Emmet’s blog….Jesus and the rest of us in real life

Jim’s comments on “Merchants of Cool” and the failure of adults to protect kids from the producers highlighted an interesting aspect of marketing predominantly to youth culture…. it glorifies youth culture as the biggest or best in society. Even though a massive amount of the add market is devoted to the Boomers, it doesn’t glorify that culture. I mean is the need for Viagra really a high water mark in a persons life, is erectile dysfunction a “cool” aspect of getting older?

Why don’t adults protect youths from the destructive targeting of the producers? Is it because adults, secretly or openly, want to be young again? Does the youth oriented marketing and its glorification of the young distract adults from their responsibility to grow older and wiser, more confident of their own identity, and willing to share their knowledge with those who come after them? I honestly don’t have a clue. My guess is that adults have their own stuff to deal with and just don’t recognize the assault that is taking place.

Can the church even respond to the producers without coming across as old fashioned and judgmental? My guess is that the church’s only relevant response is in supporting and enabling the youth, one at a time.

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.

Randy raised an issue with the transcendental model that had concerned me also. Essentially, to what extent can we trust our experiences to accurately guide us in developing and understanding theology? People mis the boat all the time when it comes to understanding experiences, the problems are only magnified when spiritual issues are involved. Peter himself was bipolar in his ability to understand what was going on, and he had the benefit of having Jesus constantly explaining stuff to him. Personal experiences are key in any development of theology; if they don’t connect there are going to be issues and people are going to have a hard time connecting with you. It seems that, as Randy commented, there is the need to balance experience with scripture. Paul had an experience on the road to Damascus that completely transformed his theology. Even though he didn’t learn it from man, he still tested it against what other believers held to be true and saw the need to connect it with scripture.

I liked what Joe had to say on Barker and politics. I don’t know where the majority/minority lines are drawn in christian relations with the political, but I think it’s clear that there are many different groups and subgroups, once more, I think that the best way to claim power over naming and deciding issues is in acting. I agree with what most of the Religious Right believes, I just wish that they would shut up and realize that being ‘right’ isn’t the point, and that in the grand scheme of things, American politics just doesn’t matter that much (that’s not to say it doesn’t matter at all). It’s in action and practice that Jesus impacted his community and it is in action and practice that we have the greatest opportunity to impact ours.

This seems to connect with the principle of, instead of asking God to bless what you are doing, start participating in what God is already doing. This may drift away from the praxis model, but is in a way is still connected. Like praying for the sic or preaching the good news, the praxis model demands that you interact with what God is doing. You can’t just leave it in your head or on paper. By evaluating what you do in relationship to God and the community, you place both yourself and and your conceptions of God to the test. Logic and reality become intertwined. It is a risk, but your identity and your faith are welded together and the results can’t be ignored.

Todd’s comments on the missional perspective of getting other cultures to step out of their traditional culture in order to embrace a higher Christian culture remind me of the constant challenges that we face. It is so easy to identify many aspects of Western culture with the Christian perspectives and identity that we grew up with. Because it is the one we grew up with we have the tendency to believe that our world view is universal and correct, those whose perspectives differ from ours “clearly” have broken world views. What we forget to ask ourselves is “If Christ were born in their community, what would he look like?” Oddly enough, this is the same question we forget to ask about our own culture/community.

I loved Michael’s comment that “culture asks the right questions”. Instead of being depressed that God can be hard to find in culture or art, though as I’ve said before I believe He is there, we should be more appreciative of culture’s own searching for God. Culture effectively reflects, at least in part, the questioning and searching that is present in individuals. The Grunge movement that came out of Seattle  in the  90’s became powerful in much of the youth and young adult culture because it reflected the searching and angst of so many people. Kurt Cobain’s death was mourned as if he had been the religious leader of so many disconnected youth, and maybe he was. Perhaps the better question is not “what is culture saying”, but truly is “what is culture asking?” I we figured that out, then maybe we could answer.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a bit critical towards allot of approaches to cultural studies. Its not because I think that they are B.S. or anything that extreme, its just that I believe that there is allot more going on than any one approach accounts for, at least from my limited understanding. Marxism has some interesting perspective on class struggle and the impact of economic structures, but there are aspects of culture which impact interaction in economic and class structures which, again from my limited understanding, Marxism doesn’t address.

This is one of the reasons why I loved Aaron’s comments on the impact that biology (at least in some peoples minds) impacts culture. In one moment culture is defined as everything but “x”, and in the next someone draws a connection between “x” and everything else. If you follow enough rabbit holes you almost have to classify culture with the simple statement, “Culture is what is.”

This probably all comes out of my own experiences of being more comfortable in environments where there is less structure, and having seen friends so caught up in the scientific challenges to creation that there faith is seriously challenged. Science, in all of its forms, has allot to offer us, is able to answer many questions, and has the potential to expand our horizons. That said, it can only take us so far.

If I dropped classes based on what I understood on the first day I’d still be working on my first quarters worth of classes.

I appreciate the tension that Mark finds in some of the concepts of the emergent church. I too thought about the implications of an addict going back to the same street that he/she used to buy drugs on. Is it wrong to tell a victim of abuse “go home to your husband and let him keep on beating you so that you can minister to him”? Logic tells me that it is, but I’ve heard too many stories of God working redemption through those relationships, of abusive husbands repenting and coming to the Lord, of gang members going back to the gangs that they came out of and being the instruments of change. The truth is, no one walks a perfect Christian walk no matter how far we are removed from the settings that used to control us, so why not take the “fear of failure” off of new believers and instead join with them in their communities. It can be hard to walk the line between prudence and the expectation that God is bigger than any situation, but that tension is a major aspect of faith and one that should keep us on our knees.