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Culture Isn't the Problem; We Are

As some guy called Dylan once said, "The times they are a changin'." It's true. We're living in a time of enormous socio-cultural confusion that's happening at a level we often only dimly perceive, but that affects our lives in the most dramatic ways imaginable. And that change is happening fast.

In this new era, we're finding that we don't have all the answers, that facts aren't everything, and that science won't cure all ills and make the world a better place like previous generations believed. As the recent U.S. election showed us, there's a lack of belief on the part of the younger generation in politicians and people who tell us their version of a truth that can make the world a better place. Yet there was at least a perceived belief that the Christians "won." So is it any wonder that this culture is expressing a distrust of the church and the people they find in it? And could it be that we deserve it?

Perhaps we've treated the world with just an eensy weensy bit of contempt in the last few decades and allowed it to pass us by. I mean, we have evangelists on the TV, frothing at the mouth as they tell those who are watching that they're going to hell unless they follow them (and perhaps send a buck or two). We have a church that appears divided and more in love with arguing with itself than caring about what goes on outside its doors. We talk about unity, but we have more splits than a banana at a dessert factory—and we still haven't worked out that the Pope isn't the antichrist; the guy who invented flat-pack furniture is.

Perhaps we get too big for our boots sometimes. After all, for many centuries, what the Christian Church said, went. It was the ruler, arbitrator, and Supreme Court of Christendom. Trouble is, Christendom died a few centuries ago, but nobody seems to have told much of the church.

In his book Into the 21st Century, world-renowned theologian Donald English writes, "The church which wishes to be ready for the 21st century has got to face the awful reality that its own unpopularity is used as a major excuse by those who say they long for God but cannot find him." That makes me sick. We have a world hungering for genuine spirituality, yet the one place we tell them they could come and truly find it is the one place they want to avoid like the plague! We've been acting as though we have the answer to life, the universe, and everything; but we've locked it in a box and left it gathering dust. And if we expect people to unlock it based on watching how we do it, we don't give them a chance; we seem to have forgotten the combination. It's no wonder they don't trust us. For crying out loud, many of us don't trust us!

Perhaps it would help if we started listening instead of condemning, acting instead of speaking. To re-earn the trust of a culture that we've been so clever in alienating, perhaps we should stop shouting at them and telling them where they're wrong and start acting with compassion and love. My son doesn't trust me because I tell him he's a jerk all the time. He trusts me because I'm there for him, and he knows I love him. Let's stop speaking out of the sides of our mouths—acting like a bunch of dualists who buy suits to fit the specific occasion—and start to live real lives.

It's time to embrace this new culture. We need to get our hands dirty, get involved in the world, care for those in situations of oppression, and start working out that the truth does indeed set you free—it doesn't tie you into a straitjacket of conformity. We need to learn to celebrate our diversity, stop all the pathetic pharisaic augments and start loving one another. And here's a scary thought for all of us, across the denominational and group boundaries: Maybe we aren't 100% right, but God loves us anyway.

And people will listen, watch, and embrace us back. A friend and I recently had the privilege of being the first westerners ever to go into an isolated village in Ethiopia. Thousands of people in the surrounding areas were suffering from a drought of biblical proportions. The solution was to cap a spring on a nearby mountain and get the water to the village. The cost: phenomenal. Yet with the help of thousands of young people in British Columbia, many of them completely unchurched, that village now has clean, pure water. That one thing not only saved countless lives, but it also did more to demonstrate the love of Christ to a "show me, don't tell me" culture than all the messages we could ever hope to preach. The kids heard it, saw it, embraced it, and were changed by it.

The church that wants to move forward needs to stop asking the question, "What form should our Sunday service take," and start asking, "How do we serve?" Let's forget about transient programs and events that have to be trendy for a moment and start concentrating on people. Trust is built by making yourself vulnerable, by being there when you're needed, by being loyal and servant-hearted. That's what Jesus was to the world. Why do we think we could be any different?

The church exists to make the world more delicious, not to run from its sourness. Too many of us grew up with a kind of bunker mentality, firing the odd John 3:16 machine gun burst and pretending we are "evangelising" that big, bad, dark place out there. Perhaps instead of running from a world that seems culturally alien to us, it's time we embraced it and loved it in order to transform it. And to do that, we have to live in it and be truth in it. Go on, I dare you. Break out of the boundaries and boxes we've made for ourselves. I think we'll find that God is outside the box waiting to give us a hand.

Andy Harrington is the executive director of Greater Vancouver Youth for Christ where he leads a team of 70 youth workers in a thinly disguised attempt to transform the world and the church that’s at its heart.