christianity today – Houghton STAR

The 2014 Houghton Reads book is Culture Making: Rediscovering Our Creative Calling, by Andy Crouch, the Executive Editor of Christianity Today. This book is being read by many groups around campus. Overall, it is not a bad book (yes, I have read the whole thing).

Crouch presents his case that Christians should be “makers of culture.” I could not agree more. Christians are to be a community, united in love, forming a counter-culture that displays the radical love, grace, and forgiveness of Jesus. This culture we are making together, and are to invite others into, is the Kingdom of God. But it is not this idea of culture making that I’ve got a problem with. No, my problem is with the real-life way that Crouch tried to “make culture” this summer.

In the book, Crouch talks about four postures that American Christians have taken in regard to culture. These are: Condemning (think of a fundamentalist who rants about the evils of culture while keeping a safe distance), Critiquing (a Christian who engages with culture for the sake of pointing out its flaws), Copying (picture the way Contemporary Christian Music took the form and style of secular music and inserted God into it), and finally Consuming (leaving God out of the picture and embracing the secular as default). He goes on to say that rather than embracing one of these four postures, Christians should “make culture” instead. No problem here. I agree that Christians have, far too often, engaged in one of these postures instead of being the countercultural Kingdom of God. So how do we make this culture?

According to Crouch, if we want to change/make a culture, we must start small. He says that we make culture by creating cultural “goods.” These can be things like songs, books, legislation, computers, etc. A cultural good is anything we create that has the potential to change the culture around us. Again, no problem here. We all need to reclaim the transformative power of creative acts. If we see the smallest things we do as a part of making our culture and world a better place, we will find our lives invested with meaning like never before. Now onto what Crouch did this summer.

On July 1st of this year, Andy Crouch, along with 13 other Christian leaders, signed and sent a letter to President Obama. The President had announced that he planned to make an Executive Order banning all federal contractors from discriminating against potential employees based on their sexual orientation. The letter asked the President to exempt religious organizations from this order. Or, to put it bluntly, these leaders want permission for their organizations to legally discriminate against a portion of Americans. They want to remain in contract with the federal government, which means keeping all of the money that goes along with that, but be permitted to discriminate based on certain people’s sexual orientation. This is where I have a big problem with the way in which Crouch wants to make culture.

In his attempt to “make culture” Crouch introduces a “cultural good” in the form of a letter. His idea of making culture is to create a world where it is legal to discriminate and reject certain members of society, not because these people are criminals or harmful to others, but because of who they choose to love (and make love to).

As I’ve already said, I’m all for making culture. The Christian story invites us to become a part of a community that shares the love, grace, and forgiveness of God with others; but I’m not for a culture that is accepting of discrimination. I don’t see room for discrimination in the loving, graceful, forgiving way of Jesus.

“What use could God possibly have for a soul that has been completely emptied?” This question encompassed my reflections back in 2011, a darker season of my years-long struggle with depression. Even now, although I would not frame the question in such a hyperbolic sense, it continues to haunt me. On one level, I still perceive my depression as a particular kind of brokenness—a brokenness that has often given me pause to reflect upon who I am as an individual. More broadly, though, I consider what implications this raises for my participation in the body of Christ.

Before I am accused of painting a negative portrait of the subject at hand, I must first clarify that I am not suggesting that brokenness is tantamount to sin, as I have been fighting this notion for several years in my own life. To provide rather extreme examples, I have personally been told by others that I suffer from depression because I have too much sin in my life; that mental illness is a form of demon possession; that depression is merely a sign of a spiritual deadness. Rather, here I associate depression with brokenness in that it disrupts God’s design for human flourishing.

In light of these considerations, I instead want to assert that my personal questions are not completely foreign to the church’s uncertain response to mental illness. Furthermore, how is the church to regard members of the body who continue to suffer in this way, perhaps over a sustained period of time? While I do not intend to present a full indictment of the church on this account, I do wish to indicate a lack of consensus as to how to regard mental illness. In viewing some of the contemporary evangelical responses, I was somewhat astonished by the wide and varied perspectives represented in popular Christian forums. A 2009 issue of Christianity Today featured multiple articles on the contemporary “depressive epidemic.” These articles recognized the perplexing nature of depression within the church, ultimately finding root in meaningful suffering, communion in the body of Christ, and Christian eschatology. On a different end of the spectrum, Focus on the Family published an article, as a part of a series, with a rather telling title: “Depression: Reject the Guilt, Embrace the Cure.” While author Bruce Hannigan clarifies that depression is not in itself a sin, he describes the illness as a propensity that may lead to sin if one indulges in it, comparing depression to alcoholism.

In the midst of these assessments, some helpful and some harmful, I believe it is very much important to maintain the complexities of mental health (especially the often-neglected biochemical levels) as the church continues to struggle in better understanding these issues. Even considering the numerous differing responses among Christians, I remain hopeful that the church may increasingly recognize these complexities and thus better support and affirm those who are battling mental illness.

In returning to my initial question, I want to assert that, in the midst of brokenness, God is redeeming all things to himself. This remains a promise, not a trite solution. It is a promise that implies both a continuing process and an eschatological hope. It does not explain away our present trials; it does not silence our questions. Rather, I trust that it gives us cause to boldly pursue our calling to uphold one another in the body of Christ.