Christian Cultural Conundrum! Christians can be pretty lame. That’s generally the feeling I get from our society when watching TV shows and movies, also through interactions in my daily life. Everyone’s seen the guy on the corner of the street yelling at the “heathen sinners” from his megaphone, or the syrupy sweet girl who seems oblivious to the world around her. When I see these people, I just roll my eyes; maybe you do the same, or maybe you're filled with rage or pity. Let me back up and tell you that I am, in fact, a Christian. I believe Jesus was and is who he claimed to be, and that is a fact that has radically changed who I am as a person. The truth is, when identifying myself as a Christian I become uneasy. In our society, self-identifying as a Christian carries a stigma. Depending on the person, the stigma ranges somewhere between that of a Nazi and a Justin Bieber fanatic. Think about it--how many “cool” celebrity Christians can you name? I’m not the epitome of cool by any means, and I don’t think that is something Christians, or anyone for that matter, should strive to be. I feel that the reason this stigma exists is because a majority of believers in Christianity have cloistered themselves off from the rest of the world, rendering themselves irrelevant to the world around them. I feel I must here make a distinction between two categories of Christian: “professing” and “practicing.” According to most polls, at least seventy-five percent of Americans identify as Christian. However, far fewer practice that faith in any genuine

way. “Professing” Christians often view their Christianity as something inherited, such as ethnicity; for “practicing” Christians, their faith is more than a title--it’s the driving force of their lives. It’s the “practicing” Christians that I will be discussing, because I feel that these Christians are whom society views as “lame,” and are the primary cause for the stigma of Christianity. There are many really awesome Christians that are extremely welcoming, loving, and caring--I write, not to say that these “lame” Christians are bad people, they are simply culturally insignificant. I’ve attended just about every denomination of church, all over this country and the world, so I feel that I can speak from an informed perspective. I've seen and interacted with these believers in a multitudes of settings, and while each church or group of Christians that you meet will definitely have qualities that separate them from the next, no matter where you go, one trait continually asserts itself: the tendency, whether intentional or not, to pull away from secular culture. This tendency to pull away from the culture of the “non-Christian world” often comes accidentally. It’s within human nature to desire association with people of similar beliefs and ideals. No matter who you are, and what beliefs you hold, I would wager that the vast majority of those you consider yourself closest to, view the world fairly similarly to the way you yourself do-- its natural. For some Christians, the desire to associate with those like them leads to involvement in church functions every day of the week.These functions range from traditional Sunday morning and Wednesday night services, to other distinctly Christian activities like midweek

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prayer or worship nights, coffee shop bible studies, and “Community groups” where people come together at a home and discuss their lives in relation to the lessons learned in church and through bible studies. Church functions can also be purely recreational--church planned bowling trips, beach retreats, golf tournaments, etc. all provide Christians activities that keep them firmly inside of a comfort zone filled with people just like them. It’s the tendency to pack ones schedule full of these activities that inadvertently causes believers to become disconnected with the culture outside of their church group. For some Christians, the decision to separate from secular culture is deliberate. They view non-Christian society as a constant source of temptation, dangerous to the believer--holding fast to verses in the Bible like Romans 12:2 which exhorts believers to not be conformed by the world. When I was fresh out of high school I attended a private Christian College that held this belief. School policy severely restricted when students could and could not leave campus, and where they went upon leaving-- i.e. no bars, clubs, churches of other faiths and denominations, or even movie theaters. This may seem extreme and unfounded, but the administration's goal in instating these rules was to keep the student body “an example of the believers, in word...in faith, in purity” (1 Tim 4:12). However, what was accomplished was the creation of a safe and completely sterile “Christian bubble” in which the campus and students were trapped, unable to interact with the world around them. To Christians who find themselves separated from the world outside of their Christian bubble I would like to say one

thing: do not allow your sense of comfort or the desire to maintain purity inhibit you from affecting the world around you. Focus on embracing and showing love to the people within the culture that you find yourself. Jesus himself is quoted in Mathew 22 verses 37-40 as saying, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart...this is the first and greatest commandment and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Jesus is saying, everything else falls into place when we make love our focus. By interacting with society, learning from and contributing to the culture around us we become relevant. The Apostle Paul illustrated this in saying: “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some” (1 Cor 9:22). By actively participating in culture we, like Paul, are better able to love the world around us. Learning from and participating in the interests of people outside our comfort zone we are better able to relate to them--in doing so we help to lift the stigma of Christianity that we have garnered.

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