One of the most important passages in the entire New Testament is I Corinthians 15. In it Paul talks about the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus, how it defeats death, and offers forgiveness for all humanity. He also has this little line in there, “If Christ has not been raised from the dead, our preaching is useless and your faith is in vein. Later in the chapter he says, “We might as well eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die” (vs. 32). He’s quoting that line from a motto in his own culture. Paul was writing this letter in Ephesus then, if he were writing it from almost the same distance away, like maybe Philadelphia today, I wonder if he’d say, “If Christ has not been raised, you might as well live the Jersey Shore life.”

What I mean by that (and I think what Paul means) is that if Jesus isn’t who said He is, you need to find a new religion or a new philosophy of life, because you don’t really have much of one here – after all it all centers on Jesus being alive again. It’s always been interesting to me that Paul says this. He’s a Jewish rabbi and while he broke his allegiances with the traditional Jews, he could have hidden out in a small village, tentmake, return to his pre-Christian Jewish perspectives and wait for the real Messiah. After all, they’ve had failed messiah-figures before.

Now I don’t want this post to get too long but want to mention that the people he is writing to in Corinth are not Jews, but Gentiles. For them, if Christ has not been raised, they are likely not going to convert to Judaism but probably return to the governing philosophies of the day. This makes what he’s saying to them a bit more clear.

In undergrad, I had a theology professor who said, “If Christ has not been raised, then it’s just like that beer commercial, ‘You only go around once – grab all the gusto you can.’” I find this to be a very revealing statement of the entire scope of our Christian faith. Our obedience to God, our morality, our generosity, our kindness to the stranger, etc. is a response to a God who is real and offers life. As Christians, we don’t do these things to secure His favor, mind you, we already have His favor, but rather we live our lives after His example as a reflection of His love and favor.

It’s like Paul saying, “If Christ has not been raised, nothing else really matters except for whatever it is you want to matter”. It’s a huge statement because it puts down other religions and in some ways, if we were to follow the logic, it exalts social darwinism – the strong, the beautiful, and the popular are the ones who who “make it” in this world.

In this world, the Jersey Shore life not only makes sense but arguable is a great way of life. As many have pointed out, celebrities born out of reality tv are fascinating because majority of them are not talented in the same way as our other celebrities like actors, musicians, models, and athletes. So instead of being accountants or working retail, they get paid to do what they like the most – party. What separates the cast of the Jersey Shore from the random people you meet a bar or a club? In some ways – not much. This fame-lottery winning cast was able to capitalize on the buzz of their show and continued in getting people to watch by more or less acting crazy and living it up. They are rewarded for drunkenness, getting arrested, womanizing (and the opposite) because their philosophy of life (their religion) is “get rich and get famous.” (they opening song, “Get Crazy” says as much). And in a world where there is no risen Jesus, not only can we not blame them, but we must congratulate them.

Thoughts? Part 4 Soon …

I finished the previous post by offering a brief overview to my introduction to the idea of the “culture war”. This post I want to engage in how many of us as Christians have been fighting the culture war. As you saw in the last post, there was a connection between Christianity and political conservatism. While not all Christians have made that same connection, I did. It was a reflection of our Christian faith – to vote conservative. While I will not argue that the right evangelical expression is to vote more liberal/left (or moderate, or not vote at all, etc.), it is my aim that our faith must transcend our political ideologies. Said another way, our faith can be reflected in our political views but not defined. For me, “fighting” in the culture war did not allow me to see that and I suspect that many young evangelicals can relate.

It should be said that some do not actually see a culture war but instead see many expressions of beliefs and practices that some respond with varying degrees of tolerance/intolerance. For our purposes, I will simply use the idea of “culture war” to reference the fight that results between our conflicting ideologies, namely conservative versus liberal, Christian versus non-Christian. However, as the posts unfold, I am more interested in the Christian’s perspective and posture towards the idea of the culture war.

From where I sit, I see four typical responses to the way the culture war has been fought by Christians.

One is way of the “Conquistador”. They can be the trailblazing missionaries that jump off of boats, planes, and blogs ready to claim soul and land “in the name of Jesus!”  You could argue the missions movement of the 19th century was another example of this. You could also make the case the birth of America was rooted in this too but good luck explaining how the treatment of the Native Americans was moral, Christian, or in an sense, acceptable.  But those may be subjects for another day.

Easier examples might be the more modern versions of the “Conquistador”.  Sometimes the Conquistador is an innovator/builder/mogul like a Billy Graham.  At its laziest and lamest, the Conquistador is the “copycat” who sees You Tube and creates God Tube or sees MySpace and creates HisSpace or something like that. The purpose is to claim “space” in the name of God.

The second response I see is the “Guardian” mentality. The Guardian is the one who is scaring the life out of people on radio, television, internet, and from behind the pulpit. “The ACLU is coming to get you! And if they don’t succeed, the other secularists will! And so, if you send $50 to our organization, “Keep God Where He Belongs”, you will do your part in making sure the omni-presence of God stays where it belongs, right here in America!” Yes, that is a caricature.

Probably a better connection point is the common sentiment that the 1950′s were a very Christian and moral time in America and we need to get back to it. It’s the hope of Pleasantville and the personalities are the televangelists like Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, etc. You could say that the Guardian mentality is the generation (not 40 years of time but of mentality) after the Conquistador. They quote Paul and the Founding Fathers in the same breath. That’s a problem for the Christ-follower who claims to be seeking the Kingdom of Jesus.

Succeeding the Guardian is the Debater/Protester/Activisit. This person is a combination of the Conquistador and Guardian. They are (re)claiming something and guarding something else. In the political world, it could be Ann Coulter. In the subversive Christian world, it could be a Shane Claiborne. (By the way, this is the only time in the entire internet that those two names will be found in back to back sentences). This person is typically passionate and prophetic. To its extreme, this person is the assassin.

The final Christian response to the culture war is the “Private Apathetic”. This is the person who has more or less seen the gravity of the situation, has fired upon others in the culture war, has been fired upon and has been wounded. This person has regretted hurting others and being hurt and has consequently abandoned the fight.

Some have retreated deep within the Christian sub-culture and filled their days praying for the rapture while waving their finger of judgement at the decadent world. While others have abandoned any form of institution whatsoever and in some cases, forsaken Christian community as well, wishing only to worship God “privately”.

What’s interesting to me is that most of us have dabbled in all four mentalities at some point, some at the same time.

Now, I am not saying that there is no virtue in any of these. I am trying to draw broad strokes on a blog post here. Certainly there is a place for Innovators. Indeed, there is a time when we do need to guard important matters. There is a place for debate, protest (hello Protestant Reformation), and activism. There is also a time to retreat from the affairs of the world and find rest and renewal. I would contend that the work and the cross of Christ can be seen in these mentalities and more. I would also argue that the work and cross of Christ go much further and thus, so should we.

I’ll pick up here in the next post.

It was back in college (Liberty University) that I learned about the “Culture War”. I remember having to be convinced that there was one. Prior to that, I do not remember having many enemies. In the 90′s, I think I disliked two groups of people, abortion doctors and Red Sox fans ;-). Around that time, I only had a few problems, bad luck with girls, Greek (the language, not any frat reference. Come on, the context is Liberty University! ;-), and rock n’roll sucked. As I recall, in 1997, there were two songs on the radio, Matchbox’s 20 “Push” and Sugar Ray’s “Fly”. Oh wait, there was Chumbawaba and boy bands were about to take over the world. In response, I started listening to John Coltrane, Miles Davis and other classic jazz musicians.

Anyway, I was informed that we were at war. I’m not talking about Ephesians 6 (Our battle is not flesh and blood …), but a war of competing ideologies, beliefs and values and the fate of the world rested on it. My real enemies were the ACLU, Bill Clinton and his Democrats, and Marilyn Manson. It was then that I started reading Chuck Colson’s Breakpoint, World Magazine and books by Cal Thomas and William Bennett. I was also very interested in apologetics and really believed that I could prove Christianity. So Ravi Zacharias, RC Sproul, and Phillip Johnson and on serious days, Gary Habermas and William Craig. I remember that summer reading Robert Bork’s Slouching Towards Gomorrah (which is an awesome book title) and thinking that I needed to be ready “to take a stand” and “hold the line” because a good Christian was a good soldier.

Like all good soldiers, I was headed down the road of not questioning my superiors. The orders I was given were more of disposition and rarely of action (after all, we were evangelicals ;-) But as influential as Bork’s book was, I remember coming across a report where the ACLU represented a student-led after-school Bible study in a public school. What??? I knew that Jesus said, “a house divided against itself cannot stand” but was this something even more diabolical? I started seeing that things were a bit more complicated. Later I began understanding things like why many people had abortions (turns out, the white, affluent, liberal, career women represented a very, very, tiny percentage. It was lower-income minorities that comprised much of the stats.) And while that didn’t change my position on the topic of abortion, I started seeing the complexity of life, this world and God, Himself (including His mercy and justice).

Later I stumbled across Addicted to Mediocrity by Franky Schaeffer which eventually led to the work of his father, Francis. Titles by C.S. Lewis and Peter Kreeft starting filling up my shelf and while I have always been and still remain conservative/moderate on most issues, the idea of objectivity (meaning that we as flawed, sinful people could actually be objective) was losing its grip on me. While I did not recognize it at the time, the idea of postmodernity was becoming a good thing and instead of seeing myself at war within my society, I started understanding the potential virtues of plurality and the power of relationships and conversation.
Part 2 later.

My earliest Michael Jackson memories include the Thriller video, him being on the cover “Weekly Reader” when I was in second grade and answering my friend’s question, “Why does he only wear one white glove”. (I think the answer I gave was, “Because that’s what he wears in the “video” which were pretty new back then). If you can imagine, in the early 80’s not everyone had cable television and access to MTV (nor were there things like remote controls). Anyway, Jackson was the first super-star that I came to know. He would be followed by Hulk Hogan, Mr. T, Sylvester Stallone, & Optimus Prime.

Yeah, the pet tigers were weird and so was that glass oxygen chamber he supposedly slept in but that didn’t stop me from putting quarters into the “Smooth Criminal” arcade game (still my favorite Jackson song). It wasn’t until he released the Black or White album, that I started getting bored with him. It wasn’t that Black or White was that bad, but there was Pearl Jam and Nirvana (in that order) that were much cooler and more interesting. But even grunge and flannel couldn’t compare to the eye-candy video of “Black or White”. (It was one the one with everybody morphing into each other and it was the same technology used in Terminator 2). Besides, whose against racial reconciliation?

There were two other (admittedly minor) things that annoyed me about Michael Jackson. One was that I was a bigger Michael Jordan fan and I acknowledged him as the true “Michael” or “MJ”. Second was the extremely long video of “Remember the Time”. It was a video of him and his love running around ancient Egypt. Being Egyptian, I got annoyed by the cheesiness of the video (but I do like that Bangles, “Walk Like an Egyptian”).

Jackson grew weirder and while I had grown up (a little), it seemed he never did. I know growing up with Joe Jackson as your father probably didn’t help nor did being a child super star help your adolescence. As he grew older, there were the weird marriages, the continued skin lightening, the nose jobs, the scandals, and there wasn’t any amazing music to justify the weird and perverse behavior. In the world of Rock’n Roll, that means you’re finished.

But finished only to people like me because a significant part of the rest of the world was still in love with him. During our mission trip to Estonia in 2004, we were asked over and over how Michael could be accused of such terrible crimes. I remember speaking to a young adult there and she was absolutely crushed when I told her that many of us in the West see him as deranged. 40 year old men don’t share beds with 12 year olds. It was a losing argument for me.

Fast forward to last week. I read the twitter updates that said he was being rushed to the hospital due to a cardiac arrest, I went to the gym, came home and Susan told me that he died.

All week all the FM stations played his music. You could start “Billy Jean” on one station and finish it on another. On my way to school last week, I was rudely cut off by a BMW 750 owner. Normally I would have pulled out my bazooka and sent him into oblivion but I was listening to “Man in the Mirror” and thought, “If I want to make the world a better place, take a look at myself and make a … change.”

I’m really trying to say something redemptive here but it fails. Though I literally own zero Jackson cd’s (I did own all his cassettes from Thriller to Black & White however), I admit, I was a bit saddened. There was a part of me that always justified the extremely odd behavior brought upon my numerous reasons like being a world-famous celebrity and being called, “The King of Pop”. But there was also a part of me that always wanted him to redeem himself. A lot can be said right here but it’s already been a long post. Still, it seems fair to say that this is yet another story that does not end the way we thought it would.