16 minute read
I love Jesus but loathe most elements of Christian culture.
The reason is that Christian culture usually has little to do with following Jesus and when there is a direct connection it is often in direct conflict with The Way of Jesus. The more I study it the more I become convinced it’s more influenced by Screwtape than the Holy Spirit. Let’s be clear. This isn’t about discipleship or spiritual formation, but rather assimilation and enculturation.
Some may counter, “It’s seldom referred to quite that forthrightly, but assimilation and enculturation are essential parts of discipleship and spiritual formation within the Body of Christ.” Oh, really? I live in the Free State of Christian Texas. Somebody please tell me what this handgun fetish has to do with following Jesus, loving your enemy, and turning the other cheek.
Christian culture and the The Beatitudes aren’t friends.
By “Christian culture” I’m not referring to the explicit doctrinal beliefs like the Trinity or the formal rituals like Communion. I still affirm the Nicene Creed without caveat or equivocation. No, I’m talking about the post-conversion process of acquiring the implicit social norms and unstated cultural expectations that they always neglect to mention during their evangelistic spiels.
My soul is so sick and tired of this crap. Mahatma Gandhi famously said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” Gandhi said that from an etic (outsider’s) perspective. From an emic (insider’s) perspective, I would say Christian culture is a veneer of Christ-less Christianity that should be scurrilously labeled “Christian-ism.”
At times this aversion to Christian culture has almost been enough to drive me away from Jesus.
As a working definition, Wikipedia says, “Christian culture generally includes all the cultural practices which have developed around the religion of Christianity. There are variations in the application of Christian beliefs in different cultures and traditions.” Please note these key words: “which have developed around the religion.” Christian culture isn’t intrinsic to The Way of Jesus.
When referring to Christian culture, I mean it in an academic sense. I’m leaning heavily into the language and conceptions of cultural history and cultural anthropology. The focus is the Christian religion’s past and present defaults, expectations, mores, values, customs, etc. To give a snapshot of these dynamics, here’s a sample list of a good, round 51:
- Acceptable forms of violence,
- Accommodation to disabilities,
- Artistic expression,
- Authority frameworks,
- Behavioral taboos,
- Clothing and fashion standards,
- Communication models,
- Conceptual habits,
- Conflict management,
- Decision-making customs,
- Deference to regional sensibilities,
- Developmental stages,
- Dispositional preferences,
- Division of labor,
- Doctrinal notions,
- Ecological concerns,
- Economic values,
- Emotive expression,
- Epistemological beliefs,
- Financial agendas,
- Gender norms,
- Geo-political affiliations,
- Hermeneutical principles,
- Historical antagonisms,
- Household customs,
- Ideological commitments,
- Interpersonal power dynamics,
- Intellectual predilections,
- Kinship structures,
- Linguistic idiosyncrasies,
- Literary genres,
- Medicinal limitations,
- Metaphysical schemas,
- Moral culpability,
- Nutritional restrictions,
- Pedagogical systems,
- Performance of sacred rituals,
- Philosophical presuppositions,
- Political convictions,
- Racial assumptions,
- Relational boundaries,
- Rhetorical methods,
- Rites of passages,
- Role of precedents,
- Sexual ethics,
- Social etiquette,
- Socio-economic distinctions,
- Technological expectations,
- Treatment of sacred texts,
- Tribal loyalties, and
- Worship practices.
No doubt many discerning readers will wonder if I’m painting with too broad a brush. For example, do I have in mind Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant Christianity? Moreover, am I myopically projecting my experiences with late-20th and early-21st century American Christianity onto culturally and historically diverse Christian communities? Valid questions.
To address that concern, let’s go all the way back to the very beginning.
Without getting into all the technical theological complexities, I think it fair to say Pauline teaching in the New Testament presents the Christocentric faith of the emerging Jesus community as both the culmination and extension of Ancient Near Eastern Jewish people going all the way back to Abraham. Paul saw it as the faith of Moses, David, Elijah, and John the Baptist.
Put more succinctly, Paul presents Jesus as the fulfillment of Judaism. I have no qualms about that. Yet I defiantly reject seeing the Christian faith as the fulfillment of Pharisaicalism–the notoriously legalistic first century expression of Judaism–even though it was the dominant form of Judaism at the time. Its lingering influence is rebuked at every possible turn in Scripture.
The problem doesn’t end there, though.
To employ an agricultural metaphor, the infant Church grew out of the cultural-religious soil of the Ancient Near Eastern Pharisees and immediately grew towards the cultural-philosophical sunlight of Ancient Greco-Roman Platonists and Stoics. These influences and precedents were absorbed into Christian culture so early that people assume that’s the stuff of following Jesus.
The English, Christian historian Herbert Butterfield once wrote, “[T]he blindest of all blind are those who are unable to examine their own presuppositions, and blithely imagine therefore that they do not possess any.” This isn’t a puritanical call for some sort of untarnished strain of Christian spirituality but rather a call for self-conscious observation of influences.
All I’m saying is, let’s be mindful of our presuppositions.
While there may have been areas of conceptual alignment, I have no reason to believe Jesus of Nazareth subscribed to metaphysical Platonism nor ethical Stoicism. The same goes for Paul, Peter, John, James, Luke, and the rest of the New Testament writers. At the very least, it seems fair to say that following Jesus doesn’t require ascent to such ancient philosophical frameworks.
Having studied both Greco-Roman philosophies at-length, are there ways in which my intellectual and spiritual perspective is significantly influenced by both? Yup. No doubt about it. Both have insights of truth, beauty, and goodness that I think most all Jesus followers would be wise to glean. Would I self-identify as a Platonist or a Stoic, though? Absolutely not.
We need to decouple the Christian faith from Platonism and Stoicism.
I’ve long leaned in a Greg Boyd Open Theist direction that rejects platonic Classical Theism. More recently, however, I’ve become convinced the Jesus tradition offers a subversive alternative that neither aligns Jesus with Stoicism nor accepts the premise of the only options being pleasure-minimizing Stoicism vs. pleasure-maximizing Epicureanism. That’s a false dichotomy.
I believe in a third-way.
Remember Jesus’ first miracle? It’s not a Baptist-friendly story. At the wedding in Cana, Jesus transformed water into the the best Welch’s grape juice wine ever for people who were already thoroughly inebriated. Even if Jesus was himself an Ancient Near Eastern teetotaler, which is highly implausible, He certainly had no scruples about enabling others to have quite a good time.
Jesus was a contemporary of Seneca the Younger, but the two didn’t share the same philosophy. Jesus, as described in the New Testament Scriptures, defies ideological purity and the stereotypes of stock characters, so I wouldn’t deny there’s also evidence of some strong ascetic elements in His lifestyle as well, but our Jewish Messiah certainly wasn’t a Greek Stoic.
Christianity ≠ Stoicism.
It’s my firm conviction that early Christian culture’s entanglement with Greco-Roman philosophy was a gross mistake. This philosophical accommodation made ante-Nicene Christianity more culturally and intellectually palatable for evangelistic purposes within the Roman Empire, but it departed from Jesus and created many troubling cultural precedents that persist to this day.
One such unChrist-like cultural precedent is how the Church’s embrace of Stoicism formed their sexual ethics, which in turn warped interpretations of Scripture. You couldn’t possibly have an entire book of the Bible dedicated to the sheer celebration of erotic intimacy and passion as a natural part of human life, right? Nah, it’s got to be an analogy for Christ’s love for the Church.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Americans tend to be historically myopic, so American Christians are particularly oblivious to the role of cultural precedent. Why are Christians so uncomfortable discussing even basic matters of sex? Why do Christians in traditions as diverse as the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention struggle to deal with childhood sexual abuse scandals?
It all goes back to the embrace of pleasure-minimizing Stoicism. And that’s long before we get to Augustine’s 4th century shame complex that taught us sex isn’t a divinely intended blessing for human flourishing, but at best is not overtly sinful. (Gee, thanks.) Stoicism had already sexually sent Christian culture down the wrong track, then that tool took an everlasting dump on it.
Church history is worse off because of Augustine of Hippo‘s influence.
Alas, 800 years or so later Augustine fanboy Thomas Aquinas doubled-down on Western Christianity’s sex-negative Christian culture. Their influence is more obvious within Catholicism, but even among contemporary Protestants there’s this subtle notion that sexual pleasure must be linked with reproduction through an ever-present openness to life. Thus masturbation is a sin.
I fiercely disagree with that theological proposition. It seems to me Aquinas was blind to his presuppositions. He, and for that matter most Western thinkers prior to the 20th century, have tended to draw their natural law conclusions by focusing almost exclusively upon the anatomy of the penis, which as a sexual organ has dual purposes in both pleasure and procreation.
Talk about a total dick move.
That conclusion makes sense if you’re starting and ending the conversation with a male focus, but, unsurprisingly, female anatomy tells a wildly different story. The clitoris has no reproductive purpose whatsoever. It exists exclusively for sexual pleasure. Imagine how Aquinas’ reasoning might’ve gone differently if early Christians hadn’t regressed to patriarchal norms.
If we shift away from this Thomistic androcentric perspective to a well-rounded natural law view that takes into account both male and female anatomy, then our collective, complementary anatomy suggests pleasure may exist for its own sake. That is, it appears God designed humanity in such a way that procreation and pleasure are linked, yes, yet ultimately distinct.
Fascinating implications.
This view validates sexual practices that are purely for pleasure like oral sex. Cunnilingus and fellatio are poetically praised in Song of Songs yet are criticized by the Catholic Church, and makes a great many Protestants squirmish, because it may result in a non-genital to genital orgasm and, therefore, does not reflect an “openness to life.” Maaaaybe God isn’t a prude after all.
Anecdotally, I cannot begin to express the number of Christians who’ve confided in me about the severe sexual dysfunction in their marriages as a direct result of them absorbing these guilt and shame themes growing up. After being instructed to be functionally asexual and equate sex with sin, they’re supposed to instantaneously make a 180° turn the moment they say, “I do.”
It’s madness.
Follow the bread crumbs. Early Christian culture rejected the Pauline redemptive movement toward gender equality from Genesis 3:16 to Galatians 3:28, instead reverting to patriarchy as a result of the fall. Patriarchy gave us Augustine, Augustine led to Aquinas, and Aquinas inspired JPII’s A Theology of the Body and evangelical Protestantism’s Every Young Man’s Battle.
The worst part is that the overwhelming majority of Jesus followers are so blind to Christian culture’s process of tribal enculturation that they sincerely believe this garbage is actually just biblical Christianity. We keep building upon their earlier precedents generation after generation, then suddenly wonder how we ever got to the lunacy of movements like Purity Culture.
Adherence to Christian culture slowly but surely steers one away from Jesus.
It’s not only sex and gender norms. Take alcohol as another example. Since the 19th century Holiness Movement, large swaths of Christian culture (exported from the U.S.) have emphasized anti-alcohol biblical passages like Genesis 9:21 and Proverbs 20:1 while downplaying or altogether ignoring pro-alcohol passages such as Psalm 104:14-15 and 1 Timothy 5:23.
Extreme fundamentalist readings of Scripture struggle with the concept of moderation, but could it be that the biblical warnings against drunkenness are, in fact, referring less to singular instances of getting buzzed and/or wasted? Perhaps the ancient biblical wisdom is instead cautioning us about more something akin to what modern-day readers would call alcoholism?
“Everything in moderation, including moderation.” – Oscar Wilde
It’s even the way Christian culture forms our intellectual habits. Christians often get a bad wrap for being completely anti-intellectual. Nah, untrue. As Brian McLaren pointed out on Brian Kaylor‘s Dangerous Dogma podcast, what is actually going on is Christians are enculturated to think deeply, just in perpetual apologetic defense of what they already believe.
The heart and soul of the scientific method lies in humbly overturning one’s views as merited by new evidence. I see no reason whatsoever why this intellectual framework should be contrary to The Way of Jesus. To quote Galileo Galilei, “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
Ever notice how Christian culture bifurcates almost everything?
I’m no psychologist or sociologist, but in my experience there’s few demographics on earth who are more dualistic thinking than Christians. My sense is that most expressions of Christianity inculcate believers in an epistemologically and intellectually bankrupt worldview premised upon a logical fallacy: false dichotomy. Black and white simplicity is praised; nuance is condemned.
There’s no good reason this should be so. Richard Rohr has shown quite definitively that the Christian faith is non-dualistic in essence: the human condition reflects the image of God and the fall, Jesus is fully God and fully man, the Gospel must be both culturally immanent and culturally transcendent, etc. Yet Christian culture breaks most everything into binary options.
How’s about we slay another sacred cow?
“Forgive and forget” is cheap and hollow. So many Christians have (begrudgingly) apologized for sins committed against me that had devastating consequences upon my life, but seemed aghast when I’ve replied with something like, “I accept your apology and forgive you, but clearly you’re yet to repent. You haven’t lifted a finger to make things right. Actions must follow words.”
True repentance necessarily includes restorative justice. It requires doing whatever is possible to restore and make whole the person or situation like what Zacchaeus did in Luke 19, but in 37 years I’m yet to stumble upon a Christian tradition, or even a single church, that habitually practices that. Christian culture tells us to be content with mere apologies. Well, I’m not.
The same goes for the doctrine of grace.
It’s my understanding that in the original Greek charis is simply about God’s radiating presence of loving-kindness, goodwill, delight, affection, and joy toward His beloved children. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with it being undeserved, unearned, unmerited, or unwarranted. Yet Christian culture just keeps inserting that moral ledger of debts and credits.
Theologians, pastors, and laypersons continually harp on this, but I genuinely believe they’re profoundly misguided. Grace does not mean “God loves you despite your sins and shortcomings.” That raises the specter of the moral ledger over it all. Stop it. True biblical grace is more beautiful and simple. It ends that sentence after three words: “God loves you.” Full stop. That is grace.
Another example: lament.
Thankfully, there are some powerful counterexamples but on the whole Christians don’t do well with lament. Instead Christian culture prefers what Brené Brown calls “toxic positivity.” I prefer oppressive optimism, but whatever. The point is, Christian culture usually sucks at faithfully living with discomfort, injustice, and outrage. The Jewish tradition has us beat on this.
On Kate Bowler’s Everything Happens podcast, the present Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, remarked, “In most of our Western liturgical traditions… we have completely forgotten about [lament]. We don’t know how to do lament. We don’t know, liturgically, how to call out our intense anger at injustice and wrong, or even at God.” Here Christian culture again defies Jesus.
Next up: biblical genres.
One of the key reasons so many Christians poorly read and apply the Bible is Christian culture teaches almost nothing about hermeneutical principles, including interpreting a text according to its literary genre. Maybe my life experiences have skewed my perception, but it sure seems like just as often as not Christians are oblivious to the very existence of these genres.
Forget having compared The Epic of Gilgamesh or the Enūma Eliš with Genesis‘ creation accounts (plural), many Christians take it literally because they’re unaware of creation myths. Likewise, they read the biblical stories like David uncritically because they’re unaware of apology as a literary genre that defends, justifies, or clarifies a certain agenda using “alternative facts.”
Oh, but I’ve not yet gotten into the sacred rituals.
In cultural anthropology, religion means submission to–or worship of–a deity, various deities, or the supernatural whereas magic involves rituals used for manipulation or control. That distinction was a game-changer back in undergrad. In one fell swoop, it captured my conscience’s growing objections to my low-church, Prosperity Gospel, Pentecostal background.
The thing is, high-church Christianity is prone to the same magical impulse. I affirm the underlying theological benchmarks in most sacramental liturgies, but, let’s face it, way too often these rites get treated like incantations. It’s as though the presence and blessing of God can be summoned through specific words and sacred gestures, which is more Christian culture malarkey.
Christian culture also screws up family life.
Conservative New York Times columnist, David Brooks, boldly declared that the nuclear family was a mistake. Read the article. He’s absolutely right. It only worked for about 15 years in the socio-economic conditions immediately following WWII, but Focus on the Family and other Christian culture influencers still point to it as a timeless paragon of God’s intended social order.
As Brooks points out, since the 1960s the nuclear family model has only worked for upper middle class who can afford to hire considerable domestic help while the Christian culture’s insistence upon this kinship structure shames those of lesser economic means for not living up to this ludicrous, myopic social ideal. I know this is a uniquely American problem, but it still sucks.
Let’s not neglect the heresy of Christian nationalism.
1 Peter 2:9 says followers of Jesus are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession.” Our sole allegiance is to Christ and His eternal Kingdom alone, not to any temporal geo-political entity, party, movement, figure, or ideology. Giving our loyalty to the Roman Empire in 422 AD or the United States in 2022 is sheer idolatry. It’s anathema.
This one hits close to home. The Rolling Stone and the AP/PBS have recently published articles about my brother’s ascent in the unhinged world of populist conspiracy theories crossed with Christian nationalism at his nationwide ReAwaken America Tour. He’s out there peddling his unique form of ignorant, pious vitriol and much of Christian culture is eating it up. It’s disgusting.
What about truth?
Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, so I believe in truth. I also believe in civility. That means treating all people with basic human dignity even amidst the tension of relentless disagreement. This truth + civility third-way is seldom seen in Christian culture, though. Instead it’s these bipolar oscillations between the default superficial niceties or dehumanizing rants under duress.
One of my professors at Baylor‘s Truett Seminary commented, “The problem with brutally honest people is they’re usually more brutal than honest.” Ouch. That was a highly convicting insight that I’ve tried to earnestly take to heart. At the same time, I doubt I’ll ever be tolerant of the way Christian culture usually values propriety over truth and honesty.
Then there’s the empathy problem.
Has anyone else observed that Christian culture seldom values empathy and frequently scorns it as weakness/sin? I think of Henri Nouwen, Philip Yancey, and Mother Theresa as tremendous counterexamples, but these are the exceptions that prove the rule. A compassionate leader like Pope Francis is an anomaly who for that very reason is despised by the institutional types.
Joe Rigney serves as the president of Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis. Writing for John Piper‘s DesiringGod.org, he published a piece entitled, “The Enticing Sin of Empathy: How Satan Corrupts through Compassion.” Oh, but it’s not just the Western Christians. Have you seen the Russian Orthodox response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine? Seriously, WTF people?
Christian culture also gets reconciliation ass-backward.
A friend once opined, “We’ve been so conditioned to value cease-fires instead of peace that we no longer know what true peace really is.” It was an astute observation. Christian culture teaches us to pursue superficial détente, which is the mere absence of active conflict. That ain’t true peace. Détente inhibits genuine reconciliation in order to limit culpability and save face.
While détente is the passive absence of conflict, shalom is the active presence of truth, justice, love, and restoration. That’s the stuff of genuine Kingdom reconciliation. My problem is, I’m continually getting in trouble with clergy and laity who’ve been conditioned by Christian culture to accept half-ass détente as their preferred form of so-called “reconciliation.”
This pattern of objection to Christian culture applies to each and every area on that list of 51.
Some may object, “Let’s accept the premise that Christian culture has many faults, but are you seriously suggesting that assimilation to Christian culture as a whole leads people away from Jesus?” The short answer: Yes, the more I’ve studied Christian history, theology, and culture, the more I become convinced Christian culture assimilation runs contrary to actual discipleship.
The long answer adds a bit more nuance and texture: While I’m not saying it’s necessary to be a complete Christianophobe in order to faithfully follow Jesus, discernment is in order because the loyal Christianophile path certainly leads away from Jesus. All the things I’ve briefly touched upon here are just the tip of the iceberg. The rabbit hole keeps going deeper.
We now face nearly 2,000 years of interest accruing cultural poverty.
For my part, I have no trouble affirming the redemptive metanarrative of the Christian faith without affirming the defaults, expectations, mores, and values of Christian culture. I see Jesus pretty clearly in the skeletal structure while having deep reservations and/or conflicts about how following Jesus has been fleshed out by Christian culture.
Of course, numerous people I know have objected to this separation. This isn’t a quote verbatim, but one friend insisted that we can’t separate the doctrinal content of the Nicene Creed from the cultural-historical context of the community in which its concepts were conceived, written, and edited. Without getting into the nuances, for him the text and the culture are one in the same.
Suppose I don’t see things that way.
I responded, “Why not? We do this all the time. You despised the pious fundamentalist culture of Southern evangelicalism at the college where we met but immensely value the content of the education you got there, yes? You also affirm the theological content of the Nicene Creed yet detest the O.G. Roman version of Christian Nationalism that made it possible, right?”
If I can give another example without getting too far into the weeds, as a Jesus follower in the Anglican-Episcopalian tradition I affirm the principles of apostolic succession and episcopal oversight. These are important to me. However, that doesn’t imply one modicum of fondness for the culture of top-down spiritual authoritarianism that pervades most Christian culture.
I find that sort of all-or-nothing thinking to be utterly bizarre.
Most Christians agree that the Holy Spirit never abandons the Christian community. Yet it has been my observation that there is a watershed belief. Some are clearly inclined toward a pro-institution view that God largely accomplishes His purposes through the Church while others tend to believe an anti-institution view that God accomplishes His purposes despite the Church.
The former tend to be top-down institutional types like Orthodox, Catholic, and Anglican Christians. The latter tend to be bottom-up personal types like Anabaptists, Baptists, and contemporary non-denominational Christians. You can see how these perspectives play out in their church governance, conceptions of salvation, spiritual formation practices, and the like.
The thing is, I’m a mutt.
The Quaker theologian Elton Trueblood once wrote, “One of the best contributions which Christian thought can make to the thought of the world is the repetition that life is complex. It is part of the Christian understanding of reality that all simplistic answers to basic questions are bound to be false. Over and over, the answer is both-and rather than either-or.”
My take is both default variations of Christian culture have largely gotten it wrong. As a student of history and theology, it’s pretty much a self-evident truth to me that God’s purposes are somehow accomplished both through and despite the Church. With something like the Nicene Creed, I honestly think the Holy Spirit pushed that thing through in spite of the participants.
The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed brought incredible clarity and unity to the Church.
Not to be outdone by God, however, the Church still managed to retroactively split over it with the filioque controversy… Ugh. Assclowns… But, really, that’s my whole view of Christian culture. Even when there’s a major work of the Spirit afoot, we keep finding new and interesting ways to screw it up via Christian culture’s precedents. Yet even then God remains undeterred.
What I’ve concluded is Christian culture assimilation ironically often leads to numeric growth for the Church while leading people away from genuine discipleship in The Way of Jesus. I don’t have all the answers–I don’t know if I have any of the answers–but I do know my path forward is to pursue Jesus by consciously moving away from Christian culture as it has been handed down.
It’s the Christian culture of every denomination and tradition, too.
Yes, I feel that way about the Christian culture expressed in Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, pre-Reformational Moravianism, atavistic Protestantism, progressive Protestantism, Restorationism, contemporary non-denominationalism, and every expression of Christianity you can name. Specifics differ but the general problem is the same.
Once again, the problems go right back to the very beginning with the Pharisaical culture out of which the early Christian community began. In my opinion, the problem is not Jesus, the Bible, the episcopal governance of the ante-Nicene Church, or the basic skeletal structure laid out in creedal orthodoxy. The problem is the way Christian culture has fleshed out the faith.
Christian culture keeps moving further from Jesus.
On Peter Enns‘ podcast, The Bible for Normal People, he suggested that Christian culture is getting richer with time. I don’t disagree with Enns too often, but here my perception couldn’t be more the opposite. Based upon my extensive study of church history and historical theology, I’m seeing Christian culture getting more impoverished and further from Jesus over the centuries.
In other words, I would inverse the whole matter. Instead of perceiving some vices here and there but overall seeing Christian culture as an honorable, noble, and wise schema to be used as a foundation for discipleship, I readily acknowledge some virtues here and there but overall see Christian culture as a contemptible, foolish abomination that disciples of Christ need to reject.
It’s intellectually dishonest to dismiss all these as outliers instead of systemic problems.
Please understand I’m trying my best to be civil and measured, but, yeah, I’m pissed. For me the person of Jesus is the most important thing in the world. He is sacred, but each day I deal with people misunderstanding my words and misinterpreting my actions because of how Christian culture from the beginning has bastardized and weaponized the beautiful faith.
I can’t keep fighting these same uphill battles every single day of my life. Seriously, I can’t keep dealing with the core breakdown of communication that occurs whenever I say something like, “I’m a Christian.” I spend so much precious time and energy redefining that freakin’ word for people. They just cannot fathom it means something so radically different than they imagine.
Jesus is great, but Christian culture is bloody awful.
It is rigid where it should be flexible and flexible where it should be rigid. It is critical when it should be charitable and charitable when it should be critical. It stands up when it should sit down and sits down when it should stand up. For nearly 2,000 years, it has consistently zigged when it should zag and zagged when it should zig. Impressive, Screwtape. Most impressive.
It’s like that Seinfeld episode, “The Opposite.” To quote the modern sage, George Constanza, “It became very clear to me sitting out there today that every decision I’ve ever made, in my entire life, has been wrong. My life is the opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have, in every aspect of life… It’s all been wrong.” Yup. That’s pretty much my view of Christian culture.
Consider this the Festivus airing of grievances.
