Youth Workers, Culture Watching, and Holiness. . . Part 2 . . .

Yesterday I blogged on culture-watching and the youth worker. Should we or shouldn't we? And if we should, how should we? Yes, it can be a dangerous balancing act if we aren't thinking carefully as we take each step. Each step needs to be grounded in "holiness" . . . the very thing that most people believe should keep them from walking in the first place. But holiness is what should drive us to know and engage the culture, rather than causing us to run from it.

Understanding "holiness" has to start with the only “Holy” one. What does he say in his word about “holiness?” And rather than make the mistake of looking at and interpreting a few isolated verses on the subject, we need to examine the full context of Scripture - examining all the parts of the Bible from start to finish as a comprehensive worldview. What do we find? Stated simply, what follows is a short summary of what the Bible says about holiness.

First, holiness is first and foremost a divine quality. In fact, the word captures the essential nature of God and includes all his other attributes of sovereignty, mercy, awesomeness, separateness, power, wrath, etc. When the Bible speaks of God’s holiness, it means that God and only God is morally perfect, and God and only God is uniquely set apart from all his creation. No one who has ever walked this earth - besides the God-man Jesus - has ever by nature been holy. It’s a truth we affirm every time we sing these words from the great hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy”: “Only Thou art holy - there is none beside Thee, perfect in power, in love and purity.”

Second, to be holy is to be set apart by God. We are declared and become holy the moment God, by grace, brings us into a relationship with Himself through Christ. The source of our holiness is Jesus himself, who makes us holy by forgiving our sins. There’s absolutely nothing we can do to make ourselves or anyone else holy. Our holiness, righteousness, and redemption are in Christ. As the writer of Hebrews says, “We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb 10:10).

Third, to be holy, is to be consecrated for service to God.  We are called to be set apart to serve our Creator. As a result, we are to distance ourselves from the ways and values of the world. . . the believing and doing that marks the ways and values of the world.  Even though we are holy in the eyes of God, we continue to struggle with sin - something we all know the reality of all too well. We must prayerfully seek to separate ourselves from sin and hold fast to Christ. To be holy means to be “different.”

Fourth, Jesus is not only the source, but the standard and example of holiness. Holiness is the opposite of sin. That means it’s conformity to the character of God and obedience to his will. We are to actively seek to express our new life in Christ and our holiness by following the example of Christ. To be holy means that we will prayerfully and earnestly strive to avoid sin while reflecting the image of Christ in how we love others both inside and outside the body of Christ. “Holy, Holy, Holy” is the short answer to the great question Dean Borgman insists we ask as we minister in our contemporary culture: “How would Jesus move through the crowd today?”

Fifth, holy people live the will of God, including his call to be in, but not of, the world. This is the great paradox of holiness - that the God who calls us to be “set apart” turns around and tells us to “go into” the sinful and fallen world, both through the example of his Son and the commands of Scripture. We cannot forget that on the night before his death, Jesus prayed the will of his Father for all his disciples in all times and all places: “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. . . . As you sent them into the world, I have sent them into the world” (Jn 17:15&16, 18). Looking at, listening to, and understanding that world for the sake of the advancement of God’s rule and reign is not a compromise of our holiness. Instead, it is an expression of it. It’s clearly part of the role God’s called us to play in his grand plan of redemption. While our resolve should be to avoid “living” the ways of the world, we are called to live in and understand a world that has its ways. This is the service for which we’ve been set apart. To do otherwise is to keep the Christian faith locked up in the bunker of separation and fear.

Sixth, to be holy doesn’t mean we keep a long list of behavioral do’s and don’ts. Sadly, this is the un-Biblical reality many have adopted simply because that’s what they were taught growing up. This was exactly the problem with the Pharisees. They mistakenly believed that it’s what’s outside a person - rather than what’s inside - that makes him “unclean.” Charles Colson warns us of four problems bred by this view of holiness. First, it limits the scope of true biblical holiness to just a few but not all areas of our lives. We wind up living the “out of” and not the “in” the world, thereby forfeiting our mission influence. Second, we fall into the trap of obeying rules rather than obeying God. Third, the emphasis on rule-keeping leads us to believe that we can be holy through our efforts. And fourth, our “pious efforts” can lead to self-righteousness - an ego-gratifying spirituality that turns holy living into spiritual one-upmanship. The apostle Paul once lived that Pharisaical life. But after experiencing God’s grace on the road to Damascus and coming to a proper understanding of holiness, he referred back to that old way of living as “dung” (Phil 3:8).

Finally, we can’t go places we can’t go. Christ has never called us to deliberately sin in order to engage the world for the sake of the Gospel. If you can’t watch it, listen to it, or read it without falling into sin, then don’t. But don’t fall into the trap of equating temptation with sin. We know that Jesus, our example of holiness, was tempted in every way but did not sin. Being tempted or plagued by evil thoughts isn’t sin. If a lustful or ungodly thought enters our mind and we choose to reject it, we have not sinned. But if we seek out, embrace, or entertain those thoughts for the purpose of pursuing their pleasures, then we’ve fallen into sin. Martin Luther likened the tension to the fact that evil thoughts will come like the birds that fly over our heads all the time. That’s out of our control. What we can and must do is stop them from building nests in our hair. And lest we forget, the one who was tempted in every way but did not sin promises us that we won’t be tempted beyond what we can bear, nor will he leave us without a way out (1 Cor 10:13). Maybe our problem is that we wind up trying to do God’s work (imparting holiness) because we don’t take him at his word.

So now I’ve got a question for you: What are your kids listening to, reading, and watching? For the sake of Christ and the Gospel, maybe you should be listening, reading, and watching right there with them.

Youth Workers and Culture-Watching. . . How Far Is Too Far?

“Should a Christian read and see “The Hunger Games?” Hmmmm. I hate questions like that. I was asked that question about this time last year by a youth worker who knew that I had already read the book and seen the film. The youth worker also knew that I was other telling other youth workers to do the same. I knew full well that the tone and timing of the question meant that I was not being asked about “The Hunger Games.” No, this was a question about my theology, and I was being inquisitioned by someone who was out to scold me for crossing a line and compromising my faith in Jesus. There was an agenda behind the question.

This happens to me a lot. One time I was leading a youth workers seminar on how Christ’s followers should interact with culture. A youth worker in the room who was growing increasingly uneasy with what I was teaching proceeded to accuse me of promoting pornography. “So what you’re saying is that Christians should know the culture?” he asked. My excited answer was rather straightforward: “Yes, if God in His word charges us to reach the world with the Good News about Jesus Christ, we must understand the changing cultural context in which lost people live. To do that, anyone who works with the emerging generations needs to be familiar with what they’re watching and hearing - that’s the stuff shaping their worldview. By doing that, we can learn how they think and what they believe. Then, we’ll be able to connect with them in language and categories they can understand, and the unchanging, life-changing, and corrective truths of God’s word won’t fall on deaf ears. In effect, we’re cross-cultural missionaries!” 

Case closed. . . . or so I thought. The immediate response indicated otherwise: “So you tell those who want to reach kids to watch pornography?” I was a bit taken back by the connection. In his mind I wasn’t concerned with sharing the Gospel anymore. Instead, I was promoting involvement with pornography and leading youth workers and kids down the compromising road to perdition. After all, we've got kids who regularly engage with pornography. So. . . . shouldn't we familiarize ourselves with pornography by looking at it too????

To be honest, I’ve heard variations on this argument dozens of times before so it really wasn’t anything new. I responded as I have for years. First, I clarified that pornography is an expression of sinful and fallen sexuality and it certainly isn’t a place where God wants us to go. Nor is it a place I indirectly suggest people go. It’s not a legitimate art form that in and of itself is redeemable. It’s to be avoided. We know that it’s left a trail of destroyed individuals, marriages, and families in its ugly wake. Neither would I suggest to a parent or youth worker that they go look at pornography if they discover their kids are spending time in it themselves (which most of them have, by the way). If I discovered my son was spending his time in some of the deepest and darkest corners of the Internet, I wouldn’t say, “Hey buddy, let’s sit down and look at this together so we can talk about it.” That would not only be wrong, but ridiculous. I’ve seen it. He’s seen it. Neither of us need to see it again. But because I’ve seen it and know where it comes from, what it is, and what it does, I would sit down with him and talk about it.

Second, I challenged the faulty logic followed in the argument. My inquisitor had fallen into the classic mistake of employing the flawed “slippery slope” approach to logic. In his mind, if “A” happens (in this case, “anyone who works with kids and wants to effectively share the Gospel should be familiar with what they see and hear”), then through a series of small steps through “B”, “C”, “D”, . . . . “X”, “Y”, eventually “Z” (“you’re promoting pornography”) will happen, too. Then, because “Z” shouldn’t happen, “A” should have never been said or done in the first place. If that’s the case, then Jesus, Paul, and every cross-cultural missionary since has messed up big time.

The conversation continued and it became abundantly clear to me that the root issue wasn’t necessarily pornography. Rather, it was our differing understandings of what it means to be “holy.” As youth workers, a proper understanding of “holiness” is essential, not only as we live out our own lives to the glory of God in today’s culture, but as we endeavor to teach kids how to navigate all the confusing and difficult stuff that youth culture throws at them.

We can all agree that God calls us to “be holy.” But we often part ways on our understanding of what that means for how are we to live and conduct ourselves in our sinful and fallen world. In my friend’s understanding, to be holy meant that he was required to avoid any contact of any type with the ungodly elements of popular culture – the bunker mentality. To be holy is to not watch or read “The Hunger Games.” In my understanding, to be holy requires obedience to Jesus’ command to go into the world. . . and to watch and read “The Hunger Games.”

Because of the questions I had been asked and the differing conclusions followers of Jesus reach on the issue, I think it’s a good thing to regularly “regroup” and humbly re-evaluate my understanding of “holiness.” What if I’ve been wrong all this time? Or what if I’ve somehow unknowingly slid into compromising my faith and holiness? After all, I don’t want to defend, promote, live, or teach a flawed understanding that isn’t faithful to God’s will for those who are His own. In order to check the validity of our understanding of how to approach matters of faith and culture, we need to take another look at our understanding of “holiness.”

Tomorrow. . . Part 2. . . a look at "holiness." 

I Shop. . . Therefore I Am. . . .

We're living in the midst of an earthquake. . . and unless we step back and look really really hard, we probably don't even know that the ground and everything on top of it is shifting in major ways. That's right. . . most of us don't even notice what's happening. Instead, we have willingly yet unknowingly jumped on board for the ride. For those of us who are consciously endeavoring to follow Jesus while leading others to do the same, we need to be regularly stepping back, looking, evaluating, discerning, and responding. That's the only way that we will embrace a lifestyle marked by being in but not of the world.

I'm thinking about this today as a result of some thought-provoking reading I've been doing in preparation for our upcoming Doctoral cohort in Ministry to Emerging Generations that's meeting next week at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. One of the texts we assigned to students is Paul Hiebert's Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change. Don't let the title scare you. This book offers one of the best descriptors and analysis of the modern to postmodern to post-post-postmodern that I've ever read. In essence, this book offers a bird's-eye view of the earthquake that is shifting the cultural landscape and changing all of us in the process. Transforming Worldviews describes our culture, our kids, our institutions, and our selves.

About that earthquake. . . Hiebert quotes Peter Drucker's description of history and the times: "Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp transformation. We cross what. . . have been called a 'divide.' Within a few short decades, society rearranges itself - its worldview; its basic values; its social and political structure; its arts; its key institutions. Fifty years later, there is a new world. And the people born then cannot even imagine the world in which their grandparents lived and into which their own parents were born. . . . We are currently living through just such a transformation." Read that again. It's significant. Our role is to figure out which changes to embrace, and which to resist. That's what discernment is all about. If we aren't discerning, we tend to nonchalantly accept "what is" as the status quo, or the "way things should be."

One of the main changes that we have to understand and confront is "consumerism." Hiebert offers a compelling analysis of how the postmodern turn has fostered a consumerism that is driving our lives and perhaps even more so, the lives of the kids we know and love. Consider these little snippets from Hiebert:

• The pursuit of pleasure through consumption of commodities and services has become the dominant cultural value of postmodernity, replacing the deferral of gratification and self-denial.
• Consumerism offers people meaning through buying and living the good life in a world in which they feel increasingly meaningless, insignificant, and unreal.
• Consumerism is nourished by human dissatisfaction and craving. Once existing needs are adequately met, new needs must be created to keep the market going.
• People who are relatively happy with their lives, enjoy spending time with their children, enjoy walks and times of prayer, meditation, and silence, and have a peaceful sense of who they are, are not good for the market. But those who are unhappy and dissatisfied with their lives, live in anxiety, and are unsure of their identity and their relationships to others, want more, and the market promises to fulfill these ever-expanding needs and wants. 

In the end, we have been lulled into a new religion where the mall (or the internet shopping site. . . or TV's QVC) becomes the church. Liturgies are written by marketers. We engage in "retail therapy" to make ourselves feel better. . . for a little while at least. And rather than living for eternity, we live for the here and now. Overall, it's an ugly landscape. 

In the end, it's idolatry. Isn't that what we need to avoid?

How Music Has Changed. . . And What That Says About Us. . . .

For me, it was college dining hall background music with great harmonies, loads of energy, and some great guitar riffs. I was reminded of Heart's 1976 hit "Crazy On You" (video from a 1977 performance below) this past Saturday night as I watched the band come together for the first time in over thirty years to perform at their induction into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. I thought about the band, their music, and what they represented about the times and the culture again on Sunday night, when I watched the Billboard Music Awards show. The contrast between these two televised events made the contrast between then and now oh so clear.

Perhaps the defining cultural peek from Sunday night's Billboard Music Awards was Selena Gomez's performance of her new single, "Come and Get It" (video below). The two words that came to mind as I watched were "sad" and "embarrassing." It was sad because it was formulaic, lacking any kind of creativity, and it was lip-synced. It was embarrassing for two reasons. First, this twenty-year-old performed in front of a room full of musicians - many of whom have genuine talent - and she performed in front of a television audience. It was embarrassing for her. But it was also embarrassing at a much deeper level. If this is this all we're attracted to musically. . . and we settle for it. . . then we've been complicit with a music-industry driven more by marketing and consumer interest, than it is driven by talent, truthfulness, and hard work. As I thought about the difference between Selena's performance and what I saw from Heart the night before (along with the other Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame inductees), well. . . then shame on us. It was embarrassing because I realized not only how low we progressively set the bar, but the kind of message we're sending to our kids. "Come and Get It" is a seductive invitation. Sure, there have been seductive musical invitations for years. But if a grade could be put on how the seductive invitation is worded and delivered, we've even gotten worse at being seductive!

When I teach skills in media evaluation and cultural exegesis, I always tell students to listen and look for spiritual hunger cries. There is always some cry for redemption. There is always some indicator of humanity's universal hunger for heaven that is rooted in our brokenness and lostness. There are also clear indicators of where people are traveling in their quest to find redemption. Like Paul in Athens (Acts 17), we need to find the "unknown God."

I've been pondering this as I think about what I saw and heard from Heart and Selena Gomez last weekend. When Nancy Wilson hits those guitar chords and sister Ann's voice soars in "Crazy On You," there's a unmistakable sense that they clearly know that they and the world are broken and that we all need some kind of relief. The song is rooted in the tumultuous and tenuous years of the 1970s. They sing, "If we still have time, we might still get by/Every time I think about it, I wanna cry/With bombs and the devil, and the kids keep comin'/No way to breathe easy, no time to be young. . . Wild man's world is cryin' in pain/What you gonna do when everybody's insane." While Heart's redemption is sought in the wrong place (a night of escape into passion), there's at least the conscious sense that things are horribly broken and in need of repair. But if Selena's song is an indication of how we've changed as a culture, we don't ponder the brokenness anymore. We simply skip right to seduction, as if that is the chief end of humanity.

So, while brokenness was in the music back in the 70s and it's still here now, we've spiraled down more than we know. We don't think. We don't ponder. We don't make as much music that comes from the heart and mind of the artist. We simply flood the market with musical and lyrical fluff that is fed to thoughtless minds who as a result of their thoughtlessness, are even more easily influenced that ever before. And that is not at all a good thing.

Self-Injury. . . What We Don't Know Will Hurt Them. . . .

As a culture-watcher, I sometimes like to “rewind” as a way to gain perspective on just how much and how fast youth culture has changed. The practice serves to wake me up at times when familiarity with what was once relatively unknown lulls us to sleep because it’s become all-too-common and widespread. That creates huge problems, because we’re prone to sleep through things that are so normalized that they don’t catch our attention and wake us up anymore. In just two days, I'll be hosting my good friend Marv Penner on a webinar about one the most pressing youth culture issues we face as parents, counselors, and youth workers. It's "cutting." Sadly, the epidemic of self-injurious behavior that’s swept through and taken up residence in today’s youth culture is one of those things that show us just how much the culture has changed. 

I first-encountered self-injurious behavior – more specifically, cutting – in the adolescent ward of a private psychiatric hospital back in 1974. Days out of high school myself, I was hired as a well-intentioned yet terribly ill-equipped and untrained “Mental Health Technician,” working the four-to-midnight shift with a revolving cast of 15 teenagers who were dealing with a variety of psychiatric disorders. One common-thread besides their close-proximity was a tendency for them all to slice away at themselves with anything and everything sharp that they could get their hands on. Usually, it was on their wrists. That location combined with a great deal of ignorance among our professional supervisors to lead them to instruct us to chart any and every incident as an “attempted suicide” or “suicidal gesture.” In hindsight, none of us had any idea at all what we were dealing with. 

Fast-forward almost twenty years to the early 1990s. It was then that cutting caught my attention. . . again. This time I was studying youth culture full-time, which is why the concerned mother sent me her letter. She wrote, “I am the parent of two students who attend a local Christian school, a 15-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy. Recently, both of them have told me that they have numerous friends who slice themselves with sharp objects. Can you help me understand what’s going on and what to tell my kids???” A quick trip to the medical library at a local teaching hospital turned up next to nothing. . . which was still far more than I had known two decades earlier. But what was known about cutting by the early 90s was this: It was happening more frequently. It seemed to be launched as a thought or idea without outside provocation. It was usually engaged in alone by 13 or 14-year-old girls who simply had a desire to slice themselves as a result of overbearing emotional pain. Few people were doing it with the goal of taking their lives. Among those who did it, there was quite often an early experience of being victimized by sexual abuse. Once they cut, they felt better. Consequently, they cut again and again, leading to more frequent and severe episodes in an effort to achieve the end of emotional relief. Researchers also reached this conclusion: We need to learn more!

The sad reality is that since receiving that letter, self-injury has swept through youth culture like a plague. It’s not only a sign that more and more kids are hurting more and more deeply, but that cutting is no longer an unspoken and solitarily-discovered coping mechanism for those who hurt. It’s become popularized and thrust into the mainstream as an option for self-therapy and self-care through casual conversations, music, and film. In 2003, Catherine Hardwicke’s poignant film, Thirteen, depicted 13-year-old Tracey’s venture into the world of coping with a chaotic and confusing transition to adolescence through cutting. Last year, the always-relevant Pink took music-fans into the bathtub of a teenager who cuts in the video for her chart-topping song, “F___ing Perfect.” These depictions and others stand as brutal reminders of an increasingly mainstream reality many of us would rather ignore.

One cutter says this about a habit that, for those who don’t do it, seems absurd: “I feel like there's something terrible inside me that I have to get out any way that I can. I think that's part of the reason why I have to bleed. Afterwards, I feel cleansed. I feel like whatever was crushing me before has been removed. I feel calm and in control." Beneath his shirt, unbeknownst to even his closest friends, this twenty-year-old wears the cries of his heart and soul on his chest. Because these marks are usually outward manifestations of inward pain, one researcher has called self-injury "the voice on the skin.

I want to invite all of you who know and love kids to join us for our 90-minute webinar on Thursday at 1pm (Eastern Time) for an eye-opening, practical, helpful, and hope-filled look at the issue of self-injury. Dr. Marv Penner, one of the world's foremost experts on self-injury and author of Hope and Healing For Kids Who Cut, will be walking us into a deeper understanding of this crucial issue. This is a webinar for parents, pastors, counselors, and youth workers. You can get more information and register here.

Inside the Teen Brain. . . .

One summer evening when my son Josh was only about five years old, he and I were driving east just as the sun was going down. After looking out the back window of the car at the setting sun, he leaned up and looked into the sky to see the moon. After another look back at the sun and a look ahead at the moon, he turned to me and asked, “Hey Dad, how come when the sun is still out the moon is up too?” Good question. After thinking a bit, I explained that God made the world so that there would always be a light to shine, one during the day, and one during the night. Then, I stepped down to his level and said, “And he made it so that when Mr. Sun is ready to go to bed, Mr. Moon is already up and ready to take over.” After catching a couple more curious glances at the sun and the moon, my little boy turned to me and adoringly said, “Man dad. . . . you know everything!”

And then he grew up and turned into a teenager. Suddenly, I knew absolutely nothing.

Why did Josh’s perspective on my intellectual capabilities do an about-face? We can better understand some of the intellectual changes in our teens by looking at the work of the late Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who pioneered some of the most significant research in the area of child and adolescent intellectual development. Piaget found that young children pass through three distinct intellectual stages by the time they reach the age of eleven or twelve.

The first stage in the development of intelligence (roughly birth to two years) is called the sensorimotor stage, when a child’s intelligence is manifested through actions. Every parent remembers the joy of watching their child progress from acting solely on reflex to using senses to solve problems like reaching for a toy or opening a door.

The second stage in Piaget’s scheme is the preoperational stage (roughly two to seven years), when a child has the capacity to us language and play make-believe. The developing child uses imagination to pretend that a block of wood is a car or that two sticks are an airplane.

Piaget called the third stage during childhood the concrete operations stage (roughly seven to eleven years). The child is now able to think, using limited mental logic to solve simple problems. Children in this stage see tings literally and think in terms of facts. They see social problems and issues in terms of black and white, right and wrong.

The intellectual abilities of children are limited. Mom and Dad, along with most other adults, are viewed as being knowledgeable and correct on most matters. This makes life around the house fairly stable and comfortable. But things change when a child enters adolescence.

They certainly did for me when I was a teen. In hindsight, I realize that it wasn’t my parents who had changed, it was me. Although I didn’t know it at the time, adolescence had ushered me into Piaget’s formal operations stage (roughly twelve to fifteen years). I now had the ability to use more advanced logic to explore and solve complex hypothetical problems about the world on my own, and assess consequences of different courses of action. I was becoming an adult.

Amazing developments in the area of brain research are especially encouraging for parents of teens. In years past, it was assumed that a child’s brain was fully formed somewhere between the ages of eight and twelve. New scientific and research advances along with the use of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technologies show that the brain is an organ that grows and transitions, just like the adolescent to whom the brain belongs. The brain itself is going through a period of growth during the period between puberty and young adulthood. In addition, the brain’s hardware and software goes through a process of “wiring” or “pruning” itself during the teen years. The brain’s Limbic system is the area deep within the brain that generates emotions, including rage and fear. With hormones surging and raging during adolescence, the limbic system is affected in ways that can intensify aggressive emotions, particularly in boys. Research shows that the brain’s pre-frontal cortex is the last part of the brain to develop. This is the area of the brain that controls planning, organizing, judging consequences, decision-making, self-control, and emotional regulation. Laurence Steinberg, an expert on brain development at Temple University, says, “The parts of the brain responsible for things like sensation seeking are getting turned on in big ways around the time of puberty, but the parts for exercising judgment are still maturing throughout the course of adolescence. So you’ve got this time gap between when things impel kids toward taking risks in early adolescence, and when things that allow people to think before they act come online. It’s like turning on the engine of a car without a skilled driver at the wheel.” When all is said and done, the brain may not be fully formed until our teenagers reach the age of 24 or 25 years old!

While right is still right, and wrong is still wrong, this ground-breaking research explains a lot about teenage behavior. Teens have difficulty controlling their impulses, they lack foresight and judgment, and they are especially vulnerable to peer pressure. This may explain why teens are more prone than adults to shoplift, smoke, experiment with drugs and alcohol, ignore using their seat belts, and engage in a host of other risk-taking behaviors. Their growing and developing brains can also sustain severe immediate and long-term damage when alcohol, drugs, and pornography into their systems. Without even knowing it, many teenagers are damaging and altering their brains for life.

I often think back to my own teenage years and some of the impulsive decisions that led to saying and/or doing things that I quickly regretted. My dad would often question the root of my impulsive behaviors by asking that oft-repeated fatherly question, “What in the world were you thinking?!?” I’ve asked the same question of my own kids. Their answer echoes my answer to my dad: “I don’t know.”

While there may be marked differences in the ways that different teens view the intellectual capabilities of adults, their newfound and developing ability to think as an adult will make for some interesting conversations and confrontations at home. Sometimes the best approach is for parents to bite their tongue and understand that this is a part of normal adolescent development. Remember, your adolescent is not yet an adult. You can expect an interesting mix of adult thinking ability tainted by immaturity, impulsivity, and inconsistent logic. As someone once said, “the best substitute for experience is being sixteen!”

Wise parents learn that while it is important to continue to offer structure, Godly guidance, direction, advice, and explanations, they should at the same time give their children some freedom to make their own decisions. Some of the best lessons are learned through discovery. Your kids will appreciate this, and it will benefit them in the long run. Parents who continue to do all the thinking for their teenagers will raise children who will have difficulty making vocational, marriage, educational, time-management, ethical, and other important choices later in life. In our house, our general rule has been this: When they are children, we most often think for them. As they move into adolescence, we most often think with them. We do this so that when they become adults, they will be able to think for themselves.

As parents, encourage the use of these new intellectual capacities by doing the following:

● Challenge your teenager to reflect on issues about which you might not see eye-to-eye. Share God’s perspective by leading them to Scriptures that speak to the issue or situation. By doing so, you will model and encourage responsible and Biblical critical thinking.

● Encourage discussion, and be sure to listen before offering advice. Teenagers who sense they’ve been respected and heard, are much more prone to listen to those who have first listened to them.

● Treat your teenager as an adult whose opinions you value by allowing them an increased role in the family decision-making process.

● Always teach God’s standards of right and wrong, and be sure to explain and enforce appropriate consequences. By doing so, you will provide the structure their developing brain lacks. In effect, you will become their pre-frontal cortex!

Now that my kids are adults themselves, suddenly I’m smart again. What goes around comes around. If you are struggling with an intellectually superior teenager, trust me, there will be a day when you too will get smart again!

Abercrombie. . . Where Ethics, Brains, and Beauty Are Only Skin Deep. . .

Is it possible that a clothing retailer could be any more shallow or ignorant? I don't ask this question in a momentary fit of knee-jerk anger. My question's been years in the making. Consider that I've on occasion wondered out loud about Abercrombie's worldview, ethos, tactics, and products. The company's lack of common-sense and decency sparked past blogs, including "More Reason to Not Like Abercrombie," "Abercrombie and Our 7-Year-Olds,"  "Cultural Hypocrisy and Abercrombie," "Hey Abercrombie I Accept You As My Savior," , and "Women and Pornography Addiction." After seeing how many times the company prompted a blog, I'm happy to say that I've never spent a penny in that store. But then again, I think that Abercrombie CEO Mike Jeffries is happy about my decision, because - after all - a guy like me sporting their threads could do serious damage to the Abercrombie image and brand.

Abercrombie CEO Mike Jeffries - Age 68 and Hip!

What is it that's sparked my ire today? Well, according to a story by Ashley Lutz in Business Insider, Abercrombie & Fitch only wants thin customers. In fact, they consciously don't stock women's clothing in XL and larger sizes because they don't want overweight women wearing their brand. Lutz says that Abercrombie wants "the cool kids and they don't consider plus-sized women as being a part of that group." She reports that Mike Jeffries admits that his business is built around sex appeal in everything. They only hire good-looking people to work in their stores because good-looking people attract good-looking people and they don't want to market to anyone who isn't good looking. I guess it could ruin their brand. . . which is where a guy like me could really screw up their marketing plan! In one interview Jeffries said this: "A lot of people don't belong (in our clothes), and they can't belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely." At least he's honest. But his honesty provides an open window into a heart that's running on empty.

Here are some thoughts sparked by this latest not-so-surprising news from Abercrombie. . . .

• We are suckers for marketing. Abercrombie has effectively grabbed our kids with these strategies. They've seized on and exploited their developmental insecurities. As a result, they are promoting and feeding a worldview that is so shallow that its depth might soon be measured in negative numbers. Kids who wear Abercrombie think the brand is helping them, when in reality it is destructive. The only people helped by the brand are those who are making a lucrative living off the brand.
• We not only pay Abercrombie for their over-priced clothing, but we then wear it. . . as walking billboards. Yes, our kids are paying the company to serve as an advertisement. That's a total reversal from how the billboard marketing on the side of the highway works. If you look at it this way, Abercrombie is pretty doggone smart. . . which means that we're pretty doggone stupid.
• We need to know that wearing the brand is more about the fabric on our bodies. We have no clue just how powerful branding has become in our culture if we think that Abercrombie is "just a shirt." No, it's a way of life. It's about the fabric of the world. . . who we should be, what we should believe, how we should live. Abercrombie is a worldview. 
• We (parents, youth workers, etc.) need to not only make our kids wise to the entire Abercrombie story and ethos, but we must go a step further and encourage them to promote a better worldview by ignoring the brand with their time, attention, and money. Don't spend a penny at Abercrombie.
• It's not just Abercrombie. And no, I'm not only talking about other clothing brands that are complicit in these strategies. Here's a very serious question. . . are we doing the same thing in our churches and youth ministries? Seriously. We continue to see a push towards style over substance. To relevance at the expense of depth. To a reliance on marketing and business savvy over and above a reliance on the Holy Spirit. Is it possible that the hipster look and resulting hipster faith that we so carefully pursue and cultivate could be making those who might be "plus-sized" (i.e. older, less style-obsessed) have no place in our "store" or with our "message." If that's the case, we'll soon be measuring the depth of the church with negative numbers.

Here's one more link for your reading pleasure. . . . Any Taylor's "Open Letter from a Fat Chick to Mike Jeffries." 

Teen Sexual Activity vs. Teen Sexual Integrity. . . .

A couple of weeks ago a youth worker was talking to me about his experience reading my book Engaging The Soul of Youth Culture when he was a college student. As we talked about the parts of the book that were most helpful, he mentioned a three-word phrase that he said has stuck with him: "familiarity breeds acceptance." He says that as a youth worker, he's committed to knowing cultural forces that have become familiar to kids. Why? Because even those things that are wrong become normalized and accepted if they become mainstream in culture. Then, he knows what he needs to address from a biblical perspective. You see, few of us are really aware of our own worldview and how it shapes what we think and what we do. Rather, we believe that this is the way the world is and that other people see it this way as well. Familiarity does breed normalcy and acceptance.

I was thinking about how familiarity breeds acceptance as I pondered cultural changes that have occurred since George Michael took his song "I Want Your Sex" to the top of the charts 25 years ago (can you believe it's been that long?!?). I remember talking about that song to my own youth group kids and their parents as we discussed cultural standards and biblical standards for sex. That was back in 1987. Now that those kids are parents themselves, Michael's quarter-century-old lyrics describe the mainstream assumptions of the generation of kids those "kids" are now raising. 

Take a look at the lyrics (below). The words aren't instructive or suggestive as they once were. They've become familiar and accepted. Now, they are descriptive. . . 

It's natural
It's chemical (let's do it)
It's logical
Habitual (can we do it?)
It's sensual
But most of all.....
Sex is something that we should do
Sex is something for me and you

Sex is natural - sex is good
Not everybody does it
But everybody should
Sex is natural - sex is fun
Sex is best when it's....one on one
One on one

Sadly, those last two lines might even indicate that George Michael's sexual understanding is a bit old-fashioned in terms of present day understandings about the purpose, place, and practice of sex. 

This morning I was reading a passage from Acts, chapter 2. As Peter addressed  the crowd during his sermon at Pentecost, he called them to turn themselves around and embrace Christ. In verse 40 he tells them to "save yourselves from this crooked generation." As we think about what those words mean for us today, we're not talking about just one generation, but a crookedness and corruptness that has grabbed us all. . . weaving itself through every nook and cranny of every life. We need to identify with Jesus and his cause with every square inch and moment of our lives. This includes our sexuality. With the culture sending so many familiar sexual messages (it's become ambient noise that's hardly noticeable anymore) that breed acceptance, there's another sexual script that must be taught, told, and lived. Take for example the mainstream Trojan Condom broadcast ad that I've posted below. What assumptions does it make about sex and sexuality? And, do you realize that those assumptions exist without question in today's youth culture?

Here at CPYU, we want to see all people (including ourselves) embrace God's life-giving and liberating will and way for all things. . . including our sexuality. We want to know the truth so well that those lies which have become so familiar will become clear to young and old alike.

If you'd like to know more about how to help the young people you know and love embrace God's grand design and big "Yes!" for their sexuality, consider joining us for tomorrow's 1-hour webinar with Jason Soucinek, the Director of our new Sexual Integrity Initiative here at CPYU. The webinar - "Raising Up Youth Who Believe in Sexual Integrity" - begins at 1pm (Eastern Time) on Tuesday, May 14.  You can get more information and register here. We invite parents, youth workers, and pastors to join us. 

 

Remembering Dallas Willard. . . .

"Readers are leaders." I've had several people tell me that over the years. I don't know that my reading has led me to leading, but I do know that reading has opened my eyes to so much. I would say that "Learners are readers." And, as I've learned to read, there are several writers who have become "must-reads" for me. John Stott, Tim Keller, David Wells, Os Guinness, Francis Schaeffer to name a few. Dallas Willard is also on that list.

Dallas Willard

Willard went to be with His Lord yesterday. I recently re-read his book The Spirit of the Disciplines. It was required reading for one of our Doctor of Ministry in Ministry to the Emerging Generations cohorts at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Such a good book. I thought I would pass on a couple of quotes from The Spirit of the Disciplines. If you've already read it, perhaps this will spark you to pick it up again. And if you've never read it, maybe you will pick it up for the first time.

"My central claim is that we can become like Christ by doing one thing - by following him in the overall style of life he chose for himself."

"What activities did Jesus practice? Such things as solitude and silence, prayer, simple and sacrificial living, intense study and meditation upon God's Word and God's ways, and service to others."

"The 'cost of discipleship,' though it may take all we have, is small when compared to the lot of those who don't accept Christ's invitation to be a part of his company in The Way of life."

"A thoughtless theology guides our lives with just as much force as a thoughtful and informed one."

"One specific errant concept has done inestimable harm to the church and God's purposes with us - and that is the concept that has restricted the Christian idea of salvation to mere forgiveness of sins."

"When we are in isolation from God and not in the proper social bonds with others, we cannot rule the earth for good - the idea is simply absurd."

"Where have we gotten this idea about 'doing what feels good'? The unrestrained hedonism of our own day comes historically from the 18th-century idealization of happiness and is filtered through the 19th-century English ideology of pleasure as the good for people. Finally, it emerges in the form of our present 'feel good' society - tragically pandered to by the popular culture and much of popular religion as well. Think about it. Isn't the most generally applied standard of success for a religious service whether or not people feel good in it and after it?"

"It is solitude and solitude alone that opens the possibility of a radical relationship with God that can withstand all external events up to and beyond death."

"What individuals are ready to do, what sits in them ready to burst forth, goes far to explain why people do the ghastly things they do. They are set to do them. There is a 'real presence' of evil scarcely beneath the surface of every human action an transaction."

"It is in his faith alone that we can find a basis from which the evil in human character and life can be dislodged. We have one realistic hope for dealing with the world's problems. And that is the person and gospel of Jesus Christ, living here and now, in people who are his by total identification found through the spiritual disciplines."

"Ministers pay fare too much attention to people who do not come to services. Those people should, generally, be given exactly that disregard by the pastor that they give to Christ. The Christian leaders has something much more important to do than pursue the godless. The leader's task is to equip the saints until they are like Christ (Eph. 4:12), and history and the God of history waits for him to do this job. It is so easy for the leader today to get caught up in illusory goals, pursuing the marks of success which come from our training as Christian leaders or which are simply imposed by the world. It is big, Big, always BIG, and BIGGER STILL! That is the contemporary imperative. Thus we fail to take seriously the nurture and training of those, however few, who stand constantly by us."

Texting Your Students. . . A Need for Youth Ministry Wisdom. . . .

Stupid. Now, it seems just plain stupid and risky.

Thirty-five years ago I was a freckle-faced youth ministry rookie. . . twenty-one years old, just out of college, exuberant about ministry, naive, and incredibly naive. I had just signed on to do full-time ministry with the Coalition for Christian Outreach, a campus ministry organization based in Pittsburgh. I was single and working about 80 hours a week, splitting that time between ministry on the local college campus and doing youth ministry in a local church. A good portion of our time was spent doing "contact work." That was ministry code for getting to know kids. Being somewhat extroverted, it fueled me. But thinking back to those early days and many of the years that followed, there was a "stupid" component to my ministry. . . in fact, it was a "stupid" component to the way everyone I knew in ministry was doing ministry.

The "stupid" part of our ministry had to do with the way in which we engaged with students. It didn't seem at all stupid at the time. After all, it all seemed so innocent. But filtering our ministry efforts through the framework of life in today's world. . . WOW! . . . I'm not sure it was really all that smart and I'm grateful that my innocence never got me in trouble. For example, the ultimate way to get to know a student was to spend time in their bedroom. The bedroom was the student's space. You could learn a lot about a student's heart, beliefs, worldview, and convictions by looking at their walls, checking out their music collection, scanning their bookshelf, etc. For someone like me who had been trained in sociology and anthropology, this was always an amazing ethnographic opportunity. It still would be a great way to get to know kids if we didn't live in such a dangerous and creepy world. But too much can happen. We know that, especially if we know ourselves. In hindsight, I realize that even the perceived and actual value of all that time I spent in the car with kids - alone and in groups.. . both male and female. . . sure, it was amazing ministry time filled with significant conversations, but I'd never do that today.

In recent years, I've had loads of opportunity to train youth workers in how to get to know kids, how to get to know their culture, and how to do youth ministry in a rapidly changing culture. I believe that it's that rapidly changing culture coupled with the reality of our own fallenness that requires us to exercise wisdom, diligence, and discipline as we set parameters for how we spend time with our students. Time with them is necessary and required. But I have to admit some concern regarding the lack of parameters and boundaries that I sometimes encounter. I've done a complete about-face. . . telling youth workers to stay out of kids' bedrooms and to avoid time alone in the car. You might never do anything or even think of doing anything, but you have no control over what others might do or say regarding that time. It's best to be prudent and safe.

Tim Keller defines "wisdom" as "competence with regards to the complex realities of life." He says that wisdom includes insight (knowing how things really work in the world), prudence (knowing how things really are in the world), and action (knowing what I should do about it). Youth workers need to pursue wisdom and live wisely in the world. That includes how we spend time with and relate to kids. It's about both hindsight (learning from the past. . . both our own past and the past of others) and foresight (anticipating how to live in the world in light of what we've learned from the past).

Which leads to this question: "How can we exercise wisdom in regards to our use of social media with kids?" It's an important question that not only sets good boundaries for our relationships, but it's also instructional as we nurture kids into a lifetime of living wisely in the midst of all the distractions and tools that they've been given.

I have one quick suggestion for how to make that happen. It has to do with text-messaging. My thoughts are prompted by some pretty direct questions I fielded last week from some youth workers who were considering how to set text-messaging borders and boundaries. They specifically asked about what could go wrong, and they had a desire to prevent that from happening. Their question prompted me to think back to my own early years of youth ministry and the fact that asking those kinds of questions never even crossed my mind. I was impressed! I was also prompted to think about wisdom and the need to apply wisdom to life and ministry in a rapidly changing culture.

My suggestion is this: even though text-messaging is the preferred method of communication for students, it isn't the best method of communication for anybody. Face-to-face communication is always the best. . . and I fear that we're losing the ability to do that effectively. That doesn't mean that I'm saying you should stop texting. I don't think that at all. There's a time, a place, and use for texting. Instead, we should be texting wisely. . . even redemptively. We should be texting in an "in but not of the world" kind of manner. That's the way we should be doing everything, right? Here are three quick standards that I encourage you to consider:

• Don't nurture kids into text-based communication. Always opt for face-to-face communication so that you can communicate deeply while nurturing them into an art that is on its way to being forgotten.
• Be very careful about texting one-on-one with students. I used to advise against one-on-one texting with students of the opposite sex. I liken it to riding alone in the car. But in today's cultural setting, it might be best to start considering the avoidance of one-on-one texting with students of any sex. If that doesn't sit well with you, just take a moment to contemplate what could go wrong.
• Make texting one of the ways you communicate with kids. I think there's a great value to mass-texting. Mass-texting your entire youth group is a great way to spread the word.
• Always, always, always think about your text message before you send a text-message. Is this wise? Is this helpful? Could this be misinterpreted? 

A word to the wise from someone who's been there. . . do youth ministry today in a way that you will never be able to label as "stupid" or "risky" 35 years from now.

Money, Sex, and Power. . . Thinking About Those Things That Destroy Pastors. . . .

I've been reading through Eugene Peterson's memoir over the last couple of weeks. It's simply titled The Pastor. Peterson brings a sensibility and wisdom that's much-needed and often ignored in our relevance-obsessed church culture here in America. It's a sensibility and wisdom that comes from his ability to see things through the lens of Scripture in a manner that combines with the smarts that can only come with age.

Last week I read an especially interesting passage from Peterson's book which I've included for you below. It's a letter to a pastor friend. . . a warning letter of sorts. It's a warning letter about the dangers of "adrenaline and ego and size" in our world of ministry. It's good. Really good. I would go so far as to say that if you ignore it, you ignore it to your own peril.

A few days have passed since I read that passage. Since then, I read another newspaper story about one of our own who stepped down from a high profile ministry due to an adulterous affair. This time it was in Orlando and yes, the newspaper noticed. The story's headline reads, "Discovery Church illustrates how power of pulpit can lead pastors to affairs." I don't at all envy this church as they are no doubt going through some very difficult days. Their response is a good one. I don't know all the details, nor do I need to. I'm sure there are many variables here as there are in all stories. I think we need to think about our own response. Our own response should be a response that looks inward at ourselves.

These stories are well worth reading. Give them a read. Then, read the passage from Peterson's The Pastor that I've quoted below. And while you read. . . remember. . . we're all only one bad decision away from being a story in a newspaper.

One Tuesday as we were getting ready to break up, one of our company announced that he was leaving his congregation for another, a church of a thousand members, three times the size of where he was. He described it as “more promising.” I had lunch with Phillip later that week, and he told me that he felt his gifts were being wasted where he was, that he needed more of a challenge, more opportunity to “multiply his effectiveness” (his term). He had not been one of the original members of the Company, but he had been with us for seven years. He was thoroughly familiar with the particular ethos of pastor that had been developing among us.

The more he talked that day over our plate of breadsticks and bowls of vichyssoise, I realized that he had, despite the Company of Pastors, absorbed a concept of pastor that had far more to do with American values—competitive, impersonal, functional—than with what I had articulated as the consensus of our Company in Five Smooth Stones. That bothered me. It didn’t bother me that he was changing congregations—there are many valid, urgent, and, yes, biblical reasons to change congregations. But Phillip’s reasons seemed to be fueled by something more like adrenaline and ego and size. I made a few shy demurrals, but he wasn’t listening. So the next week I wrote him a letter:

Dear Phillip,

I’ve been thinking about our conversation last week and want to respond to what you anticipate in your new congregation. You mentioned its prominence in the town, a center, a kind of cathedral church that would be able to provide influence for the Christian message far beyond its walls. Did I hear you right?

I certainly understand the appeal and feel it myself frequently. But I am also suspicious of the appeal and believe that gratifying it is destructive both to the gospel and the pastoral vocation. It is the kind of thing America specializes in, and one of the consequences is that American religion and the pastoral vocation are in a shabby state.

It is also the kind of thing for which we have abundant documentation through twenty centuries now, of debilitating both congregation and pastor. In general terms it is the devil’s temptation to Jesus to throw himself from the pinnacle of the temple. Every time the church’s leaders depersonalize, even a little, the worshipping/loving community, the gospel is weakened. And size is the great depersonalizer. Kierkegaard’s criticism is still cogent: “the more people, the less truth.”

The only way the Christian life is brought to maturity is through intimacy, renunciation, and personal deepening. And the pastor is in a key position to nurture such maturity. It is true that these things can take place in the context of large congregations, but only by strenuously going against the grain. Largeness is an impediment, not a help.

Classically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence—religious meaning, God meaning—apart from God as revealed in the cross of Jesus: through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs, through the ecstasy of recreational sex, through the ecstasy of crowds. Church leaders frequently warn against the drugs and the sex, but, at least in America, almost never against the crowds. Probably because they get so much ego benefit from the crowds.

But a crowd destroys the spirit as thoroughly as excessive drink and depersonalized sex. It takes us out of ourselves, but not to God, only away from him. The religious hunger is rooted in the unsatisfactory nature of the self. We hunger to escape the dullness, the boredom, the tiresomeness of me. We can escape upward or downward. Drugs and depersonalized sex are a false transcendence downward. A crowd is an exercise in false transcendence upward, which is why all crowds are spiritually pretty much the same, whether at football games, political rallies, or church.

So why are we pastors so unsuspicious of crowds, so naive about the false transcendence that they engender? Why are we so knowledgeable in the false transcendence of drink and sex and so unlearned in the false transcendence of crowds? There are many spiritual masters in our tradition who diagnose and warn, but they are little read today. I myself have never written what I really feel on this subject, maybe because I am not entirely sure of myself, there being so few pastors alive today who agree. Or maybe it is because I don’t want to risk wholesale repudiation by friends whom I genuinely like and respect. But I really do feel that crowds are a worse danger, far worse, than drink or sex, and pastors may be the only people on the planet who are in a position to encourage an imagination that conceives of congregation strategically not in terms of its size but as a congenial setting for becoming mature in Christ in a community, not a crowd.

Your present congregation is close to ideal in size to employ your pastoral vocation for forming Christian maturity. You talked about “multiplying your influence.” My apprehension is that your anticipated move will diminish your vocation, not enhance it.

Can we talk more about this? I would welcome a continuing conversation.

The peace of Christ,
Eugene

That was the end of it. We never did have the conversation. He accepted the call to the big church, and then another, and then another. I would get occasional reports on him from friends. All the reports seemed to document that size was turning out to be a false transcendence in his life.

Unmarried Moms, Cultural Trends, and Youth Ministry. . . .

Have you pondered the news that was released last Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau? The agency released a report that offers insight into current values and attitudes through it's statistical analysis of behavioral trends. The report, Social and Economic Characteristics of Currently Unmarried Women with a Recent Birth: 2011, tells us that as of 2011, 62 percent of women ages 20 to 24 who gave birth in the previous 12 months were unmarried. We also know that 23 percent of all unmarried births are to teenagers.

From New York City's Teen Pregnancy Campaign

Changing understandings, values, and attitudes are evidenced in behavior. Our views on marriage, sexuality, family, child-rearing, and parenthood are shifting. Overall, the well-being of children is at stake. . . a not-so surprising outcome when God's order and design is jettisoned, forgotten, and even seen as archaic. An article in our local paper here in Lancaster puts faces and names to these changes.

Here at CPYU, we promote a three-fold response to cultural realities. First, as followers of Christ we are called to be prophetic. We are to know, understand, live, and teach God's order and design in every square inch of life. This prophetic presence will salt and illuminate a world struggling with advancing decay and darkness. Second, as followers of Christ we are called to be preventive. We must deliberately endeavor to instruct our children in ways that will equip them to steer clear of dangerous choices while speeding towards following God's will and God's way for their lives. Finally, as followers of Christ we are called to be redemptive. Not a day will go by when we encounter those within the church and without the church who mess up. This includes our very selves. How will we work to restore individuals, to bring hope and healing to difficult situations, or to bring positive outcomes consequences of poor decisions?

If you're a youth worker or parent, take some time to read the report. Then do some strategizing. . . prophetic, preventive, and redemptive.

What Is The Wrong Message? LeRoy Butler, Jason Collins, and The Church. . . .

The Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. That's how theologian Karl Barth said Christians should begin their day. Theologian John Stott told us to engage in "Dual Listening". . . the practice of listening to both the Word (Bible) and the world (newspaper) so that we can consciously and carefully bring the light of the former to bear on the darkness of the latter.

I didn't get yesterday's newspaper in my hand until last night. And when I did, I was reminded that opinion and experience outweigh truth in today's culture. To appeal to the truth's of God's Word is laughable, archaic, and just plain stupid. Not only that, we are living in a church culture where it's clear just how much the sequence of John Stott's "Dual Listening" dictum has been increasingly reversed among the very people - Christians - who should be getting the order right. Culture and world is now understood to inform and trump the Word. And before you think that I'm pointing the finger first at others, I realize that this tendency can so easily sneak into my own life. Mark Galli's brilliant piece in the latest Christianity Today on Rob Bell and the "evangelical religion of feeling" sheds some light on this reality, how it works, and what it's done to the church. No doubt, this reality has played out all through the course of history in a variety of ways. It seems that the contemporary issue that reveals these tendencies more than any other might be the debates raging over homosexuality. We should be pausing to ask ourselves, Is the Word illuminating our view of the world? Or, is the world illuminating our view of the Word?

Last night's reminder came in an op-ed piece by USA Today's Christine Brennan that I found inside the sports section. The headline in the print edition caught my eye: "Church sends wrong message." It's important to read in its entirety since you need to evaluate my comments in the context of Brennan's complete piece. Former Green Bay Packer LeRoy Butler (inventor of the "Lambeau Leap") was dis-invited from speaking at a church in Wisconsin after he tweeted a congratulatory message about Jason Collins ("Congrats to Jason Collins") after Collins came out. It seems that Butler's tweet had crossed the line of a morals clause in his speaking contract with the church. Brennan states that the morals clause in question is in effect a pledge that Butler "won't say anything nice about gay people." Brennan goes on to write, "Say this for that congregation: It must make life so much easier when you don't have to concern yourself with all that 'Do unto others' stuff. . . . We can guess what the parents of that church were trying to shield their children from: even the hint of a discussion of gay people in American life."

Like so many other stories from the past few weeks, this one makes my head spin as I try to sort out all that's happening behind the actions and words. Here are some thoughts. . .

First, I believe that we need to listen to and ponder the many critiques of Christians and the church that we are encountering these days. They can be very helpful to us as they open our eyes to how people perceive and experience us. Reality is, there are things that we need to change about the manner in which we present ourselves and engage with others. We look like ignorant idiots because we've been ignorant idiots. But as we encounter these critiques, we need to differentiate between critiques that challenge us, and those that challenge the Gospel. We've been told in the Gospel that the Gospel is offensive. But that does not mean that we need to be offensive in such a way (or any way for that matter) that people can't ever get beyond our offensiveness to encounter the life-changing and life-giving offensiveness of the Gospel.

Second, we need to understand context. My main critique of Brennan's piece is that she doesn't include context, an omission that can so easily lead to misinformation and poor conclusions. Granted, I have no idea what transpired at the church after Butler sent out his tweet. As one who has served on a church staff and been responsible for bringing speakers in to speak to youth group kids I understand the responsibility and need to serve as a gate-keeper. Who knows how this decision was made, why it was made, and how difficult it may have been? Who knows what the church knew? It's a dangerous jump to conclude from the reversal of the invitation that this is a church that doesn't concern itself with all that "Do unto others" stuff, that they don't say anything nice about gay people, or that the parents are about shielding their kids from a discussion of gay people in America. Take a lesson. . . as we enter into these extremely sensitive discussions we can't be quick to jump to conclusions void of context.

Finally, we need to keep devouring the Word. If we aren't careful to keep our bearings we are sure to lose our bearings. The Word should not only inform what we believe, but how we engage with those who might think and believe differently. We need to be people of deep conviction and we need to be willing to pay whatever price those convictions bring. But we can never be ignorant and graceless idiots.

What Does This Say About Us? A Little Exercise In Culture Watching. . . .

A couple of weeks ago someone sent me a heads-up about the new commercials for Facebook Home. If you're on Facebook, the social media giant has most likely hit you up with a few of their ads for Facebook Home during your own Facebook experience. The TV commercials are clever. . . not at all surprising. But could there be more to them than just an attempt to inform?

Here at CPYU we are constantly reminding you of culture's two-fold power to serve as both a map and a mirror. As a map, it is directive. It tells how to live in the world. As a mirror, it is reflective. It tells us how we are already choosing (most likely unconsciously) to live in the world. Culture has power. As cultural artifacts, the Facebook Home ads certainly function in this way. . . they are both maps and mirrors.

As followers of Christ, we are - or should be - committed to Kingdom of God oriented living. This requires us to listen to both the Word and the world. Listening to the Word hones our ability to discern what we see and hear in the world. It helps us to evaluate the accuracy and appropriateness of the maps we encounter. . . while helping us to evaluate the accuracy and appropriateness of the maps we've already chosen to follow. And, where adjustments and corrections must be made, we should make them.

So. . . back to the map and mirror of the particular Facebook Home ad that takes us into the dining room and the family dinner (see the video below). . . What is it telling us? What does it tell us about ourselves? How does it tell us we should live in the world?Does it tell us about how
we are already living in the world? Should we be concerned? And finally, how could we use this ad with our kids?