Culture "War"?

I've been wondering about this term, which floats around in the media, in the blogosphere, everywhere. I've been thinking that here we have another hyperbolic use of "war" as a descriptor for the differences of opinion which pervade our culture. It is ours, isn't it? Don't all of us contribute to its many facets? it isn't truly monolithic, is it? especially not if you turn off the TV for an extended period of time. At some point I plan to blog on the TV-free life I lead, but not yet.

Here's an excerpt I like from Andy Crouch's article in Christianity Today:

"There was violence and disintegration in the day of Jesus, too. Jesus was hardly shy about confronting the patterns of sin in his culture—though he was consistently harder on the pious than he was on the pagans.

But everywhere Jesus went, life blossomed. The sick were healed, lepers were touched, daughters and sons were plucked from the mouth of the grave. Jesus left behind him a trail of leaps and laughter, reunited families, and terrific wine, as well as dumbfounded synagogue leaders, uneasy monarchs, and sleepless procurators. His witness against violence, amidst a culture in rebellion against the good, was neither withdrawal nor war. It was simply life: abundant, just, generous life. And, ultimately, a willingness to let the enemies of life do their worst, confident that even death could not extinguish the abundant life of God."

These words remind me that I don't want to be a warrior--instead, I have a better model, and I'd better start following.

A Keen and Surprising Witness!

Here is an excerpt from Glenn Stanton's current article in Christianity Today--I'm excerpting it here by way of follow-up to earlier exchanges here and elsewhere about homosexuality and Christianity. This excerpt sheds light while expressing the author's viewpoint, I think:

I have seen true humanism at work in a friend named Anita, whose life is illuminated by the Incarnation. Many years ago, her son announced that he was homosexual. As a Christian mother, she was devastated. Her efforts to "talk her son straight" were to no avail. Years later, she got an evening job waiting tables at a restaurant. Her boss asked her if she realized the diner was a "gay hangout" at night. Feeling that God had led her to the job, she stuck it out. She applied herself to her work and came to love the men that came in every night.

Years later her son, Tony, now a young adult, moved in with his partner, Rick, an older man. Rick was not kind to Anita, saying things to shock and embarrass her polite Christian sensibilities. Anita also learned that Rick had infected her only son with HIV and that they both had contracted full-blown AIDS. She wrestled with hatred and anger, but then she remembered what she had learned years earlier by working with young gay men. Anita explains, "Rick was not the enemy. He was another lost soul created in the image of God, just like my son."

So Anita committed herself to loving and caring for the man who had given her son a death sentence. In Rick's last months and weeks, Anita fed and cleaned him, tracked his medications, changed his diapers, and just spent time talking and being with him. Rick came to love Anita, and they shared many sweet moments together before his slow death. Rick is gone, and Tony is still alive. But they both witnessed the remarkable, incarnated grace of Christ through Anita.

I'm proud to count Anita as a colaborer with me in the culture war. But I'm even more proud to consider her my fellow humanist.

Copyright © 2006 Christianity Today. Click (http://lists.christianitytoday.com

Uplift vs. Teardown: a dichotomy with eternal ramifications?

I was reading an entry here at Common Grounds, Glenn Lucke's blog, about how we use our time. That led me to an epiphany about the blogosphere, about how bloggers choose to use their time and their postings. Mine are infrequent, due to workload and the many other demands on my thinking time and inspiration, but some people take vast amounts of time, posting every day, dialoging with others, and in so doing, they create one of two impressions: they offer uplift to their readers, or they offer argument.

Granted, as Glenn and others point out, we need to engage in argument, questioning and criticism--this keeps our minds sharp, keeps us thinking. But there is no shortage of argument, some of it not too clean, some of it rather emotive and sloppy. Following along the trail of an argument in a blog sometimes leaves me with an indigestive feeling in the mind, as if I'd eaten an entire meal of cotton candy, or of acidic foods, or of fatty substances. Then I need to go away from that blog, resist engagement with the teardown. Sometimes I think it's too easy for an argument to veer off-course into teardown.

The other night I was reading C. S. Lewis' remarks on how we can fall into a seductive kind of hating, where the energy of conflict itself becomes a pleasure. He points out that this is the ultimate nadir, the essential state of fallen humanity, the playground of the devil, if you will. That's the real danger lurking for us, as Christian thinkers, he implies. And I think he's right. So what do I learn from this? Avoid teardown, smackdown, the joy of conflict. That path leads downward. Argument requires the safeguard of cool reason, and constant requests for grace.