I have been thinking a lot lately about Christians and the world. Every time I get involved in a Christian subculture I am impressed anew with the capacity of Christians to be tribal, insular, self-protective, complacent, passively submissive, and even fearful. Christians have done a good job of raising "good Christian kids" who go on to become "good Christian," which as often as not means "good American consumer-capitalists." I am far from convinced these are synonymous.
Think about it. Which of the following describes the Christians you know?
| complacent | visionary | |
| docile | loud | |
| passive | activist | |
| "sacrificial" | transformative | |
| cooperative | imaginative | |
| tribal | community-building | |
| insular | embedded |
Which of them describe history's famous followers of God, like Martin Luther King, Thomas Merton, Solzhenitsyn, Mother Teresa, Peter, Paul, Moses - or Jesus himself? They're not all opposites, exactly, and the second column isn't exactly meant to be a list of specifically Christian attributes, but it seems to me that Christians should have more of the second column than the first. Obedience and submission to God and his moral law do not strike me as the same as obedience and submission to injustice and indignity just because it is perpetrated by "our" government against someone else (the working poor, the stranger, the widow, and the orphan, usually). If Christ doesn't make a real difference in our lives - and in our lives as Americans - then how can he be relevant to anyone?
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