’t drink, “doesn’t smoke,” “doesn’t cuss,” “doesn’t watch Rated R movies,” etc. Or, to repeat the cute sing-song I learned in my hometown: “Don’t smoke, don’t chew, don’t go with girls who do.” In other words, to be a Christian means to be a “good person” or to “behave properly.” So, if you are drinking, smoking, or cussing, you aren’t “being a good witness for Jesus.”

But when I lived in Philadelphia, “being a Christian” comes with an entirely different complex of concepts, as evidenced by books like unChristian & They Like Jesus but not the Church. Things like “judgmental,” “conservative,” “hypocritical,” and “homophobic.” That’s what being a Christian means to a lot of folks in a lot of communities. In other words, being a Christian has nothing to do with Christ. And, to be honest, my not cussing, smoking, or drinking, would’ve contributed more to this negative view than my drinking and cussing. Luckily, I do both.

Well, which set of behaviors is right? If we agree that Christianity isn’t about rules, then I think that’s the wrong question. It’s more important to me that I ask “how can I represent Christ here”? And often, that involves clearing away any roadblock people might have between themselves and God. And as Evangelicals, boy have we created a lot of roadblocks. If you’re going to be a Christian we have a list of about 35 beliefs and behaviors you’d better come to real quick or else we’ll passively aggressively tell you things like “God accepts you where you are but he doesn’t intend to keep you there” (hint, hint, wink, wink) or “Christianity isn’t about works, it’s about grace. But that grace should create change in your life” (subtext: but based on your behavior, it’s not).

So, I spend a lot more time telling people what they don’t have to believe and what behaviors they don’t have to give up to be in Christ.

I guess my long-winded point is this: to my bothers and sisters, if your conviction is to keep not drinking and cussing for the cause of Christ, may you be blessed. But as for me, I’ll keep hanging out at bars, drinking my beer, for the same cause. And may Christ be lifted up in both.

*For example, in my post last year “Saying Shit for Jesus,” the negative/positive feedback was largely split based on geography. Those in less churched areas understood my point, those in the Bible Belt, largely didn’t.

Celebrating Advent

Posted on by jbyas

Advent. Until I was a teenager, “Advent” was just an adjective followed by the noun “Calendar.” And all it meant was “a challenge to sneak more than one piece of chocolate per day out of the calendar.”

Eventually the word became associated with stuffy church traditions that weigh people down with religious requirements. And more importantly, only boring churches talked about Advent.

As an Evangelical, we tried to save people from such routine, not understanding how something so scripted could be meaningful.

But in the past five years, spontaneity has lost its luster. Getting lost in the practices of the people of God has become more meaningful to me than getting lost in relevant praise music or reading a “devotional.”

And in that time, I have discovered that church rhythms are about something more than “feeling close to God,” they are about practicing new habits.

They jolt us out of the culture-induced haze that we cannot help but succumb to throughout our everyday routines. They are about loving God with our habits, as well as our emotions. They are about play-acting a new reality as a community, behaving in a way that matches our hopes and prayers.

And so, for the last few years, Advent has become the most important time for my faith. As a family, we have decided that this season, from around Thanksgiving until Christmas, will be a time for us to stop. It is a time of rest when most in our culture stress, to be present with people rather than just buy presents for people.

I need this time to remember that I am in this world but I will not be owned by it. That Wal-Mart will not decide what Christmas means to me and my house. But remembering that takes more than a weekly church service. It takes more than listening to Christmas carols in the car. It takes practice.

And so, even with three toddlers, a 4 yr old, a 3 yr old, & a 2 yr old, the next month will be a time for us to take a break, do less and not more. And the things we do will be intentional. They will be a willful decision each moment to be aware of things we have lost sight of through the year. That my children are beloved, both by me and by God. That my wife is my best friend. And that God has heard our prayers.

For us, this has a distinct set of practices. Each person learns a special prayer we pray together each morning at breakfast, we sing carols before I go to work during our daily “Circle Time.” We tell a special story every night before we put a homemade Advent ornament on our tree. And we end every night with the lights out singing O Come O Come Emmanuel. All of them remind me throughout the day of the season I am in.

And once the kids are in bed Sarah & I spend our nights making gifts for the kids. This year she is knitting them stuffed animals while I write each animal a short adventure story explaining how they came to our house. And then we sleep, consciously going to bed earlier than we normally do, resting on purpose.

These are not rules we must follow, they are not burdens to bear for God to be pleased with us. And probably most importantly, they aren’t that different than how we live outside of Advent. They are practices that linger over the next eleven months, they anticipate and act out a life we long for the rest of the year.

There will always be ebbs and flows to our lives, seasons of busyness and seasons of boredom, sibling rivalries that need mediated and rowdiness that leads to broken furniture and dishes. Lots of broken dishes.

But as for me and my house, Advent has become a time to remember the past, to be present with those in our lives, and to look forward to, even act out, a time that is coming. A time of peace, joy, and love. In a word, Advent gives us hope. Come, Lord Jesus, Come.

On Why I Say Xmas*

Posted on by jbyas

“You know me, I am no fan of the term X-mas or X anything.
I make my kids play Christ-box 360.
And if they break a bone they get Christ-rays.”
-Stephen Colbert

If you haven’t noticed, I am very interested in the ironies of the Evangelical culture. As we enter into the season of the “Culture Wars,” we see an instance where conservative Christian culture undermines itself.

On the one hand, evangelicals often believe that one of the (if not the) most important part of the Christian faith is to win people to the Christian faith.

On the other hand, some evangelicals emphasize trying to “keep America a Christian nation” by protesting things like people saying “Xmas” or “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” or by wanting to keep “In God we Trust” on our money.

Now, trying to accomplish both of things at the same time seems almost impossible, based on simple psychology: when you make an enemy of someone, they are not easily won over to your position.

If my goal is to make my country a place where everyone says “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays” I, either on purpose or implicitly, make everyone who says “Happy Holidays” an enemy.

Think about it.  People say “THEY” are taking Christ out of Christmas? Who is this “THEY” anyway? Isn’t it just other people? That is, a group of people who say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”? They are the enemy. They are “in the way” of accomplishing my mission of “Keeping Christ in Christmas.”

First of all, you are free to keep Christ in Christmas. As we’ve talked about before, holidays can be whatever we want them to be.

But more to the point, once someone thinks you have made them an enemy, the defenses go up. It becomes extremely hard for them to hear anything you have to say as a positive step in the relationship, no matter how well-intentioned it is. And so, Christians are increasingly perceived to be judgmental and intolerant, which is not a helpful moniker when you are trying to convert others to your position.

And so, I would like to propose that we do away with all culture wars, but specifically the “Christmas culture war,” which I think rests on three bad assumptions:

1. That saying “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays” actually means you are a better Christian.
2. That we can coerce a culture into a relationship with Christ.
3. That winning this “battle” actually helps us win the “war.”

For the sake of space, I will make the bad assumption that numbers 1 & 2 are self-evidently poor assumptions. If you disagree, let me know in the comments and we can talk further. Here I want to further my argument against #3.

As we live in a culture that is increasingly post-Christian, my argument here, as I said in a previous controversial post, is that we have to be willing to concede some cultural “battles” to win the relationship “war.”

In fact, this is part of my life mission, to “concede” people into the Kingdom of God. This seems to be how Jesus reacted much of the time. It was his unwillingness to fight that was often the most powerful weapon in his arsenal (except for the religious leaders of course. He had no problem standing up to them). When Peter declared that it was finally time to “stand up for what we believe,” Jesus rebuked him and healed the person Peter lashed out against.

The point of Jesus’ mission in the world was to lose, not to win. It was in losing arguments that he won people. But that is often difficult for us to swallow. It seems so backward. But thus is the Kingdom of God. We want to do both. But in the process we never get to the point: Jesus.

Because of our need to win, we stop people before they ever get to Jesus. We stop them at whether or not they say “Christmas,” we stop them at whether they celebrate Halloween. We stop them at whether or not evolution is true. We stop them at whether or not the government should let homosexual couples marry. There are so many check-points, no wonder so many people give up before they ever get to Jesus.

In a world where Christians are labeled as being against everything in our culture, what a powerful argument for God when we confound their expectations, when we come to battle with a towel and basin full of water instead of a sword.

Why not sacrifice the less important (people saying Xmas) for the more important (people seeing X in me)?

On Doing Great Things For God

Posted on by jbyas

I was asked to attend a conference this Fall to give a presentation entitled, “Excuse me, your ideology is showing: Slavoj Zizek & the megalomania of Christian sub-culture.” I had to turn it down for a number of reasons, which is okay, because between me and you, the title was the best part of the presentation. Besides, what can follow a badass title like that?

But since I won’t be presenting it there, I figure I would present a simpler version here.

My point was simply this: The Christian message in America has largely tied itself to the very modern notion of progress and megalomania. And if we aren’t careful, as the culture becomes cynical toward and rejects that narrative, they will reject the gospel as well.

The most concrete example of how we have tied ourselves to modern notions of progress & megalomania is the phenomenon of The Purpose Drive Life and its hundreds of copy-cats. Perhaps that was okay. After all, maybe we were just being good missionaries, tying the message of the Gospel to a cultural relevant medium: achievement/purpose/doing great things. After all, who wouldn’t want to buy a story that told them they were destined for “great things,” typically being vague about what that means exactly. And, let’s be honest, this message has absolutely driven the Christian economy for about a decade now (yes, economy, you know, like Christian bookstores, speaking circuits, celebrity pastors preaching messages of megalomania for the hurting masses – there is a lot of money in the Christian economy).

But what is dangerous is when we actually believe that the narrative of megalomania “really is” the narrative of the gospel. That is, when we do not recognize that the language we use to talk about what the Gospel is, is simply cultural ideology or, to put it more simply, our interpretation/translation of the Gospel, we run the risk of being very bad missionaries. This is especially true when we have married the gospel to the current cultural narrative and that narrative begins to fall out of favor with the culture.

What happens, for instance, when we move from a culture of modernity, where we all agree that progress is a good and where we still believe that we are all destined for greatness to a culture of postmodernity, where we all agree that progress is illusory at best, a narrative of oppression from the powerful at worst, and where many are well on their way toward rejecting the systems, institutions, and technologies that have deceived them about their potential for “greatness.”

If we have marriedthe gospel to the modern narrative of progress and “doing great things” then as people reject that narrative and feel deceived by that narrative, they will reject the gospel and feel deceived by that gospel. After all, wasn’t the “good news” of Jesus the same as the “good news” of the American institutions, politicians, and systems?

What Can We Do About It? I have a lot more thinking to do about how this is already being done (which it is, more and more every day) and new ways we can approach it. But here are a few . . .

Admit that Your Gospel is Limited: One of the best things I ever did was become friends with Christians from other countries, both Europe, Africa & South America. Most of them couldn’t care less about doing great things for God. They want to be faithful, not great. Once we begin to see the shape of global Christianity then we can see how the shape of our Christianity is not the only shape. That doesn’t mean our translation of the Gospel is wrong or right. It most likely means that some of it is right and some of it is wrong. But until we are exposed to the Global Christ we aren’t able to imagine something other.

Humbly Listen to Younger Christians: This is the thorn in the flesh of every generational shift. The youngsters are idealistic and rebellious. When they are older they will be just like us. The old-timers are jaded and stuck. They were just like us at one time. But if we are going to be good missionaries in an ever-evolving culture, at some point we must trust the translation of the Gospel of a new generation. But to do that we must admit that our gospels are limited (see above) and that perhaps Christianity can look much different than what we have practiced and still be centered on Christ.

Stay Centered on Christ: There is no way around it. We will always be influenced by our culture. But if we would learn to keep Christ at the center then we would be less likely to create false narratives that are rejected by our culture.

Let our Bibles Read Us: Of course, we often read our Bible through cultural lenses. That’ how we started marrying culture to the Bible in the first place. But there are some important minority voices in our Bible that critique our current megalomania. In fact, I preached through Ecclesiastes once in a series call The Purposeless Life. The prophets, Ecclesiastes, the Exodus narrative, and Job all have very important critiques of our current narrative. Let them do their job.

What are other ways?