Lionhead introduces us to their Project Natal-enabled interactive character named Milo. This demo is from E3 2009.

and

“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but through me.”

This is a beautiful verse. I have used it more times than I can count in the past two years to talk about truth. Jesus is The Truth. There is none greater. To think of truth in any other way is to think of a lesser truth. The writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus was the highest revelation of God. Truth is found in Christ and through Christ. And it is only found through relationship. Truth is not a proposition, but a relationship. How else do you get to know Truth, Christ, except to be in relationship with Him?

While I enjoy the Truth, I had not spend time on the Way until I read Eugene Peterson’s book,The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus Is the Way, in 2007. The book is a conversation on how people go about following the way of Jesus (1) It peaked my thoughts and pricked my heart. I found myself falling in love with the Way in a new way.

The way Jesus loves and interacts with the world is personal. It is the incarnation. Flesh and blood. Relational. Particular. Local.

The ways of our Western culture are quite the opposite. It focuses on programs, organizations, and detachment. It honors numbers over names, ideologies over ideas, and abstraction over interaction. (2)

Unfortunately, so many who have embraced the Way and wish to follow the Way have given themselves over to the culture’s way of doing things. The way of Jesus is not a supplement; it is the highest expression of life. To live any other way is to live a lesser life. Just as Jesus is the highest expression of the Truth, He is also the highest expression of the Way. Again, the interaction with the way requires relationship. To fill it with anything else is to at best weaken the Way and at worst abandon the Way.

Culturally, we have moved into the realm of consumeristic capitalism where life is about transactions of devoid of personal interaction. According to Benjamin Barber, there was a time when “a productivistict capitalism prospered by meeting the real needs of real people…Today, however, consumerist capitalism profits only when it can address those whose essential needs have already been satisfied but who have the means to assuage ‘new’ and invented needs…” (3) America has become the most consumer-oriented society in the world according to Juliet B. Schor. (4) Is it any wonder, then, that when 9/11 happened, and President Bush was looking for a metaphor to help us gain a sense of normalcy, he focused on shopping? (5)

This move towards consumerism is a move that results from the loss of our identity and the filling of our felt needs with transactions. Even our most intimate moments relationally, have culturally moved from intimate times of oneness to sexual transactions. We are filling our lives with transactions while our real needs, our deepest needs of emotional health and wholeness are hidden behind a credit card payment.

The transition from the Jesus way to the culture’s way has become the “get me stuff to bring me short-term comfort and keep me from addressing the real needs” way. That is the Western way.

Now the great American invention now has turned the church into a similar consumer enterprise. We have embraced culture’s way, not the Jesus Way.

We Americans have developed a culture of acquisition, an economy that is dependent on wanting more and requiring more. It is about getting our needs met. As a result, we have a huge advertising industry designed to stir up appetites and needs we didn’t even know we had. We are insatiable.

It didn’t take long for some of Christian to develop a way to meet those needs. In doing so, they created consumer-oriented congregations. If we have a nation of consumers, obviously the quickest and more effective way to get them into our congregations is to identify what they want and offer it to them, satisfy their felt needs and recast the gospel in consumer terms: entertainment, satisfaction, excitement, adventure, problem-solving are some examples. This is the language we Americans grew up on. It is the language we understand. We are the world’s champion consumers so why shouldn’t we have state-of-the-art consumer churches? (6) Church now is about getting my needs met and having a non-boring experience.

Alan Hirsch, in Forgotten Ways, The: Reactivating the Missional Church, argues a similar point. He states,

In the modern and postmodern situation, the church is forced into the role of being little more than a vendor of religious goods and services. And the end-users of the church’s services (namely, us) easily slip into the role of discerning individualistic consumers, devouring the religious goods and services offered by the latest and best vendor. Worship, rather than being entertaining through creatively engaging the hearts and minds of the hearers, now becomes mere entertainment that aims at giving the participants transcendent emotional highs, much like the role of the “feelies” in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where people to the movies merely to get a buzz.

Church growth exponents have explicitly taught us how to market and tailor the product to suit target audiences. They told us to mimic the shopping mall, apply it to church, and create a one-stop shopping experience catering to our every need. In this they were sincere and well intentioned, but they must have been also totally ignorant of the ramifications of their counsel – because in the end the medium has so easily overwhelmed the message. (7)

He goes on to say:

Speaking to the insecurity of the human situation, it was Jesus who said “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But first seek his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things well be given to you as well” (Matt. 6:31-33, emphasis mine). Consumerism is thoroughly pagan. Pagans run after these things. (8)

The way of church is as important as who is behind the church.

In the wilderness setting of Matthew 4, we find the enemy trying to divert Jesus not from the end (or goal) but the way. Satan is not concerned with the end, because the end is not important if the way isn’t followed. In fact, the end is different if the way is not followed. Therefore, he attempts to keep Jesus from following God’s way.

His first temptation is to turn stones into bread. Jesus is hungry and Satan attempts to get Jesus to feed his own need. He urges Jesus to turn the creation into a commodity (stones to bread) and do something productive with it. The idea was that once he meet his own needs, he could then meet the needs of others in the same manner.

The temptation he uses for us it to do the same. We can follow Jesus but use Jesus to meet needs; our own first and then the needs of others. The temptation is “to deal with myself and others first and foremost as consumers. It is the temptation to define life in consumer terms and then devise plans and programs to accomplish them ‘in Jesus’ name.”. (9) We think people need to be entertained so they won’t be in a bored worship gathering so we meet that need by creating a production that rivals many rock concerts. We hope that the show will meet their need for entertainment and when that need is met they can hear Gospel. Or there is a program and organization for every member of the family so they get entertaining environments with good productions so that their needs are met and they can then hear the Gospel. Which leads us into the second temptation.

The second temptation was to jump off the roof of the temple. “The devil wants to use Jesus to dazzle the crowds of people on the street below with a miracle, to put a little excitement into their dull lives. ‘Jump, Jesus – these people will never forget it; it will change their lives…The temptation is to embark on a circus career in miracles. And what could be better than a career in God-miracles, religious miracles, entertaining crowds, supplying ecstasy on demand.” (10) Our temptation is to use Jesus as a commodity for weekend diversions. It is not a relational experience. It is a religious diversion that, for most, is in effect a transaction.

The third temptation was ruling the world. “The devil wants to use Jesus to run the world, take charge of the world…But of course it would have to be in the devil’s terms, a rule conditioned by the unholy if – ‘if you fall down and worship me.’ The devil’s way would necessarily be an imposed, impersonal way. The devil’s way would be absolutely perfect in its functions, but with no personal relations.” (11) The devil, according to Peterson, wants us to use Jesus to run our families, our neighborhoods, our schools and governments efficiently. But there is no love or forgiveness. It is the only way to have a just, peaceful, and prosperous government. Letting people have a voice will just cause problems. (12) So we use the words of Jesus to develop a smooth running organization devoid of the personal touch and spiritual investment. It is a way to achieve our goals of a growing (numerically) organization thinking we are doing great things for God.

What does this consumerism do to the church in America? Large churches are growing, medium-size churches are declining, and smaller churches are struggling. The larger a church grows, the smaller the kingdom grows, because in America, those larger churches are pulling from the smaller churches who cannot offer the same goods and services as the larger churches. The religious consumer, wanting the needs of their family met heads off to the big church where they are busy with activity and have entertainment for all ages. The smaller church suffers, to the point of having to shut down because it cannot sustain itself.

The churches who are surviving are trying to put together the right programs and activities that will attract those religious consumers. They are spending time, money and other resources on buildings and productions so that people will enjoy (or be entertained) by the show that is put on in the church.

But is this real success? The Jesus goal cannot be achieved unless the Jesus way is followed. The end does not justify the means. God’s goal is that we become like Him, conformed to His image and the image of His Son Jesus. The goal is not heaven, the goal is Cruciformity, or conformity to the Cross of Jesus. It happens through Faith, which for Paul was a “total response to obedience to the gospel (Rom 1:5;16:26). It is also…a death experience in which one enters into the experience of Jesus’ crucifixion.” (13) The Jesus Way is a process where God seeks to re-shape and re-form that person into his or her original identity, and to re-fill that person with His original purpose of relationship with God. In embracing the gospel of Christ, a person embarks on a journey out of brokenness and into wholeness that will only be complete as God works to restore all of creation. (14) The Jesus Way does not have as its goal the creation of people looking to have their own needs met. Why then perpetuate the climate of the consumer church in an attempt to see people conformed into the image of God?

Success then is not following the consuming way, but the Jesus way. Maybe our measure of success should be an expression of people being conformed to the image of Christ, obeying the Gospel, and living the crucified life that is an expression of Faith.

Notes

1. The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus Is the Way, 1

2. Ibid.

3. Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, 9

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid, 41.

6. The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus Is the Way, 6.

7. Forgotten Ways, The: Reactivating the Missional Church, 110.

8. Ibid.

9. The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus Is the Way, 30-31.

10. Ibid, 31.

11. Ibid, 33.

12. Ibid.

13. Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology, 80.

14. The Doctrine of Humanity (Contours of Christian Theology), 50.

Why is East Asia more conservative?

“One of the major problems in most societies…is the fact that people observe correlations of attitudes & beliefs, and infer from those necessary relations.” What an opening sentence! We do that don’t we? We observe people, find out an important aspect of their belief system, and immediately categorize them according someone’s correlation theories. Suppose I said that I stated on this blog that I believed in macro evolution, the belief that one species can evolve until such time as a new species is formed, i.e., a horse becomes a cow. (I don’t believe this by the way.) Based on that statement, a whole set of associations, correlations, and categorizations begin to occur in your brain. For a particular group of people, I am now someone who denies the authority of scripture, see Genesis 1-11 as metaphorical or fiction, not true. Some might say that I would embrace homosexuality, endorse women as senior pastors and deny the virgin birth of Jesus. All because I stated that I believe in macro evolution. Is that a fair correlation?

We in the West have generally associated atheism with liberalism. I have to wonder if that is why we who claim to follow Christ fight so hard for maintaining the belief that America is a Christian nation, that our founders were Godly men, and our culture to be based on Judeo-Christian principles. We are fearfully concerned that the increase in atheism will lead to a total and complete social liberal agenda.

However, could it be that there are societies which are both far more secular than the United States, and more socially conservative? Is that even possible? According to the World Values Survey, it could just be. It appears that East Asia is more secular than the US and yet on social matters, it is more socially and fiscally conservative than us. A recent post by Razib Khan, a socially conservative atheist notes this.

I think it may be interesting to note something I heard Bob Roberts say at a conference in California in 2007. He said that there is such thing as a postmodern world. However, there is a postmodern West. According to Bob, who has spent years in East Asia and the Middle East, postmodernity is not an issue in these areas. Primarily, I think one of the reasons is because they have yet to go through modernity. They are still mystics, not relying solely on the modern scientific method to account for every aspect of life. They still believe in the spiritual. They still have faith. Their worldview does not revolve around the propositional but the relational.

In fact, another extrapolation of data from that same survey gives us the glimpse that those nations coming out of communism, which had a heavy emphasis on the non-existence of God, actually are less inclined toward the liberal socialism that appears to be growing in Western Europe and the United States. “In China atheists are actually some more hostile to the precepts of godless Communism than the religious..it was curious that Chinese atheists are probably among the segments of the world population most likely to appreciate the non-zero sum power of capitalism and economic growth.”

In the US, however, where the emphasis is on scientific and propositionally-based truth is great, atheists in America are about five times more likely to be extremely liberal than theists. I will follow this up in a future post.

What do you see as some of the reasons that Eastern cultures are more socially and fiscally conservative than many of the more Western cultures? In addition, how does that impact how we deal with the philosophical expressions of modernity and postmodernity as well as the religious embrace of either a modern or postmodern viewpoint?

Jonathan Sacks, a British Rabbi, notes:

To integrate, there must be something to integrate into. To become socializd, there must be such a thing as society, a proposition some politicians have famously denied. Nations are constituted by, among other things, a shared moral code. But liberalism in its modern guises, and still more in its postmodern ones, denies that there is such a thing as a shared moral code. It argues, instead, that we should be maximally free to do our own thing, live our own lifestyle, refuse to conform. What then becomes of the idea of belonging? The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society, pg 5

John F. Kenneday

The individuation of society, the plea of liberal, social politics, has led to the fracturing of society. John F Kennedy’s famous speech: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country,” has been transformed into “My country needs to take care of me, my family, and my job.” What once was about country is now about me or my unique indivuated group. And it is destroying the sense of belonging.

In 1995, Robert Putnam wrote a journal article entitled Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital (Journal of Democracy, January 1995, Volume 6, Number 1). He later expanded this into a book entitled Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.

In the book, he argued that civil society was breaking down as Americans became more disconnected from their families, neighbors, communities, and the republic itself. The organizations that gave life to democracy were fraying. Bowling became his driving metaphor. Years ago, he wrote, thousands of people belonged to bowling leagues. Today, however, they’re more likely to bowl alone:

Television, two-career families, suburban sprawl, generational changes in values—these and other changes in American society have meant that fewer and fewer of us find that the League of Women Voters, or the United Way, or the Shriners, or the monthly bridge club, or even a Sunday picnic with friends fits the way we have come to live. Our growing social-capital deficit threatens educational performance, safe neighborhoods, equitable tax collection, democratic responsiveness, everyday honesty, and even our health and happiness.

This was confirmed by a 2006 study for American Sociological Review. According to a report in USAToday:

Americans have a third fewer close friends and confidants than just two decades ago — a sign that people may be living lonelier, more isolated lives than in the past.

In 1985, the average American had three people in whom to confide matters that were important to them, says a study in today’s American Sociological Review. In 2004, that number dropped to two, and one in four had no close confidants at all.

All of this started around the late 1950’s, early 1960’s in the United States, around the time liberalism began to take root in USAmerican society. However, it is not limited to the US. It’s impact has now been shown in Britain.

Research commissioned for the BBC found that UK society is a far lonelier one over the last 30 years (1971-2001), noting that “neighbourhoods in every part of the UK have become more socially fragmented.”

Daniel Dorling (at Sheffield Univ.) headed the research team which created a formula based on “the proportion of people in an area who are single, those who live alone, the numbers in private rented accommodation and those who have lived there for less than a year….The higher the proportion of people in those categories, the less rooted the community, according to social scientists. They refer to it as the level of ‘anomie’ or the ‘feeling of not belonging’.”

Using these measures they found that the weakest communities in 1971 were stronger than the strongest communities in 2001.  An astonishing 97% of neighborhoods had experienced this increased isolation over these 30 years.

“The researchers conclude that the increase in anomie weakens the “social glue” of communities. The result, they suggest, is that neighbourhoods are likely to be less trusting and more fearful.” (See the BBC report here and the whole study here as a pdf)

The conclusions of Sacks must not be ignored. Liberalism is destroying the sense of community, society, and belonging. One can only note how hard it is to get people to visit your home, or to visit in other people’s homes (with the possible exception of the South).

The church has a role. Unfortunately, however, the church is following culture. Attractional churches are large but often lack community. People may choose to get involved in a small group, but the reality the emphasis of attractional, and dare I say mega, churches is the weekend event. Community has a limited ability to occur in a large gathering, especially when a large part of the gathering is passive.

When the emphasis is on missional activity, doing ministry together in the community rather than seeing church as the weekly gathering, belonging takes place. Strong relationships are developed and people have a large network of relationships to support them, encourage them, and a group where “everybody knows your name.” It develops that network because of a shared sense of responsibility and purpose.

What are ways that the church can build community and overcome the impact of liberalism in the West?

Evidence of God in Culture?

Wow, just a fascinating article on this topic.  A paper has been released, Religion, religiousness and fertility in the U.S. and in Europe where “the authors observe that the United States is much more religious than Europe as a whole, and the average American woman is much more fertile than the average European woman. From this many intellectuals have adduced that these two characters exhibit a causal relationship so that the greater fertility of American women can be attributed to their greater religiosity.”

The author of the article cites the above paper, noting the decline of Europe culturally may result from the godlessness that exists in their culture.