We Are Not Alone

This is not a new picture of Miss Boo but I just think she looks cute helping me knit. :) She's been helping me all day, including swiping the face-washing washcloth off her highchair back and washing the trashcan on the sly while I loaded the dishwasher this morning.

So... there are a few blogs I read for various reasons whose politics/religion clash drastically with my own. I was amused while reading the comments section of one of them to run across something I thought was endemic only in Christian circles: lamenting the fact that tax dollars are used to fund something that one regards as immoral. The issue in question? Folks were getting all het up over whether food stamp recipients should be allowed to purchase ice cream, Twinkies, and conventionally raised red meat with the food stamps. Not quite the same as whether tax dollars should be used to fund abortion, but heavens to Patsy, from the amount of vitriol and emotion dredged up by the topic you'd think it was.

Now please don't think I'm arguing for the nutritive qualities of Twinkies. What really intrigued me was that something I'd always thought of as the province of Christians--worrying over something we have little control over, like disbursement of tax money--turns out to really be something that most people in our society do. But because I hang around few non-Christians who are comfortable enough with me to rant, I hadn't heard it from an atheist perspective before.

My Dad has talked about this before; when I graduated from college I mentioned how it would be much cooler if we could walk out to a song from a particular movie soundtrack instead of the very very very boring "Pomp and Circumstance" (any song written specifically for a graduation is going to be boring or unbelievably schmaltzy). Dad pointed out that it was the aging alumni committee who arranged the program, and that they, being roughly fifty years older than me, would not see the merits of a movie soundtrack theme. He then expanded on this idea to point out that while the Church thinks that they are the only ones to struggle with relevance to the postmodern set, apparently alumni committees have the same problem.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying, things are more encouraging than we often think they are. As Christians we can look at the darkness in the world and get discouraged. Worse, we think that as Christians we're working under some kind of severe disadvantage. We castigate ourselves for not being relevant enough, personal enough, or consisent enough--all of which may be concerns--but then we add to it by assuming atheists have none of these problems. (They do. And they whine about them as frequently as we do.) Of course this is backward thinking; as Christians we have a huge advantage. It's called the power of the Living God.

I'm all for relevance and all, but really I think as long as we attempt to incorporate the Gospel in our everyday lives, whether we have church in a cathedral, a coffee house, or a shoe factory will be extraneous. What the Bible actually asks us to do as the expression of our salvation is remarkably simple--instructions like fear God, honor the king, pay our taxes, take care of widows and orphans, do our work honestly and well. It's when we get into the realm of slogans and titles that we get into trouble; that's also the time when we start focusing on what we're doing instead of what God's doing.

This is not to say that we shouldn't be willing to change when God tells us to. However, the stodgy church which sings nothing but hymns is as much a straw man for evangelicals as the fat-cat corporate executive is for extreme environmentalists. Do we really think the problem is that our style is not right?


Ultimately the test will be whether or not we are actually obedient to the commands of Scripture. I could care less whether you are wearing a suit, tattoos, or both; if you are obedient to Scripture, you'll attract people and find yourself evangelizing. If you are disobedient, all the how-to-be-missional classes in the world are not going to help.

So be like I was-- encouraged and also a little chastised. Encouraged that all you need to be is obedient. Chastised for thinking that your personal spin on the Gospel really mattered that much. And then go and do what you know God has been telling you to do all along.

Cheers,

Breanna