All Dressed Up with Nothing To Say

We follow an incarnate Savior who ate with sinners and dialoged with intellectuals. The apostle Paul quotes Greek philosophers, Jude references non-canonical texts, and Proverbs gladly borrows wisdom from the Egyptians. As Augustine put it, "A person who is a good and true Christian should realize that truth belongs to his Lord, wherever it is found." What's more, the broader culture is not just a sphere from which to distill truths, but also a stage on which the gospel can be performed. We enter into the world as witnesses to Christ, taking every thought captive for his glory. We disciple nations and cultures; we stand before Caesar and witness for Christ.

I say all of this up front because I still very much believe in this calling. We are not only concerned with souls or individuals' internal lives. Christianity heralds a kingdom that right now presses against the gates of this world and will one day topple them. However, I can't help feeling like the shifting waters that carried me out of Christian isolationism have---for too many of the people who joined me in this exodus---overflowed the other bank.

Uncritically Missional

 

For example, I occasionally read "missional" publications, and for all their insistence on dialoging with culture, what I see mostly applauds it. I hear lectures about finding God in Sex and the City, horror movies, and mass-market hip-hop, but after having found God there no one seems to notice the sexual scars, splatter porn, and glorified thuggery. I try to have conversations about art or music or best-selling novels and discover that many Christian friends still cannot wrestle with them in a cruciform way. Put simply, we have lost our sense of cultural critique.

I understand that many of us are reacting to being told something that was once wrong is now okay. Teetotalers sometimes turn into drunks once they're allowed to have a pint or two. Many of us seem to have an angry little fundamentalist minister on our shoulders still chastising us for worldly pursuits, and we're doing everything possible to avoid considering he might be just a little bit right. The problem is, while a call for cultural engagement set us free from a moralistic avoidance mentality, cultural engagement has too easily been replaced by acculturation.

Put another way, Christians ought to be engaged with culture so we can challenge it, remake it, and---at times---bear prophetic witness against it. We, like our Savior, walk in the world as witnesses to a greater world to come. To be in it, but not of it. Instead, what started as putting on our suits to get in the door has turned into an attempt to blend into the crowd. We are all dressed up with nothing to say.  Continue at Eric Tonjes