This Reformation

I am part of a generation that has grown up with much scrutiny. Our music was louder than the previous generation, our dancing more disjointed and our thoughts were either crazy or ridiculous. Our generation, however never saw ourselves as something to be corrected. Rather, we have desired to do the correcting of everyone else.

We have grown up as witnesses to escalating divorce and suicide rates. We see these societal sins as directly correlating with the greed of society. People have increasingly wanted their “stuff” and wanted more of it. Then they have needed to work more to pay for that stuff. Finally relationships and life fall apart.

My generation has grown up knowing only one thing: that we don’t want to be like the previous generation. We have refused the mentoring of our elders and replaced them with books and movies. We have conversed with one another about our philosophies, but putting our philosophies into practice has lead to much depression and anxiety. We have been known to hurt others and ourselves as we have strived to do things on our own. Our parents have worried about us. They have tried everything from kicking us out of the house, to sending us some place to get help, to just letting us be and hoping we figure things out.

Though we have seemed and often felt lost for most of our lives, all of this has also led to Generation X being the first generation in 500 years to be so willing to re-think everything. And just like 500 years ago, this re-thinking has begun another reformation in the church.

Through out the modern era, we saw a continuous game of “bigger and better.” This striving not only dragged the church along with it, but sometimes, the church even took the lead. Amazing things were accomplished in this era. The Americas were discovered, railroads were built, as well as cars, planes and rockets. Buildings, bridges, and boats so beautiful and monstrous were created that we visit them like we visit national parks.

But, in this modern era of “bigger and better,” we have also seen the need to conquer. During the discovery of North America, we conquered the natives and killed them. In South America, instead of killing the natives, the first explorers enslaved them. 500 years later, the native people on both continents are still suffering and are still seen as the lowest form of human.

In North America, while conquering the natives, we were simultaneously conquering some of the natives in Africa. Instead of killing them, we stole them and made them our slaves for the purpose of profit. Our railroads were built primarily by Chinese immigrants who were lied to about a good life and good work in the west. They were treated like dogs and hated even worse.

Then as our country and military grew, we saw more benefit to conquering other lands. Soon, the Middle East became our primary interest. Here was a majority of the world’s oil. A strong military presence not only insured we’d have lots of oil, but that we’d have it cheap. Some people in the Middle East have begun to hate the American government more and more over the years because of this occupation. And they have now become organized enough to begin attacking us on our own land.

Today, though Christians did not take the lead in much of this conquering, we are the first to defend our nation’s acts and the last to apologize. And to make matters worse, the Christians who speak the loudest to the American public, still insist on trying to conquer others. They try to conquer with their morals, they try to conquer with their politics. Christians have spent so much time and effort trying to conquer in the name of Jesus, that less and less people want anything to do with Jesus. They feel judged and awkward around Christians and flat out scared of Christian leaders. No longer do the most oppressed and judged in our society run to Christians for help and support. Instead they run far from us, because we are the ones doing the judging and oppressing. What has happened to the message of Jesus?

However, in the midst of all this, there have always been Christians who have held tight to Jesus’ teachings. They have been able to show the beauty of the Gospel to others. They’ve communicated love instead of hatred. They have not defined people by the differences they have with them, but rather have sought to understand the differences.

These Christians for the first time in my life are beginning to speak out. They have seen that all this conquering is not only not helpful, but is in fact hurting the church and the message of the Gospel. These Generation X, post modern Christians are becoming pastors, writing books, and some even running for office. Those becoming pastors have been ridiculed for not preaching republican candidates from the pulpit or for not circulating political literature and petitions through their congregation. Those writing books are called pacifists because they talk of loving our enemies. Those running for office are quickly labeled as liberals and thus not even considered Christian.

But we are still fighting. Fighting to preserve the church from the elder bothers and the Pharisees. Just like the last reformation, this one has also begun with the leaders of the church needing to be rebuked for so willingly perverting the message of the Gospel. Those leaders and their followers reject this reformation by perverting our message. They say we are soft on sin and just want to sit around and bake cookies for the world. They say we don’t want to defend Christianity. But what they don’t realize is that we are defending Christianity, defending it from them.

They want so bad to defend Christianity from the sins of the prodigal son, that they forget condemnation is not what brought the prodigal son home, neither is it what welcomed him with open arms. And the elder brother, the one who kept all the rules and felt he was the most deserving was the one the father needed to correct. We must also not fail to notice, the father used “love” in dealing with both the prodigal son and the elder brother.

I hear this parable being preached differently by the religious right. I instead see Christian leaders painting a picture of the father and the elder brother standing together saying to the prodigal son: “I hope you learned your lesson. You are going to have to earn this back.” But the Gospel has always spread through weakness. Just look at Jesus’ birth and death. And still, God’s people act as if Jesus came as a militant king who whipped everyone into shape. Which ironically, is how the religious right of Jesus’ day thought the messiah would come.

What would Jesus say today about a Christian culture with so much focus on political power? What would he say about the Christian Defense League? A league of lawyers who aren’t just trying to ensure the rights of Christians, but seem to be working just as hard making sure other religions and life philosophies don’t have the same rights on our free country.

What would Jesus say about Christians who think they have it all figured out? So many of us no longer seek truth, but only the ability to spin facts to support our political leanings. The church is in need of reexamination and in need of being open to self criticism. But it appears we would rather defend the things we have done and said and are still doing and saying, then to think for one moment that non-believers’ observations of the church might be at all valid.

Here is an excerpt about Christians in the Greco-Roman world from Tim Keller’s book The Reason for God (p.20):

The Greco-Roman world’s religious views were open and seemingly tolerant--everyone had his or her own God. The practices of the culture were quite brutal, however. The Greco-Roman world was highly stratified economically, with a huge distance between the rich and the poor. By contrast, Christians insisted that there was only one true God, the dying Savior Jesus Christ. Their lives and practices were, however, remarkably welcoming to those that the culture marginalized. The early Christians mixed people from different races and classes in ways that seemed scandalous to those around them. The Greco-Roman world tended to despise the poor, but Christians gave generously no only to their own poor but to those of other faiths. In broader society, women had very low status, being subjected to high levels of female infanticide, forced marriages, and lack of economic equality. Christians afforded women much greater security and equality than had previously existed in the ancient classical world. During the terrible urban plagues of the first two centuries, Christians cared for all the sick and dying in the city, often at the cost of their lives.

If I were to read this to a non-Christian today and told them this is what a Christian looks like, I wonder what their response would be.