Indignation's Death

INDIGNATION’S DEATH:

Relevance. It’s more than just an overused term thrown around in church circles today. Relevance is one of our unspoken core values. The catch is that, much like Vizzini’s misuse of the term “inconceivable,” (Princess Bride) the churchy concept of “relevance” doesn’t really mean what we think it means.

We talk about being “culturally relevant,” but what we really mean, when it comes down to it, is conforming to the pattern of the world. That tendency to conform is exactly why God commanded the Israelites to remove all the foreign peoples from Canaan. Their failure to do so led to the adoption of foreign practices, marrying foreign women, and worshipping false gods.

Conforming is the very thing the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to instruct us not to do (see Rom 12:2). Culturally relevant really means that churches today strive to model and mimic the patterns of the lost and depraved - so closely - that we become indistinguishable from them. Doctrine is watered down to be more appealing, Scripture’s mandate for church discipline is ignored, we elect and appoint the savvy businessmen as elders and deacons, and things like global mission and service - actual evidence of sanctification - are buried beneath numerical data on baptisms, decisions, and attendance.

Mission accomplished.

Therefore, Christian leadership no longer exists in the home. “Men” have become trapped and transfixed with adolescence and cease to enter manhood. Our love is for self more so than our brides or children. “Training children up in the way they should go” isn’t optional, rather it is what we constantly communicate regarding beliefs and values. As it pertains to authentic faith, parents have relinquished that role to the kids and youth pastors. Proverbs 22:6 was never intended to be a blessing of responsibility to be deferred or delegated by parents. Nowadays, our kids no longer read their Bibles or even carry them - even to church. Instead, they spend more time putting on makeup, doing their hair, and worrying about what to wear - so they can be culturally relevant because that’s what we do.

Do a quick internet search on popular Christian youth group videos. Obnoxious, vulgar, loud, sarcastic, edgy… Where’s the humility? Where’s the challenge of service and laying down of one’s life? Where’s the evidence of transformation through the Refiner’s fire? We already know what the response is. Our church kids aren’t influencing the culture on college campuses any more than the Israelites did. They’re adopting the practices of the people around them - because that’s exactly what we’ve taught them to do. Don’t stand alone like Noah. Don’t stand out like John the Baptist. Fit in. Blend. All under the guise - the lie - of cultural “relevance.”

So the response by most will be, “Man, we don’t have time for that lame, ‘old school,’ stuffy church stuff! You just don’t know how to reach kids today. We’re growing our youth ministry by leaps and bounds! We’re busy being culturally relevant! Kids don’t have much of an attention span today, so we gotta dazzle and entertain with physical comedy, crass jokes, loud music, light shows, energy drinks, pizza, free t-shirts, and video games!”

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.

-Romans 12:2

We’ve confused the concept of “relevance” with “appealing.” We’ve looked back at the righteous indignation and utter contempt our forefathers had for sin and immorality and reckoned it too zealous, too righteous, too pious, too unappealing, and too distasteful for mass consumption.

Church gatherings went from being about equipping the saints for ministry to being about appealing to the masses. Our members went from being an engaged and involved priesthood of believers, empowered ambassadors of the gospel, and salt and light in a lost and broken world - to names in a database, anonymous faces, consumers in rows, and cash cows to be appeased. Besides, somebody has got to pay all these staff salaries - right? If we actually challenge people… if we upset the golden goose… then what? They’ll likely just mosey own down the road to a more inviting, more entertaining, less critical, and far less demanding church. The church with the bigger and newer building, the slides in the kids' ministry, the funnier youth pastor, the better band, and a cooler logo and website.

I have no doubt this sinful desire for mass appeal and community acceptance is actually the thinly veiled guise of “cultural relevance.” That idea is (at least in part) what Paul was addressing in 1 Timothy 4:1-2:

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through actors and liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.

C.S. Lewis wrote about this very thing in his book, Reflections on the Psalms. Lewis noted that we either ignore or dismiss the intense cruelty and violent hatred frequently found within the psalms - something bereft from contemporary pagan literature. Lewis concluded that while the psalters’ expressions of righteous indignation were sinful and misguided (e.g. Psalm 137:9 “Blessed be he that shall take and dash thy little ones against the rock.”), they are authentic expressions undiluted by the abhorrent pretense of social convention, mass appeal, or political correctness.

Lewis goes on to note that, in our misguided pursuit of cultural relevance, it is more acceptable, and even more praiseworthy, to be an “average sensual man,” than a “soul filled with some great Cause, to which he will subordinate his appetites, his fortune, and even his safety,” because “it is out of the second man that something really fiendish can be made.” Therefore, in an effort to avoid our contemporary disdain and distasteful perception of fiendish fanaticism we have, in fact, succumb to the pattern of the world - having eliminated the passion, the zeal, the holy righteousness, and the very character and mission of Immanuel, in order to become actors and liars under the guise of “cultural relevance,” fully embracing indignation’s death.

The nation of Israel succumb to “cultural relevance” repeatedly. They conformed to the pattern of the cultures and world around them. They ceased to operate and serve their divine purpose - a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. God pleaded with them to repent (i.e. turn) from the idolatry of acceptance and relevance and back to Him. Infrequently throughout their history, some did. In their misguided zeal for God they often spewed words of hatred and disdain for Israel’s enemies. To this end, Lewis notes, “The Jews sinned in this matter worse than the Pagans not because they were further from God but because they were nearer to Him.” God sent prophets. These men were neither fortune tellers nor soothsayers, but mouthpieces and heralds of righteous indignation and imminent divine justice, and Israel rejected them. Jesus addressed this in Matthew 23:37 saying, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”

Lewis closes with the statement, “Against all this the ferocious parts of the Psalms serve as a reminder that there is in the world such a thing as wickedness and that it (if not its perpetrators) is hateful to God.” There is a fine line between murderous zeal and idolatrous conformity, which requires divine guidance and supernatural strength to navigate. In Isaiah 30:21 we read, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’"

In the not too distant future, the sarcastic, witty, pretentious, cool, and “relevant” culture of contemporary churches will be exposed for being exactly what they are - conformity to the pattern of the world. Snarky remarks and flippant attitudes by pastors with torn skinny jeans (directed at the “old timers” who preached morality and legalism) will be exposed. Neither extreme is acceptable, but I agree with Lewis regarding our in vogue apathy to sin, i.e. that “not to perceive it at all… to accept it as the most ordinary thing in the world - argues a terrifying insensibility.”

Rather than listening to the voice of God behind us, as Isaiah instructed, instead our ears are attuned to popularity and general consensus. Today our collective insensibility and insensitivity to sin thrives under the misguided pretense of “cultural relevance,” and instead is evidence of indignation’s death.

Blessings,

-Kevin M. Kelley

aMostUnlikelyDisicple.com