To Change The World, Week Eleven

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through To Change The World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Pos­si­bil­i­ty of Chris­tian­i­ty in the Late Mod­ern World by James Davi­son Hunter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2017. The read­ing sched­ule is online at https://xastanford.org/summer-reading

I found chap­ter three much more engag­ing than chap­ter two. If you’re get­ting bogged down, it gets bet­ter.

Chapter Two: Old Cultural Wineskins

If sin­cer­i­ty were the same thing as faith­ful­ness, then all would be well, for Chris­tians, as a rule, are noth­ing if not sincere—not least in their desire to be “faith­ful in their own gen­er­a­tion.” But if I am even par­tial­ly cor­rect about the nature and pro­fun­di­ty of the changes of late moder­ni­ty, then against these sin­cer­i­ty could nev­er be enough by itself. At least a frag­ment of wis­dom would be required as well. (page 213)

As a Protes­tant, I tru­ly believe in sola fide (faith alone). But very often I find Chris­tians in our cul­ture treat­ing faith as if it were a feel­ing or some mere sen­ti­ment. Faith encom­pass­es so much more than that! Faith that lacks faith­ful­ness is not the faith God requires — and faith­ful­ness is a mat­ter that springs from the con­vic­tions we have cul­ti­vat­ed and the habits we have devel­oped far more than it does from the emo­tion­al impuls­es we expe­ri­ence.

Chapter Three: The Groundwork for an Alternative Way

In a milieu where the church and its peo­ple are so quick­ly and round­ly crit­i­cized for their short­com­ings, it is easy to over­look a cen­tral the­o­log­i­cal truth; that is, that how­ev­er inad­e­quate or piti­ful the church may seem at times (and may, in fact, be), where the scrip­ture is pro­claimed, the sacra­ments admin­is­tered, and the peo­ple of God con­tin­ue to seek to fol­low God in word and deed, God is at work; the Holy Spir­it is still very much active. (page 225)

If I could have one truth tat­tooed on your gen­er­a­tion’s arm, some­thing like the above would be a strong con­tender. Always remem­ber that you are not mere­ly invit­ing peo­ple to fol­low Christ, you are invit­ing them to become part of the Body of Christ. You should love it and invite oth­ers to love it along­side you. Sad­ly, the Body of Christ is often slan­dered by believ­ers who think only of her faults (often with shock­ing inac­cu­ra­cy) and lit­tle of her strengths.

Be slow to assume you have a good read on how the church has act­ed in his­to­ry. For that mat­ter, be slow to assume you have a good read on how the church is act­ing today. Have you heard that Joel Osteen’s church has been cal­lous dur­ing the flood­ing of Hous­ton? Red­dit, Twit­ter, and Face­book users sure got that impres­sion. Before you apol­o­gize to your friends for Osteen’s alleged hypocrisy, read these arti­cles: Flood him with crit­i­cism: Let him who is with­out sin cast the first stone at Joel Osteen and his church (Bob­by Ross, Jr, GetRe­li­gion), Was Joel Osteen’s Hous­ton ‘Megachurch’ Affect­ed By Hur­ri­cane Har­vey? (Snopes), The Joel Osteen Fias­co Says A Lot About Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty (Lau­ra Turn­er, Buz­zfeed). Based on the evi­dence I’ve seen, Lake­wood Church not only act­ed defen­si­bly  but actu­al­ly act­ed wise­ly and help­ful­ly. Act­ing in a man­ner unfa­mil­iar to some of their crit­ics, they were more con­cerned with actu­al­ly doing good than with mere­ly giv­ing the appear­ance of doing good.

This, inci­den­tal­ly, is a use­ful reminder that the Bible isn’t kid­ding when it tells us there will be those who “those who speak mali­cious­ly against your good behav­ior in Christ” (1 Peter 3:16, NIV). I often meet young Chris­tians who believe that if we just act nice­ly enough that the world will love us. You’re not going to be a bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Jesus than Jesus Him­self was, and He was tor­tured to death. Tem­per your expec­ta­tions.

I say all that to say this: if you hear a neg­a­tive report about a church, do your home­work before you assume the crit­i­cisms you are hear­ing are accu­rate. A sur­pris­ing amount of the time the crit­i­cism will be false or will be mis­lead­ing­ly true.

But when a crit­i­cism of the Church is true we need to take it seri­ous­ly.

Nowhere is the task of crit­i­cal resis­tance more urgent than in the church itself for the ways that it too has accom­mo­dat­ed to the spir­it of the late mod­ern age. St. Peter is right to say, “judg­ment begins with the house­hold of God” (1 Pet. 4:17). Antithe­sis, then, means that the church’s own struc­tures and its own engage­ment with the world must be con­tin­u­al­ly scru­ti­nized. Here espe­cial­ly, crit­i­cal resis­tance must always be cre­ative and con­struc­tive; guid­ed by devo­tion to the beloved com­mu­ni­ty. (page 236)

Mov­ing on, Hunter iden­ti­fies a prob­lem that I think is par­tic­u­lar­ly strong at Stan­ford:

In con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca, Chris­tians have faith in God and, by and large, they believe and hold fast to the cen­tral truths of the Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion. But while they have faith, they have also been formed by the larg­er post-Chris­t­ian cul­ture, a cul­ture whose habits of life less and less resem­ble any­thing like the vision of human flour­ish­ing pro­vid­ed by the life of Christ and wit­ness of scrip­ture. The prob­lem, in oth­er words, is that Chris­tians have not been formed “in all wis­dom” that they might rise to the demands of faith­ful­ness in a time such as ours, “bear­ing fruit in every good work.” (page 227)

We need to rec­og­nize that our cul­ture is always try­ing to cre­ate unchris­t­ian con­vic­tions with­in us. Stan­ford does it more aggres­sive­ly than Amer­i­can soci­ety because the cam­pus is a much less free envi­ron­ment.

But that does­n’t mean that we give up and reject our soci­ety. Far from it.

When peo­ple are saved by God through faith in Christ they are not only being saved from their sins, they are saved in order to resume the tasks man­dat­ed at cre­ation, the task of car­ing for and cul­ti­vat­ing a world that hon­ors God and reflects his char­ac­ter and glo­ry. (page 236)

And so we par­tic­i­pate in our soci­ety and seek to make it bet­ter, rec­og­niz­ing that there is good­ness every­where because of God’s com­mon grace. But even when we find an area of align­ment of our val­ues with soci­ety’s, we rec­og­nize that there will be ten­sion.

It is impor­tant to empha­size that the realm of “com­mon grace” is, by no means, a neu­tral space. It is God’s grace after all—it emanates from him and its pur­pose is to give him glo­ry. To make strong and active affir­ma­tions about the present world, then, in no way implies the auton­o­my of knowl­edge, moral­i­ty, desire, jus­tice, or beau­ty. The idea that there are com­mon or objec­tive stan­dards for these things inde­pen­dent of the cre­at­ed order is an illu­sion. In the con­tem­po­rary world, neu­tral­i­ty is the pre­tence of all sec­u­lar estab­lish­ments; a myth con­cealed by its hege­mo­ny. (page 233)

As a result, we need to have a lev­el of skep­ti­cism about the struc­tures of our fall­en soci­ety.

In the present his­tor­i­cal con­text, this means that Chris­tians rec­og­nize that all social orga­ni­za­tions exist as par­o­dies of escha­to­log­i­cal hope. And so it is that the city is a poor imi­ta­tion of heav­en­ly com­mu­ni­ty; the mod­ern state, a deformed ver­sion of the eccle­sia; the mar­ket, a dis­tor­tion of con­sum­ma­tion; mod­ern enter­tain­ment, a car­i­ca­ture of joy; school­ing, a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of true for­ma­tion; lib­er­al­ism, a crass sim­u­lacrum of free­dom; and the sov­er­eign­ty we accord to the self, a par­o­dy of God him­self. As these insti­tu­tions and ideals become ends in them­selves, they become the objects of idol­a­try. (pages 234–235)

And now we’re get­ting close to what I take to be Hunter’s ulti­mate point: we don’t par­tic­i­pate in soci­ety pri­mar­i­ly to change the world. We do it sim­ply to bless those around us.

If there are benev­o­lent con­se­quences of our engage­ment with the world, in oth­er words, it is pre­cise­ly because it is not root­ed in a desire to change the world for the bet­ter but rather because it is an expres­sion of a desire to hon­or the cre­ator of all good­ness, beau­ty, and truth, a man­i­fes­ta­tion of our lov­ing obe­di­ence to God, and a ful­fill­ment of God’s com­mand to love our neigh­bor. (page 234, the orig­i­nal has empha­sis that I don’t think is being repro­duced here)

I’m eager to see where his argu­ment goes from here.