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When the forms of an old culture are dying the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure.
Time and time again I’ve sat in Church and sang some old hymn and asked the following question: “Why do I sit here week after week and recite bad Victorian poetry?”, I glance up at God, God glances down at me and I’m pretty sure that he shrugs his shoulders and replies: “I don’t know, I’ve been meaning to ask you the same question!”. If this goes on much longer I am pretty sure that God is going to lose his patience with me big time!
Churches are confusing places and Christians tend to be even more confusing; do we proclaim a radical gospel with ‘good news’ for today’s people, or do we slip into Christian jargon with outdated terms and language? Do we actually realise the full implications of words such as ‘sin’ and ‘salvation’, do they make any sense to the secular world or do they merely give people a rather abstract picture of what it’s all about? If we’re not careful we are in danger of providing non-christians with some very weird ideas.
We live in an age when modern forms of communication and culture are expanding as never before and many of the far reaching perspectives and ideologies by which people have lived their lives have been broken down into much smaller pieces by which we can catch a glimpse of what might be the full picture — but we know we can’t understand everything, this is a process which has affected everything from politics to art.
Popular culture is a priceless window to understanding our world, for example a copy of Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit might be of more relevance to the latter part of the 20th century than John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The hard core techno of Moby might have something to say which Charles Wesley missed.
Distinctions between high art and low art have rapidly diminished as new art forms have developed through increased technology. Could it be that the television in the corner of the room actually has something relevant to say?
Yet Christianity still seems to reflect medieval culture; a time when folk tales and moral stories were taken literally, when Noah really did collect a menagerie of animals and braved the floods in a homemade boat, when creation is understood in terms of a woman wearing a fig leaf, continually we fail to understand the Bible in the context of which it was written and put together. The Bible stands with all its questions and contradictions as a document by which we can catch a glimpse of the larger picture, a snap shot rather than a panoramic view. When I was a child I thought like a child, but now I am a man …, we are grown ups in a rapidly changing world and very often the culture we cling to as Christians’ may not be that which has sprung from a relationship which was the product of an earlier age. We may have to accept that existing church structures, language and liturgy are not those to which modern men and women can relate. By clinging steadfastly to the past we may do more damage to the Church than we realise but yet we also have to be careful that we don’t throw out rich traditions which may still be of value.
More importantly, we need to ask questions. Christ was more sympathetic to the confused tax collector than he was towards the pious Pharisee. Christ was far from pious; he ate and drank with the people of his time and spoke to them in a language that they could understand. All the more reason why we should seek to embrace contemporary culture and drag the Church into the 21st century.
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Last modified: 25th November 2005