The "Biblical" Man...

"Where ya gonna live?...The best thing you can do is buy a home. From an investment standpoint, from a tax standpoint, from a security standpoint, particularly you single guys..." -Mark Driscoll 18 Oct 2008

And Jesus said to him, "The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." -Luke 9:58 NASB

I have long hesitated to this blog. This is mostly because I try not be totally negative. It's also because the podcast that motivates this blogs annoyed me. There was so much fail in it that I didn't know where to start. Then again, I might just be being hissy. I digress a bit.

Anyway, it was very strange when Christianity Today included Mark Driscoll in their list of hipster, cutting edge, pastors. Every time I listen to the guy, he sounds like a stick-in-the-mud conservative. Nowhere was this more evident that his Biblical Man Sermon. This teaching starts with a few verses from proverbs, and then continues with practical advice for about an hour. This "Biblical" teaching is so deeply seated in cultural assumptions, self-help wisdom, and patron-saints of middle class that it raises the question: what does "Biblical" even mean?



When I ask that question, it is not for you to think it is a joke. This is serious. What do you think of when you attach the word "Biblical" to a term? What synonyms would you use? How do you define that adjective as you understand it? Maybe you would agree that it means something like "from the Bible" or maybe "in adherence to the Bible"? Whatever it means when said in the evangelical vernacular, I think we can all agree that it recognizes the Bible in some sense because of its very spelling.

In listening to this sermon, it is hard to understand how Driscoll can mean Biblical in that sense. Now, the sermon is not bad rhetorically. It is sprinkled with stimulating, engaging, questions. The problem is with the answers. The idea is that we need to set goals, and make plans to achieve those goals. We need to think about what lives we want in the future and "reverse engineer" it so that we will arrive. For instance, in planning our lives we must understand what is urgent and important. We must get the job and own the home. We must also make a list of appliances, furniture, and other such things that we will have in our home. In that home we must also be prepared to add equity and value to it so we can buy a bigger home, so as to make our wife and children happy. Sound good?



The problem with all of this is that it it is not "from the Bible." The first chunk of advice seems to come from an amalgamation of books like Rich Dad Poor Dad, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and probably a dozen other books of the same genre. He even cited Stephan Covey at the end of the sermon, who by the way, is a Mormon! The other huge chunk are anecdotes of Driscoll's own success. It probably does not count as bragging, but Mark Driscoll did not write an Epistle. So do not think this is biblical.

Now, understandably, some might think that I'm endorsing laziness, sloth, or perpetuated adolescence. You might be thinking, "so you don't think setting goals is good? Do you believe that developing plans is bad? Setting yourself up to build wealth or provide for yourself and others is evil?" To all this I answer an emphatic, "no of course not." I think a books like 7 Habits or Getting Things Done, are great reads. Rich Dad/Poor Dad gave me a lot to think about. Of course all these things are good, but they are not biblical.

So why bother writing this blog? Well, because it is important -for Christians- to know where their values come from because God might challenge them. Some of the things we hold as Biblical might not be so Biblical after all. Take the whole home-ownership issue. Does owning a home, building equity in the home, and buying a better home make you a Biblical man? Is it a necessary goal for the Biblical man? Well, interestingly enough I know lots of men in the Bible who had no homes. Most of the patriarchs were nomads, and Jesus as cited above, warned those who sought to follow him that "the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." (Let's not forget that he was born in a stable.)



It seems that Jesus is not a Biblical man. Furthermore, he seems to caution would-be disciples that if the follow him, they may not have homes either! I can imagine that many missionary families understand what this means. So what about the denizens of Seattle?

But maybe I am being harsh? It wasn't as if Driscoll didn't use some distinctive Christian topics in his sermon. Driscoll did, after all, talk about God as a gracious God. He also encouraged men to "walk with God" in this sermon. Yes he did. God is so gracious, that he might get you into the home of dreams (complete with white picket fence!). "Walking with God" means prayerfully setting up your plans. If you think this is hyperbole, listen to the sermon yourself.

It seems so blindingly obvious that the pervading culture, not an exegesis of scripture, is what is authoritative here. It leads to the bizarre conclusion in which Jesus wouldn't live up to Driscoll's standards. I am not the first blogger to notice this either. If hipster Christianity is the liberal-arts student, who smokes clove cigarettes while reading "the Imitation of Christ" at an indie coffee shop, than Mark Driscoll is the transparent poser wearing his high-school letterman jacket over a Radiohead t-shirt. According to Christianity Today, the Christian hipsters want a faith that distinguishable from the values of suburbs. They probably need to look outside of Mars Hill.

So what does the word "Biblical [man]" mean? As far as I can tell, it is nothing more than a synonym for "upright middle class [man]" or "socially and fiscally, conservative [man]" or maybe just simply "right." It is nothing here than a staple phrase for the American Civic Religion. And you know what? Let's go for it. I am not against the nuclear family, setting goals, or steadily building financial success. There's nothing wrong with finding the right career and being nice to your neighbors. I wish that all guys reading this would pick up 7 Habits and all those other great books to enhance their relationships, careers, and share such guidance with others. We can all be on the suburban band wagon and our kids can play little league together.

But when we do, let's drop the pretense. Let's remember that the civic religion is nothing more than that. Let's discard the illusions that it is "from the Bible" and remember it has but a thin connection to the Christian faith.

Thanks for reading, and your comments are always welcome here.

Questions on Christian Hipsterism: Part II

Hello again, my fellow Christian Hipsters. Thanks everyone who responded to my previous post on this subject. You make me glad when you post comments. Today, I hope to continue this conversation on the important phenomena of Christian Hipsterism -whether you are at Mosaic, Mars Hill, or any other church.

I'm sure everyone already knows that this is not the first wave of "Christian Cool" or however you want to term it. Years ago, in the sixties and the seventies, there were people who also wanted to be hip, follow Jesus, and avoid the established Christian culture. They too, wanted a more authentic version of Christianity that did not simply mirror the culturally conservative, suburban, nuclear family, consumerist, American life-style.

They were called "Jesus People."

Now, they Jesus People have cut their hair. They traded their sandals for dress shoes. They have beat their VW vans into SUVs. They now puchase the veggie-tales videos for their kids. They help run Calvary Chapel. The patronize the Christian book stores. They vote republican. In other words, they became the Christian establishment.

So if the previous generation of edgy, Christian cool, eventually another nominally Christian establishment, what will stop the current trend from becoming the same thing? It does not have to be. The mistakes of the past do not need to be repeated.

There is another important question for a good discussion. I can't put it any words better than Brett McCraken himself. He wonders, have Christian hipsters simply traded one way of conforming to the world for another way of conforming to the world? This is a quote from the end of the Christainity Today Article:

Isn’t Christianity supposed to be distinguishable and set apart from the world? Christian hipsters are rebelling against a mainstream Christianity that they see as too indistinguishable from secular mainstream culture (i.e. consumerist, numbers-driven Fox News-watching, immigrant-hating, SUV-driving), but their corrective may not turn out much better. Some hipster Christianity is as indistinguishable from its secular hipster counterpart as yesterday’s megachurch Christianity was indistinguishable from secular soccer-mom suburbia.

Finally, he puts down an important challenge

The challenge for hipster Christians is to figure out what it means, in their cultural context, to put on a new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (Eph 4:24). We are new creations, and the old has passed away (2 Cor 5:17). How does that mesh with the Pabst-guzzling, Parliament smoking nonchalant image that seems important to many hipsters?

So here are two questions everyone can answer in the comments:
1) How might the current trend in millennial Christian hipsterism, avoid the mistakes of the baby boomer Christian hipster-ism of the 60s and 70s? Specifically, how do we not simply turn into the next generation of SUV-driving suberbanites?
2) How can we be certain that we are really fulfilling Eph 4:24 and 2 Cor 5:17? How can be certain we are not simply conforming to the sub-cultural values of wider "hipsterisms"?

Thanks for reading... and for commenting!!

Questions of Christian Hipsterism Part I

Initially I wanted to write a blog about my reactions to the world of Christian Hipsterism. Of course, I have already gone down that bit of self-indulgence in a previous blog. While a blog is always at least a little bit self-indulgent, I’d rather spare my readers more boring stuff about me.

Instead, it would be better if I asked all of you for your thoughts on Christian Hipsterism. Part of being a Christian Hipster means that you were a “Cradle Evangelical,” which I never really was. For those of you who enjoy reading you can check out the Brett McCraken’s article at Christianity Today because it is pretty cool.

The article opens up with a fair description of what a Christian Hipster is. A Christian hipster is someone who was raised Evangelical from youth, desires to continue being a Christian, but wants to disassociate from the culture of Evangelicalism (including “Churchianity” if I may use the Internet Monk’s term). So if you were raised in this culture you are familiar with flannel graph Sunday school lessons, the obsession with left behindist end-times, republican-party Christianity, and people like Falwell, Pat Robertson, and the other crazy uncles of the Billy Graham generation. You were taught well “do not smoke drink or chew, or go with girls/guys who do.”

The Christian hipster either remembers these things as something happily outgrown or denounces them with strong anathemas. Chrisitan Hipsterism can then be defined negatively. By what it is not.

Positively defined, Christian Hipsterism is probably someone meeting at Mosiac West LA –a church I happily sojourned at for two years. A church like this embraces all the good things about the arts and entertainment. It assumes –even expects- that part of Christianity is an interest in creativity. It seeks to encourage Christians and even non Christians to deeply explore their talents and potential in music, dance, writing, visual arts and so on. This is not a crass form of evangelism. The arts are not meant to be advertisements for Jesus, but are rather a natural part of the Christian life.

Another token of Christian Hipsterism is a casual willingness to discuss the sex from the pulpit. Driscoll, (“the angry one”), delivered a podcast on the Song of Solomon. McCracken cited this sermon as token Christian hipsterism. The sermon, “the Dance of Mahanaim,” paints a picture of good sex, in which both the man and the women fulfill certain roles based on their partner’s psychological disposition and biology. I listened to this sermon myself. Even here Driscoll still had to apologize to his audience that the Bible contained sex. Nonetheless, it was an upfront discussion of a normally taboo subject.

A third pillar of Christian Hipsterism is an emphasis on concept of Social Justice. This is quite a nebulous concept, but it reflects a strong theological trend that wants to broaden the notion of the Gospel. The Gospel is not “go to heaven when you die when you accept Jesus.” The Gospel is not are mere acceptance of “salvation by grace alone.” The Gospel contains all these and so much more. The Gospel, as championed by Shane Clairborne, frees slaves, liberates the oppressed, and living a life of simplicity in face of consumerism. If the Kingdom of God is at hand, then the people of God will live according to new kind of life that resists and overturns systematic injustice in the world. Interestingly enough, this has a eschatological component, but that will be addressed another time.

There is also an interest, among the Christian hipsters, of recovering liturgy. This will also be another blog.

So, with no loss of irony, are you a Christian hipster? Are you not quite a Christian hipster? Are you to cool to be called a Christian hipster?

You might want to comment on the blog and re-post it.

Thoughts on the Case for Young Marriage

Christianity Today published an article on the case for young marriage. The author argues that in addition to teaching abstinence, Christianity needs to emphasize the virtues of marriage, specifically young marriage, to Christians. This is clearly a step in the right direction, but I have mixed reactions to the article.

For instance, the article cited that 80% of Christians have pre-marital sex. The author also admitted that "not all indulgers become miserable or marital train wrecks." It's nice of him to say so. There is however, an obvious implication here that is unaddressed in the article: of what value, then, is our abstinence culture? It seems that the promises of abstaining do not guarantee a good marriage and sex life later on. Likewise, pre-maritial sex does not curse one's later marital unions. The high statistic (80%) seems to make the abstinence culture as much of a sham as Sarah Palin's views on sex-education while bumbling to explain her pregnant 17-year old daughter. Maybe I'm harsh, but I know I can't be the only one thinking, "the Emperor has no clothes."

Nonetheless, the author advocates that teaching young people about what marriage is and what it is not. This, I think is a great idea. I have known many young marriages that have turned out beautifully, despite the economic and social hardships that he lists. Yes, getting married young, in many cases, is a still a good idea.

On the other hand, I am also old enough to have known more than a few divorced friends. This is not an issue to be taken lightly. One friend feels like he was simply "following a script" when he was married at 20. Another peer and his spouse where not emotionally or financially ready for the commitment -even despite the idea of marriage as formative institution. I could list a few more, but the examples need not be multiplied. The authors knows well that young marriage correlates with divorce. He is also right to point on that this is not a casual connection.

But in answering objections, I still have some questions -especially economics. The author is right that we have set a higher-than-realistic economic standard for both weddings and young marriages. I also think that he is right that helping young marriages economically is something that Christians ought to be doing. If more established people see new married couples in need of some kind assistance, providing that assistance should be the norm not the exception -if we truly believe it is as important as we claim.

However, I still don't think that the economic concerns can be so easily overcome. The author writes from Texas, and the situation may be very different out there. I live in Los Angeles. Very, very, few people I think, are established enough to be married here by their early twenties. Putting off marriage to either establish oneself in your career or to pursue more education is, I think, I very smart decision for many people. This kind of thinking is further exacerbated by the economic outlook of my generation. Many of us know that government services like Medicare are not going to be there for us in the future. We are also keenly aware of the high cost of raising children. These are all legitimate concerns and are completely justifiable reasons to delay marriage.

Finally, there was something that the article did not address: that the divorce rate is slightly higher among evangelicals than it is in the general populace. It very likely the lack of teaching about marriage, which the author advocates, that causes this. The consequences of the present circumstance are dire however. I think many young Christians put off marriage because they see less value to it. Why push marriage on ourselves if our ideas about marriage came from the discontent unions of many of our parents, the divorces of our relatives, or even the divorces of our peers? I do not mean to denigrate the institution. I think marriage is a good thing. But if it is the intention of older Christians to inspire younger Christians to be married, then the older generation must understand that many of the young are disappointed with the institution and why.

Neo-Calvinism?

A recent article in Time, and another (and older) one in Christianity Today cited a growing trend of the new Calvinists in the United States. They’re interesting articles, so go ahead and read them whenever you get a chance. I thought, as this is a blog mostly about religion, that I should give a few cents worth of thoughts.

I am pretty far from Calvinism. Granted, I understand it a lot better now than when I was nineteen and stupid, but it is still not on my theological radar. My litany of objects can wait for some other time, as I am not really an “anti-Calvinist” as many Christians are.

There are few good things I should say anyway. I am actually not surprised, and think it is a good thing, that people are attracted to … doctrine. Such a word is just as scandalous as “religion” in many evangelical minds. It’s good to know that people are paying attention to the theological well, instead of scorning it as un-spiritual. Secondly, there seems to be a great sincerity in feelings one’s sinfulness and being truly amazed that God would save anybody. I think this is a nice check to a lot of the “touchy feely west coast evangelicalism” that is common in southern California. Finally, reformation theology poses a nice challenge to the dispies of the world.

Still though, I always cringe at the phrase “biblical.” I do not affirm the reformed doctrine that one can only believe what you read in scripture and nothing outside of it. This is sola scriptura in the “exclude all else” sense not in the “above all else” sense. Such a thing, I believe, leads to a bad hermeneutic as one must constantly search for where scripture speaks to some issue it was never meant to speak to. People eventually start proof-texting. Also, many of the “young reformed” are passionate about how they came to believe Calvinism via studying the Bible, and not by listening to Calvinist. Isn’t this alleged purity a little naïve? No one reads the Bible without assumptions, and if you’re guided by a charismatic Calvinist preacher chances are, you’ll start reading the Bible like a Calvinist. I’m still Wesleyan at the core myself.

In the larger picture though, I still think this is probably a good and expected thing. I feel that a lot 20-something Christians are dissatisfied with the evangelicalism handed down from the Jesus people generation. It is no surprise that something different attracts our attention, just by virtue of it being different. For some it’s Protestantism with a capital P. Others it’s the emergent church. Some may jump ship completely and go to the RCC or EO.

So I expect, at least for now, for Neo-Calvinism to grow into the next generation. Unless the rapture happens, of course.