|
Subversive Cultural Engagement
by Captain Stephen Court
(complain
to
revolution@mmccxx.net)
We are in the midst of a
spiritual awakening and the Christian church is not leading
it.
God is hot with Hollywood.
God is hot with the rich and famous
God is hot with musicians
God is hot with publishers
God is hot with pollsters
God is hot with atheists
God is hot with politicians
God is hot on the Internet
God is hot on the lecture circuit
God is hot on Madison Avenue
God is hot with corporate America and management consultants
God is hot with broadcasters
God is hot with scientists
"A spiritual tsunami has hit postmodern culture. People want
to know God. They less want to know about God, or know about
religion than know God. People want to experience 'The Beyond
in the Within'." (Leonard Sweet, SOUL TSUNAMI)
He's right.
Christians often feel like we're living in a different world
than the rest of humanity. Our society, once undergirded with
a common Christian cultural capital, is now largely ignorant
of the Gospel. And what it doesn't know, it doesn't like.
We've shivered from one mistaken extreme to the other. In
history some have cloistered themselves such that the world
cannot influence us at all. If you think that throwing out
cable and passing on the movies is old-fashioned you should
think of the Christians who sold everything, moved out of
town, and lived in caves, sat on poles, and withdrew from the
world so that they were contaminant-free as far as the world
is concerned.
Now, of course, they had two enemies remaining- the flesh and
the devil. While some consider the world an enemy, others (see
Yuill, THIS MEANS WAR, and Francis Frangipane) see it as the
battleground. So they retreated from the battleground, but the
enemies remained the same. This is not to discredit the desert
monks, from whom we can learn a lot about commitment and
sacrifice and intimacy, and by whom their contemporary
Christian community was challenged and inspired. However, they
did not engage the world.
How can you win a war when you retreat from the field of
battle? How can you win the world if you are not in the world?
Or, more positively, how can we hijack this train for our own
revolutionary ends?
Cloistered or Compromised?
There is another extreme to which some Christians rebound in
reaction against the cloister. This school plunges right into
the culture. The infiltration is complete, as the trappings of
traditional Christianity are discarded lock, stock, and
barrel. These Christians absorb the look, the feel, the smell,
the nomenclature, the vocabulary of the world system.
Tragically, in the extreme, these Christians are also
saturated by the thought processes, the values, and the
worldview of our society. If it looks like a monkey, feels
like a monkey, smells like a monkey, and sounds like a monkey,
maybe it is a monkey! And so infiltration becomes cooptation.
The spy goes native. Kevin Costner went native in DANCING WITH
WOLVES. His character renounced his mission and became native.
Without endorsing his mission, we see that we actually became
an enemy of it. This is the ultimate danger of the Christian
who takes the culture plunge- renunciation of and inevitable
opposition to the original mission.
The via media, the middle way, proposes engagement without
compromise, infiltration without cooptation.
Tools, Not Rules
I'm not suggesting a superficial incursion into the popular
culture based on a set of rules I give you. It is a lot more
difficult than that. In fact, there will always be tension
living as Christians in the western world. My friend, who has
had some overseas mission experience, once suggested that it
is easier to live as a Christian on the mission field than in
North America. As a missionary, you have to make the decision
once to pass up the luxurious trappings of first world
society. You buy a ticket and leave, once and for all, the
outward temptations of commodities and commercialism and
comfort. Staying here to live and fight, you have to make that
decision of rejection many times every hour! This is not to
belittle the sacrifice and commitment of missionaries but to
recognize the different battle that we face in North America.
A Generation That Hears With Its Eyes And Thinks With Its
Feelings
"How do you communicate to a generation that hears with its
eyes and thinks with its feelings?" (Ravi Zacharias, "An
Ancient Message, Through Modern Means, To A Postmodern Mind,
1998).
The postmodern evangelistic playing field is a level one. A
culture that hears with its eyes and thinks with its feelings
is wide open to the phenomena associated with the Gospel. What
Christians read about shadows and handkerchiefs healing
people, what we see concerning New Testament signs and
wonders, what privilege we enjoy to hear God, all of these
things and more appeal to the postmodern appetite for the
experiential.
We are actually ahead of the game from a phenomenological
position in that Jesus can actually deliver on the goods.
While the world's technology can conjure up digital magic, as
evidenced in The Matrix/Lord of the Rings/Narnia trilogies,
and while New Age titillates the senses with malevolent
encounters, the reality and power of Jesus towers above them.
It is also level because of the lack of a consensual
authority. While this threatens the mindset of modern
Christians, it really is to our benefit in this new theatre of
war called postmodernism. Half a generation ago we battled to
replace a consensual authority with our alternative authority.
We tried to overthrow 'science' and 'reason' to set the Bible
in its rightful place (Ravi Zacharias, "An Ancient Message,
Through Modern Means, To A Postmodern Mind, 1998).
Our failure in this revolt was mitigated by the palpable
failure of 'science' and 'reason' to deliver on its promises,
relegating generations to despair. Even when the American
Dream was realized, it only furnished an empty framework, a
house of cards. G.K. Chesterton prophesied about our
generation when he suggested, "Meaninglessness does not come
from being weary of pain; meaninglessness comes from being
weary of pleasure" (money quote worth remembering).
And so while Christians failed to turn back the clock to the
pre-renaissance consensual authority of the Bible, we have
been given an opportunity to reach a disillusioned generation
hungry for exactly what Jesus can bring.
Now, even in my evangelizing, I've sensed the shift from
rational approaches to experiential models. Whereas in the
1980s and early 90s I scoured the university campus armed with
my Four Spiritual Laws and well-rehearsed Gospel apologetics,
these days, I am more inclined to walk the streets meeting
homeless people and drug addicts with whom I offer to pray
that God will demonstrate that He exists, that He cares for
them, and that He has the power to intervene in their lives.
The prevailing mindset has changed right under our noses.
And the leading source of significant influence in our society
today is not the church! Pollster George Barna reports that
research is revealing that the leading influencers in American
society are, "movies, television, the Internet, books, music,
public policy and law, and family. The Christian Church, his
research shows, is not among the top dozen influencers there
days- a far cry from the way things used to be" (Barna
Research, "Barna responds to Christianity Today Article,"
September 17, 2002).
A cursory glance at the history of the God at the Movies over
the last half-century is a depiction of the progression from
the literal to the figurative, from the narrow to the broad.
Most independents (those who do not yet depend on Jesus) in
the 1950s would be invited by zealous Christians, at least
that minority that attended movies back then, to see literal
portrayals of Christianity. The original blockbusters, THE TEN
COMMANDMENTS, BEN HUR, THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, and other
religious epics, were straight up. They told the story as you
could read it. Characters wore robes, spoke in vaguely
platitude-speak, and were pretty faithful to the text.
Within a decade some proto-postmodern evangelists were
inviting their independent friends to ON THE WATERFRONT and
COOL HAND LUKE to use the cultural windows of Brando and
Newman's messianic characters to reach truth. But most people
in that era were most impacted spiritually through films such
as QUO VADIS and KING OF KINGS. Generation X pointed away from
JESUS OF NAZARETH and JESUS to the Messiah embedded in the
spirituality of STAR WARS or PLANET OF THE APES. Those of the
Millennial Generation might choose SEVEN or THE MATRIX (Matt
McEver, "The rise and fall and rise of Movie Messiahs").
And this is all part of the transition from rationalism to
postmodernism. During this shift, society gained its religious
training not so much from Sunday School or Bible Study as from
television and the movies (see THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO TONY
SOPRANO). These media are the means by which most of the
population has learned vaguely to conceptualize God (Matt
McEver, "The rise and fall and rise of Movie Messiahs").
Rick Joyner, a recognized prophetic voice in North America,
has suggested that because the Church has been so slow to
listen to God through His Word, God has increasingly chosen to
speak through the movies. It could be partly due to the fact
that most Christians engage in more movie-watching than in
Bible-studying.
Another advantage of Christianity in this millennium-three war
is that one of the exposed desires in the postmodern heart is
belonging. Each of us has it. And each of us who are
Christians has fulfilled that desire.
Community
In our little corps, we are all about community. The emergence
of cell churches around the world marks the success of deeply
rooted relationships. That is one of the reasons I refer to
your pre-Christian friends as independents. The fundamental
distinctive about them is that they are disconnected with God
and so unconnected at a meaningful level with others. At an
existential, soul level, they are desperate, lonely
independents. Postmodern culture is peopled by independents
vainly searching for belonging.
The postmodern level playing field provides unprecedented
opportunity to engage the world through cultural windows.
This is not a new method. Jesus used it regularly. Not only
did He tell stories using the characters common in His day-
the farmer, the tax man, the religious man, the robber, the
Samaritan, the merchant, judge and widow- to teach eternal
truths. Metaphors "make the familiar strange"; they break open
"our structures of expectation" and "make us receptive to new
and fresh insights" (Leonard Sweet).
Jesus even used the news of the day to apply divine truth to
people's lives (for example, those guys who died under the
fallen tower). Throughout the years, great preachers have used
the common cultural capital to deliver the Gospel to hearers.
A century and more ago, the common cultural capital was
literature and poetry. And so you will read in the dusty old
sermon collections of Spurgeon and Moody and others multiple
references to books and poems in their preaching. That won't
work today.
Even quoting the best seller of the year will leave most of
your audience in the dark. You'd have to re-tell the tale to
most people with whom you converse. The common cultural
capital of our generation is movies (and to a lesser extent,
music). Movies transcend national boundaries. You can talk to
most anybody about the popular movies of the year and both of
you are on the same page.
We're about infiltrating the culture in an intentional manner.
So, instead of a list of rules to follow as we live in the
world, we want to provide you some tools to engage the world
through cultural windows.
Cultural Windows
It is through cultural windows that we can find common ground
with someone still living without Jesus. Cultural windows
generate shared experiences through which those in darkness
can peak or peer and see the light of the Kingdom of God.
Movies deal with issues of loss, hope, failure, ecstasy,
restoration, forgiveness, loyalty, companionship, love, doubt,
disbelief, loss, perseverance, and faith. And so they are
windows through which we can point to the Light.
Some things are up for grabs. For example, do we need to use
certain traditional, theological terms with independents? Must
we drop 'sanctification' on them, when 'fullness' or 'freedom'
will do? Must we meet on Sunday morning at a big church when
Saturday evening in my living room might be more inviting?
Must we thoughtlessly continue religious norms for the sake of
tradition? Of course not. We need to think about why we do
what we do. Why don't I drink (if you don't drink)? Why don't
I do drugs (if you don't)? Why don't I fornicate (if you
don't)? Why don't I support the pro-abortion position (if you
don't)? At least two things will happen when you ask these
kinds of questions.
One, you justify your lifestyle.
Now don't get me wrong. I didn't suggest that you would
rationalize it. But there is little noble to do the right
thing for the wrong reasons. For example, if you are against
abortion on demand, that is good. But if you are against
abortion on demand not because it kills an unborn baby but
because it costs the health care system a lot and it increases
the difficulties for the mother to carry a baby to full term
in the future, that isn't so noble. So, thinking it through
and asking questions helps you to do the right thing for the
right reason. Second, it frees you to shed obsolete
sub-cultural accretions that are proving to be obstacles to
you engaging the general culture.
Of course, this is the direction we're heading in this
post-modern age. Loyalty to organization is being replaced by
loyalty to relationship. In practical terms this means that my
colabourer in the Gospel in Adelaide and I may have more in
common than we individually do with some in our own divisions
because we share common mission. The fellowship is in the
fight. As we shed those oddities that make us different, we
get closer to the pure, unadulterated model of Christian that
will be attractive to independents. That is not to slam the
counter-cultural Christianity to which some are called. It is
to recognize that in different parts of the Body, different
body parts look and act differently. On different fronts, the
war in fought with different weapons, tactics, and strategies.
We're not selling a wholesale adoption of the world here. But
truth is truth, wherever it is found. And truth comes from
God. We're advocating a critical application of the truths we
find for the warfare in which we fight. A good warfighter will
use the natural lay of the land to her advantage. She will
note customs and practices, geographic landmarks and physical
realities, and passions and habits of her front, and adapt her
tactics to exploit them for her purposes. And so this
battleground that is the world is littered with stuff,
specifically with a common cultural capital, that we can adapt
and exploit for our Kingdom purposes.
I'm promoting aggressive engagement in the world. I'm not
inciting violence here. What I dream of is a generation of
Christians who don't blindly accept the subliminal inculcation
of the news, music, television, and movie media. As Francis
Schaeffer taught, "God is here and He is not silent." God is
around. God is in music. God is in television. God is in the
movies. God is in the meta-stories of our lives. And we need a
Christian worldview that frames our encounter of these things,
aggressively asking, 'Where's God?' and persistently looking
for cultural windows- shared emotions and common experiences-
through which to engage the world. The goal is global
revolution.
|
