Response to Ben on Bevans’ Ch 9
While I would like to disagree with Ben when he states, “I cannot think of a better place to implement this model than here in the U.S.”, I don’t think that I can. One thing that irritates me to the core is when I hear Americans comment on how broken America is in relation to other places. I’ve been all around the world and seen the pure destructive crap that exists in countless cultures and societies, and while I would never claim that America is perfect, it is a far cry from the worst, in fact, a legitimate argument can be made for it being the greatest country in the world (sorry to those of you who are offended by this reality). This may be the reason why Ben is right. The most destructive lies are the ones that change the least amount of the truth, this is because they are easy to disguise and can corrupt peoples perception of the truth. America probably comes closer to accurately representing Christianity than any other country, the problem is that it falls short. Instead of changing our cultural traits which are counter to the gospel, we get trapped in the self righteous passivity of knowing that, as a whole, we have come closer than the rest. The U.S. is a prime place to practice the countercultural model because it is God that we need to compare ourselves to and not the rest of the world. This statement is also true for Christians. Just being the best of the broken doesn’t make being broken any less sad.
