The Intersection of Faith and Culture
What does the Bible say [about predatory friends]?
Someone who joyfully pursues Christ has good, discernible fruit. Someone who consistently harms people, although they use all the correct Christian language and attend church like the rest of us, does not produce good fruit. Maybe it’s time we stop giving people who say all the right words a hall pass for predatory behavior. Instead, let’s be cautious when we meet someone with big words accompanied by bad actions.
Getting to the theatre, I expected to be entertained by the antics of first-time parents and troubled kids portrayed on screen. I was pleasantly surprised to find that “Instant Family” is substantially more than that; it’s a realistic look at the foster care community made by people who clearly have first-hand experience, and a story full of reminders of why investing in fostering or adoption is a worthwhile adventure.
I used to look away. I used to see the pain and avert my gaze. But not anymore. Now when I see a difficult image of a child impacted by terror, I take it in. I allow myself to feel the emotions. I often cry, or sit in breathless sadness, or grit my teeth in anger. When I allow myself to do that, it does a work in me that is hard to explain.
In our lonely, distracted age, people are longing to be seen and heard.
In response to this, words like authenticity or transparency have become buzzwords for churches across the West. They rightly strive to foster more authentic relationships or to be more transparent with their practices, but unfortunately, believers have also learned to fake it. We developed ways to use just enough honesty and still maintain control. If we ever want real authenticity, real transparency, we must step beyond our comfort zones, and we can learn how to do this (and how not to) through an unlikely ally: Standup Comedy.
While both sides have their narrow-minded, acrimonious crusaders, this debate is usually between people with good hearts. Faithful followers of Jesus who hold progressive views on same-sex matters are motivated by compassion and an admirable desire for fairness (often referred to as “justice”). They are compelled by a passion for equal and nondiscriminatory treatment of everyone. I know stories of people whose watershed moments came while facing the awful reality of racial discrimination and who want to be sure we do not make the sinful mistake of discriminating against same-sex attracted people.
Whatever the earthly future holds for the church and human culture, evangelicalism and modernity will be carried into it. Whatever postmodernity and post-evangelicalism are, they are because of modernity. And despite shifts in style, the substance of both evangelicalism and modernity are very much with us still.