When in Rome

Last weekend my wife and I went on a retreat to Pigeon Forge with our church's college/singles group, even though we're not in college; we like the people. The theme of the weekend was Christ and Culture, which led us to discuss the definition of culture, the moral neutrality or non-neutrality of culture, and our role as the body of Christ living and being influenced by our culture.
Since then, I've been thinking about trying to apply some of the great discussion we had on the retreat to my everday life, and I've run up against a problem that I can't figure out: How do we live the "radical" Christian lifestyle that's demanded of us in a culture (Southern, bible-belt, nominally Christian) that already intellectually knows the gospel and, to an extent, even the radically other-worldly (holy) lifestyle that Jesus demands from us and, yet, doesn't care? It seems to me that, in many important ways, our southern culture is still very much a "churched" culture. For that reason, it's hard for our culture to distinguish between a life that preaches the authentic gospel and a life that preaches the almost-authentic gospel that has so saturated Southern culture.
For example: the normal response of the average southerner to a confrontation with a "radical" Christian life as described on our retreat would not, I'm afraid, be "Wow- s/he really loves Jesus!" Rather, I'm afraid it would be more like "Wow- look who just got back from a church retreat!" or " Wow- look who thinks s/he's a super-Christian." I know that's cynical, but the fact is that, in the South, being "Christian" is, first, almost automatically assumed, and second, is a social virtue. So, because being "Christian" is looked upon so positively by most of society, someone who's genuinely changed by the gospel and is excited about meeting Jesus will often be seen as simply making a social move or just "cleaning up their act." The persecution and resistance doesn't come from those who are overtly hostile to the gospel, but from a culture that sees Christianity as mainly a social thing, a culture that's been on the retreats, a culture that knows when we're being "witnessed to", therefore supiciously condemning as "self-righteous" any disturbingly radical expressions of Christ we see. After all, we live in the Christendom of the South, right? We're all okay.

Married!?

Hopefully I'll ease into writing fairly often, but don't bet too much on that. I wanted to attempt a short series of posts on my married life, sans gooey-ness. I am sleeping in the same bed with someone whose pajamas match relentlessly. Every single night. I can't relate to that. I don't really have pajamas. I'm in the (hopefully permanent) stage where I look for any possible opportunity to introduce Ashley as my "wife," which makes my chest feel like a tire being pumped full of air. This is the person who has convinced me to maintain clean dishes, clean clothes, and generally acceptable personal hygiene! For anyone who has ever been to 165 Oxford Court in Athens, GA, you know what a feat that is. She didn't do it by convincing, though, I misstyped. She never said, "Hey, slob, clean up your act!" She's just very, very easy to live with and I realized that things would run a lot more smoothly if I was too. Great people are like that, and so is God; they make you a better person by making you want to be a better person.

On the Declaration of Independence and Jonathan Edwards

After having read the Declaration of Independence out of boredom and procrastinative curiosity at CUPS tonight, I'm inspired toward using more precise language to express my ideas. Keeping this resolution would solve some problems, I think, as well as simply improving my accuracy in conversation. The English of the Eighteenth century, at least in my head right now, is the English language at its height. Reading the Declaration of Independence felt like reading Jonathan Edwards. The subject addressed by each sentence is incredibly exact and explicit and the writing achieves a kind of scientific quality as well as a kind of poetic beauty, much like good theology and good philosophy, that is, both are painstakingly accurate and breathtakingly beautiful. Long, undulating sentences that are admittedly difficult to take in upon first reading emerge, once carefully studied, as perfectly cut gems focusing a precise beam of light on their subjects. See, I'm even being influenced, as I always am, by the beauty of this vintage of English, and I'm butchering the style. How can I help it? I live in a language full of "stuff" and "and stuff" and "whatever" and "like" and, as a high school friend of mine put it, our conversations rumble with the "distant thunder of approximate words." Read Edwards or Jefferson and hear lightning.

Ashley and Me