The Case of the Christmas Billboard

I first saw this billboard commuting into the city.

I thought it was in poor taste in general, and shrugged it off. I try to not let such things upset me. As the weeks went by and I saw it out of the window each week, it struck me how ironic the billboard actually is. What truly is reasonable is that Christmas in our culture is a myth: one of consumerism, individualism, crushing debt, abundant waste, gluttony and materialism. Yet, of all the images they could have chosen: Christmas dinner, shopping malls, snowmen, jingle bells, Rudolph, or Santa Claus, which are all myths, they chose the image of the nativity along with the Magi. They had a plethora of myth to chose from and they chose to display on their billboard the entire Advent, Christmas and Epiphany stories.

In reality, once all the fluff and pageantry of Christmas is gone, when all the gingerbread men and silly songs are retired, and all the decorations packed back into the attic, there is one story that will never leave. It’s pesky. It drives into the narratives of our culture: the ones perpetuated by Christians and atheists alike. It is the gospel accounts, and all of their significance and symbolism. In the atheist group’s attempt to paint the Christmas story as myth they were still, ironically, forced to use the story itself. Whether they agree with it or not, they are helpless in their attempt to mythologize Christmas because of the fact that they are still relying on the very narrative they are trying to discount!

In the end, they really didn’t think this one through. And next year, if you want to put up a billboard, put a picture of shopping malls behind it. That’s a myth both Christians and atheists can agree to snuff out.

Intersection of Faith and Globalization with Miroslav Volf

On October 28th I had the opportunity to attend Miroslav Volf’s lecture in the Faith, Law and Culture speaker series at Seton Hall Law School, where good friend David Opderbeck teaches. Volf spoke on the intersection of faith and globalization, and what the religious ramifications of globalization are.

Volf argued that globalization has a purpose to promote human flourishing, something that all religions, in their truest sense, have in common. That being said, he noted that globalization has erased geography as a determiner of religion, bringing on the following questions:

What are the effects of a globalization that both pushes people together culturally while pulling them apart (economically and socially)?

Many different religions now inhabit a shrunken world. How do we learn to live together as geography is erased?

How then does religion promote violence and/or peace in a globalized world?

For Volf, globalization and religion find common ground in the quest for human flourishing. For Volf, the meaning of life and human flourishing are the most pressing issues today, and the removal of the meaning of life and human flourishing from academic and cultural dialogue is deeply disturbing. Volf navigates the intersection of faith and globalization by understanding religious exclusivity as necessary in a religious, not political, context. Within the political framework of pluralism, religion can be utilized as a proponent of human flourishing and social justice. This is what is seen in the American separation of church and state, something Volf admires. The love of neighbor and God is central to the world’s monotheistic religions, and this love needs to guide the political sphere’s political projects. Indeed, in Volf’s opinion, one of the greatest threats to our civilization is our culture’s refusal to discuss good living and human flourishing at all, something that has been brought on through academia’s refusal to discuss the meaning of life in the arts, sciences, or humanities.

All theologians’ and philosophers’ projects, for Volf, are centered around the shaping of desire. We will be better off as a culture/civilization if we quarrel about how to live rightly instead of refusing to talk about it. We need a robust discussion about human flourishing and how to live one’s life well. Human beings are born with the search for transcendence; therefore, both the commonalities and distinctions between religions should be acknowledged. The commonalities between religions is where Volf sees the most fertile ground for discussion, because the overlaps between religions are the framework for a common moral universe. An example: Muslims, Jews, and Christians believe in the same God; the same moral universe is set up for conversation.

In the intersection of globalization and religion, religion becomes dangerous when it becomes synonymous with identity, e.g. when it becomes a flag for someone. Religious voices need to be respected in the public sphere because market economics do not bring people together in solidarity. Religions go at each other when they are tied to political states or real estate; both equal a fight for political or geographical power, which is a recipe for conflict. Religions should not associate with political or geographical identities. Freedom of conscience is implicitly ascribed in Christianity and explicitly in Islam: the kind of choice that is part of today’s culture bends toward market shaped choices instead of the freedom to choose rightly. Religious faiths should preserve the quality of freedom of conscience against the market forces of capitalism (which are evident in seeker sensitive and prosperity gospel churches).

Further arguing his point, Volf elaborates that the separation of church and state should be viewed as impartiality and license for spiritual influences to bring on cultural transformation. Muslims, Christians, and other faiths should join together to fight experientialism and individualism in contemporary society. Religions should take on the project of replacing the pleasure principle and market-driven desire with a moral framework for good living and human flourishing. The major concern of globalization is not secularism then, but the quest for pleasure that is unrestrained by a moral framework. Freud has said that without repression there is no culture, so what repression do we need to make a better culture? Volf ends with arguing that the repression of the quest for pleasure is necessary.

Am I a Christian Hipster? Yes, but…

I finished Brett McCracken’s forthcoming book Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide a few days ago and decided to sit on it and let it steep for a few days. I needed some time to think about what Mr. McCracken was saying and whether I agreed with it or not.

Part of the problem is that I am a Christian hipster according to McCracken’s definition, so I am suspect to a certain bias. The book made me a little angry in parts when he seemed to just stick labels onto things I hold dear, like my infatuation with sport coats and my aesthetic sensibilities. As much as I don’t want to have the label “Christian hipster” placed on me I’m listening to LCD Soundsystem’s new album as I write this and, well, that pretty much makes me a hipster. And I have a blog that discusses worship, vocation, and liturgy, so that takes care of the Christian label. But do both of those combine to make me a Christian hipster?

Yes and no.  I am a Christian hipster in the sense that my worldview of Christianity acts as a lens for my hipsterness (I rolled my eyes at characterizing myself as having hipsterness, but McCracken forces me to, so just roll your eyes with me). But being a Christian hipster is so lame, like Christian movies, Christian music, and Christian comedy. And lameness is the antithesis of hipsterness. Can I go the artist’s route and just say “I am a hipster who happens to be a Christian?” I hope so.

McCracken did not write this book as a grand pontification. It’s well researched. Very well researched. I was amazed by the research. I had no idea the history of coolness and hipness that has influenced Western civilization since the Enlightenment. McCracken did his homework.

The problem I found with the book was that I came into what McCracken defines as “Christian hipsterness” through the back door so to speak, much like I became part of the emerging church conversation by reading James K.A. Smith and not Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt or Tony Jones. If you have to blame any one for my becoming a Christian hipster you should blame John Piper. You read that correctly: John Piper made me a Christian hipster.

I was inundated with the high arts as an honors student in college and within two years had developed a very high criticism of art. I belonged to the Francis Schaffer, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers and C.S. Lewis camp of seeing creativity and creation as the chief end of man. I was turning into a snob.

Then one of my roommates gave me Piper’s book The Dangerous Duty of Delight and it simply blew me away. I could still delight in the high arts (classical music, museum art, ballet, theatre, etc.) but Piper’s writing delicately chided me to realize that those who I looked up to as cultural critics relished the simple delights of life as part of the chief end of man. Not only did I need to read and critique at old epics like C.S. Lewis did, but I also needed to learn how to delight in drinking brandy and smoking a pipe until the wee hours of the night. Piper’s book put me on a path to delight in all things as God’s gift, and to champion excellence in art, food, furniture, music, literature and so on. If I was called to delight, I was going to delight in the good.

So I began to develop what McCracken labels hipster tendencies. I stopped listening to so much pop music and got into indie rock and alt country. I stopped liking any old movie and started watching classics. I began to want to cook more than tuna or chicken salad. I wanted to drink more than Rolling Rock or Heineken. I wanted to eat more brie and less cheddar.  I wanted to delight in the best. Not because it was cool, but because it was good to delight as part of our experiential worship of God.

McCracken admits this as much, and it is the second great strength of his book. He wants us all to think. Coolness and the counter-culture can become badges of honor and status symbols if we don’t think about them. McCracken did his research, delving deep into the theory of coolness, and what we find is so much of the blatant and pathetic commercialism and capitalism that hipsters are supposed to cringe at. The whole hipster system is stuck in the very system it’s supposed to be against.

And that’s why being a Christian hipster might not be such a bad thing at all. Being a Christian gives me the privilege of already being outside the system. I don’t need the world to tell me I’m cool, because I am a citizen of the kingdom first. The opportunity found in being a Christian hipster is that we have more than coolness at stake. Writers like Andy Crouch implore us to be culture makers as Christians, and that is a call worthy of any vocation: to not just critique, to not just be hip or with it, but to actually make culture. That’s the end that McCracken points toward as well. He wants those that can be defined as Christian hipsters to be of the thinking and doing kind and not of the following and trendy kind. We should be at the forefront of culture not to be cool but to be culture makers. So here’s to my Christian hipster status, and yours as well.

———–

Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide
Brett McCracken
Baker Books
$10.87 (Amazon)

How Kingship Really Feels

My wife and I were driving to go get some ice cream last night when we saw a bumper sticker that started a conversation about Christ’s role in our lives. The bumper sticker read: “Elect Christ as King of Your Life.” “How do you elect a king?” my wife asked….

The Hold Steady have a final song on one of their albums called “How A Resurrection Really Feels” about an in-breaking of spiritual resurrection during an Easter service when a strung out prostitute seeking forgiveness. She asks the priest if she can tell the congregation “How a resurrection really feels.” I think someone needs to start going around like this lady and telling congregations how kingship really feels, because it certainly doesn’t feel like an election.

That bumper sticker is a pithy statement for how we all too often think about Christ’s role in our lives, in our churches, in the world. Much of American Christianity bombards us with the idea that we need to choose Christ, like its an election. Hate to break it to you all but this isn’t and never will be an election. We don’t choose Christ like we choose a president. Quite frankly, we don’t have that option. With elections come term limits, impeachments, and voting out incumbents. You can’t elect a king. A king, like a diamond, is forever. We don’t make the choice. We’re stuck with it.

And we’re supposed to be stuck with it. We’re supposed to be stuck with a king. When Paul writes about Christ’s lordship over us it is not something you put on and off. He never talks about taking off the armor of Christ after you’ve put it on. We can’t undo Christ’s presence in our life like a disgruntled electorate during midterm elections, stamping on the incumbent so we can get some fresh blood we can turn on later into the senate chambers. This is not a kingship! A king is unable to be cast off. We cannot elect a king. We can only become citizens of his kingdom. It’s an in or out type of thing. There are no passports out of the kingdom of heaven. No ways to find a new king, for a king is replaced only when they die. And though we all may doubt it sometimes, our king lives forever. He has conquered death and sin. We cannot elect him to that role. He was chosen, and we must follow and obey as subjects. Because that’s how a kingship really feels.

The Cell and the Cubicle

I facilitated a discussion about acedia at small group this week.  One of the quotes we discussed was from John Cassian’s The Institutes, and I think it is very relevant for today:

[Acedia is] a wearied or anxious heart. It is akin to sadness and is the peculiar lot of solitaries and a particularly dangerous and frequent foe of those dwelling in the desert. . . . Once [acedia] has seized possession of a wretched mind it makes a person horrified at where he is, disgusted with his cell, and also disdainful and contemptuous of the brothers who live with him or at a slight distance, as being careless and unspiritual. Likewise it renders him slothful and immobile in the face of all the work to be done within the walls of his dwelling: It does not allow him to stay still in his cell or to devote any effort to reading.

I think this is relevant for today because like monastics, many of us are modern workers who dwell alone.  Not in cells praying and studying under a vow of silence mind you, but we have our own cell: we just happen to call it a cubicle. The modern workplace, with its cubicles and corner offices and communications technology, can be a place where things get done without personal, face-to-face interaction with our coworkers. We sit at our desk, toss around emails, call people, complete documents, e-fax, scan, copy, print, and type our way to a successful workday—all while never having to get up from our cubicle and talk to someone else.  We can even eat at our desks!

This can be a situation rife for acedia. I encourage you to read Cassian’s words above, but replace the word cell with cubicle or desk, and see how it speaks to you.

Do Christians Care About Oil?

Everyone has heard about the massive oil spill in Louisiana. We all hear the grim news each day and wonder what we can do. Finally, after seeing a headline of a saw controlled by a robotic submarine getting stuck in the pipeline in a futile attempt to finally corral this nightmare, I decided to look for Christian organizations that are going to help clean up this disaster, because the current organizations involved are not getting anything done.

I looked. I looked some more. I read World Vision, Samaritans Purse, and the Evangelical Environmental Network . There are things about trees, Christmas gifts, Haiti, Sudan and Nashville floods, but nothing about the oil spill.

So, do Christians really care about all that oil? Should we care?