Fusion or Confusion?
Sometimes when you take unrelated ingredients and combine them, you end up with a fantastic meal. In the culinary world this is called fusion. Tex-Mex. Jambalaya. I would keep going but that would make me hungry. Other combinations are not so appealing or delightful. That is why you will never find me on a cooking show. My family is regularly disgusted by the combinations and fusions I try.
Popular American Christianity today takes ideas and philosophies and combines them in the same way that I do food. A little bit of this and a little bit of that and that's what we call Christianity. We pride ourselves on sweetness and gentleness. At all costs we avoid saying, believing, or doing anything that might cause offense. This feels good to a lot of people. But is this actually what Jesus taught? Did Jesus come to affirm all beliefs and actions? Did He come to help us feel better about ourselves? Did He come simply to make us nice?
Certainly the opposite isn't true, right? I haven't checked but surely no one is selling t-shirts emblazoned with a slogan like "Jerks for Jesus." To ask these questions isn't to suggest that Christians should be constantly spoiling to fight and attack others. It's to propose we look at a deeper question.
Are Christians supposed to be people of the Word or people of the world? The Bible tells us that Jesus came preaching a message of the kingdom of God and that message went like this: "repent and believe in the gospel." To our modern sensibilities, even those in the church, the word repent sounds harsh and antagonistic. It doesn't sound affirming, loving, and certainly doesn't feel nice. Yet Jesus himself preached this message.
Jesus didn't come to affirm anyone in their sin. He came to rescue us from our sin: "For the Son of Man has come to seek and save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). The work of saving required the cross. The human condition is not one in need of affirmation or renovation but complete rescue. Only the death and resurrection of the Son of God is enough to save us from sin. A Christianity that mirrors exactly the culture and morals of any given society is no Christianity at all. It's a counterfeit. Its syncretism. It's a mix that dilutes and corrupts, not enhances.
Jesus reminded us that faithfulness to Him would put as at odds with the values of the world. "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you." (John 15:18-19) Let's be people of the Word!