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Published by
OrthodoxyToday.org,
August 11, 2005
Christian Culture Redux
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John
Kapsalis
Keep the Faith...The Origin
of Species...Desperate Housewives...Reality
TV...Left Behind...CyberSex...Miracle
Crusades...The Da Vinci Code...Casino...The
Prayer of Jabez...All of this, all of this could
be yours...
In Douglas Coupland's, Life
After God, he correctly observes how the
Generation X is the first to be raised without
religion. Culture, even in its schizophrenic
breakdown, has replaced man's space for God. Yet
today's culture is driven by the vice-grip of
consumerism and entertainment. Like the daily
schlock of marketing ads that assail us,
contemporary culture is fleeting, plastic, and
dehumanizing. Even religion is Disney-fied to
please everyone and transform no one. There has
been a tectonic shift in our culture that mimics
so much of everything else in our society. We
want it cheap, fast, and super-sized. Substance
is as lasting as our need to experiment with the
latest Yoga technique. As a result, our culture
has become confused and impoverished. Pope John
Paul II described our culture as the "culture of
death," devoid of any humanity. I believe we are
now on the fast track to becoming a "culture of
evil," devoid of any sanctity. A steady staple
of heinous crimes and rapacious sexual acts,
intermingled with unrelenting hedonism is what
defines contemporary culture.
Malcolm Muggeridge, in his
classic book Christ and the Media, commented
that television is "becoming the greatest
fabricator and conveyor of fantasy that has ever
existed.... It is almost invariably eros rather
than agape that provides all the excitement;
celebrity and success rather than a broken and
contrite heart that are held up as being
permanently desirable; Jesus Christ in lights on
Broadway rather that Jesus Christ on the cross
who gets a folk hero's billing.... The
transposition of good and evil in the world of
fantasy created by the media leaves us with no
sense of any moral order in the universe, and
without this, no order whatsoever, social,
political, economic or any other is ultimately
attainable." The tailspin toward our own Sodom
will, at last, lead us to self-destruction.
Christian culture has failed
miserably to pickup the shattered pieces of
post-modern man. Gone is a sense of duty for
cultural stewardship. Either we're rejecting
culture or being swallowed up by it. What we are
not doing is transforming it, because the
contemporary Christian is hanging onto this
world for dear life. Like Lot in the days of
Sodom, we have become of no benefit to the
world. Though greatly distressed at the societal
depravity, Lot never boldly proclaimed an
alternative. Sodom's culture had such a profound
influence on Lot and his family that his own
wife could not detach herself from it.
Today, we absorb the
violence, immodesty, and sexual decadence of
contemporary culture so casually we can't even
recognize it's desecrating effect on our lives.
Though grievously troubled by the pornographic
and vile nature of fashion and movies, magazines
and books, and songs and dance, we too seem to
have become captivated with our culture. We are
"hesitating" like Lot did, refusing to give up
our quiet, comfortable lifestyle to exert the
sacrifice, money and work required to redeem the
destructive and tragic character of modern
culture. We have become modern day Demas' (2
Timothy 4:9), lovers of this present world and
deserters of the truth.
As a result, a disconnection
between the Biblical message and our lifestyle
has emerged. Christian culture is ephemeral
because it is no longer incarnational. The
culture embodies the lifestyle, but the
lifestyle does not embody the message. Faith too
has become so nakedly and shamelessly
commercialized and gaudy it is no wonder people
are shying away. Christian culture merely
mirrors its secular counterpart. Even a trip to
a monastic community will yield its requisite
bazaar-type cornucopia of decorative plates,
cookbooks, greeting cards and icon mugs. Lost is
the culture of prayer, silence, and ministry.
We are the consummate
narcissists hungry for the instant gratification
of feel-good religion. God is only good so long
as He conforms to our image and serves as our
genie, granting us the health, wealth and
comfort we demand. Social historian Dr. Stan
Mattson reminds us "There was a time when vital
Christian faith and a passionate love for
learning and the arts were viewed as being
wholly compatible. In stark contrast, Christians
now find themselves largely isolated from the
cultural mainstream and hard-pressed to
envision, let alone fulfill, any meaningful role
within a society that increasingly presses for
the privatization of faith. The consequences
have been devastating not only for Christian
scholars and artists, but equally important, for
all Christians and Society."
If Church attendance
throughout the western world is hemorrhaging it
is because the Church has ceased being a
counter-culture. She no longer vigorously
engages culture in the radically transforming
way of the New Testament, and as a result, the
Church stopped trying to share some of the
Kingdom come, now and here. In The Princeton
Theological Review, almost a century ago, J.
Gresham Machen lamented, "the Church is puzzled
by the world's indifference. She is trying to
overcome it by adapting her message to the
fashions of the day. But if, instead, before the
conflict, she would descend into the secret
place of meditation, if by the clear light of
the gospel she would seek an answer not merely
to the questions of the hour but, first of all,
to the eternal problems of the spiritual world,
then perhaps, by God's grace, through His good
Spirit, in His good time, she might issue forth
once more with power, and an age of doubt might
be followed by the dawn of an era of faith."
Christians need to return to
their foreigner status among the world (1 Peter
1:1). We are sojourners in a foreign land sent
to transform it, not fall in love with it. Our
calling is not one of inertia or of personalized
private faith. When we stop living like carbon
copies of the world and set our whole lives
apart from its ways, then our influence and our
culture will act as salt for the world,
preserving it from its rotting nature. C. S
Lewis, in Mere Christianity, suggests that a
"Christian society is not going to arrive until
most of us really want it: and we are not going
to want it until we become fully Christian."
We need to be more like
Daniel and his three friends. Though immersed in
the pagan culture of ancient Babylon, Daniel
"made up his mind" not to take part. Because
Daniel stayed close to God and His commandments,
he was a visibly different influence on the
king. Father Alexander Elchaninov writes, "our
young people today make a great mistake in
thinking that Christianity is a system of
philosophy.... No, Christianity is life." Only
when we fully comprehend what it means to be a
Christian can we share the truth to others. Only
when we anxiously anticipate the glorious hope
of life eternal will our light shine
differently. And only when we live in obedience
will a radically different culture emerge. At
last all things will be made new.
John Kapsalis has an M.T.S from Holy
Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology.
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