Okay, I’m going to do something now that may not work, may be a complete waste of time—yours and mine.
But, here goes anyway!
Please (don’t make me beg!) go to http://www.harpers.org/ as soon as possible. Or, pick up a copy of Harper’s Magazine from a newsstand today.
Read the August 2005 article by Bill McKibben—The Christian Paradox: How a Faithful Nation Gets Jesus Wrong (pages 31ff).
In my view, McKibben, a self-described Christian environmentalist, sums up the current challenge facing Christians today in the United States.
He also completely and properly reframes an understanding of the culture war raging around us.
Read it.
Let me know what you think!
9 comments:
Thanks for pointing us to this article, Larry. Perhaps we all knew its point, but to see it made so clearly is a bit disturbing. I will be sharing it with my Bible class on Sunday as we discuss our missional posture toward the poor.
I realize that the author is a Christian, but sometimes it seems the mainstream media "gets it" better than most Christians. The rutty, knotted plank in our collective eye must be pretty noticeable, huh?
The article online is just an excerpt, but it's here.
McKibben says some reasonable things, but I'm not noticing anything that other people haven't been saying for quite a while now.
The question, I think, is not, "does America behave like a Christian nation?" The question, instead, is, "how do we convince American Christians to start behaving like Christians?".
An alternative question might be, "how do we convince Americans to stop calling themselves Christans?"
The article reminds me of Ronald Sider's "The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience" and of Philip Kenneson's "Life on the Vine." My prayer is that these types of works will imagine new forms of American Christianity which might better reflect the heart of the gospel.
Christian Paradox? Let's use a better word that Jesus once uttered to the powers ... perhaps Christian Hypocrites?
The article makes plain the serious shortcomings of US religion today. Add it to the pile of evidence.
So, what do we do about it? Do we try to go through the slow and painful processes of trying to reform the churches we belong to, or do we reimagine what Christ's church should be? The short answer is...I don't know. But the answer should be something. If we acknowledge the obvious truths around us and do nothing, we're more culpable than much of the hypocracy we rail against (myself included).
To convince people what they need to be doing, we need to show them. I imagine most of the readers for this blog are already involved, but if we took the time we spend talking about this and headed out to help people, it would benefit them as well as inevitably come up in conversations with fellow Christians. I'm not throwing stones - I need to do it as much as anyone.
And, Larry, of course, I'm not labeling your blog as such an effort - we are incredibly inspired by your words, ideas, and experiences. I hope to have enough experience to similarly help others one day.
We should stop calling ourselves Christians... I'm thinking maybe we just say we belong to "the way"? Or better yet as a body of believers we could just follow Christ with our whole lives and let the world we impact (whether or not - to them - we are an aroma of life, or the stinch of death) give us a name. Something tells me they're already doing that anyway.
Incredible article. I am greatly looking forward to my new subscription.
Thank you, Larry, for continuing to remind us of the true message of Christ.
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