“1 in 8 Americans consider themselves ex-Christians.” (source) This is a startling statistic. Something is broken and the evidence is beginning to build.
One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about the narrative of Scripture is seeing the patterns designed into the universe. What is true produces life. What is false produces death. It’s really that simple. The mechanisms for recognizing the problem are embedded into our design as human beings. 2+2=4 works. 2+2=5 just won’t produce the same result. We use the fruit as a mechanism for understanding the embedded systems behind the action. If it works, it’s good. If it doesn’t, there’s something wrong. Jesus even gave us a rather simple way of understanding this, “By their fruit you will recognize them.” Jesus understood that the fruit was a byproduct of the system. If the person thought they were bad, they would produce bad fruit. If they thought they were good, they would produce good fruit.
When we apply this to the church we can begin to listen to the problem. The fruit of the current form of church isn’t working. I would suggest the primary story that informs the church has run its course. In in the presence of an informed and permission oriented generation, the world (and even those in the church) is saying enough. The immediate temptation in the face of such evidence is to suggest that we’re just not giving enough effort, or that we’re just not understanding the Gospel enough. It’s easy to say that this generation is captivated by iPod’s, texting, and social media. Their too interested in a 2×4 screen to care. But this is a cop-out. They’re not attracted because they’re smart enough to tell it isn’t working. They look into their parents faces and say, “I just don’t want what you have.”
I would suggest that there are two primary mechanisms that have created this culture. First, this is the first generation that has grown up entirely wired. They’re never not had the Internet. This means that they’ve grown up with the capacity to check EVERYTHING. Social media has just enhanced it by allowing them to check their friends opinions on it as well. I’ve said before that a person can listen to a sermon and check in real time whether or not they share the same opinion about it. They can look it up in the middle of the sermon. This is an unprecedented level of empowerment the world has never seen. Second, this is the first generation that has grown up without the shadow of ex-communication. The church no longer holds the capacity to shun in the way it once did. It not longer has the capacity to control thought. Emerging generations are empowered with a permission to question. They’ve been born into families with parents of the sixties who practiced revolution and questioning. It’s a central part of who they are.
The two factors, and I’m sure there are many more, have created a perfect storm. The evidence of the fruit of the church is on display and its not working. And when someone famous leaves the church, as in Anne Rice, it’s broadcast for the world to see in real time. Everyone knows about it before you’ve had breakfast.
At the core of the problem is not the fruit. Fruit is simply an indicator. Jesus even stated this. “Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.” The fruit comes from the tree. The problem is the story that informs the fruit. The problem is the perception we hold that informs what kind of tree we are.
At the heart of Discovering The God Imagination is the idea that we’ve gotten the story wrong. And when the story is wrong it will produce bad fruit. 2+2=5 is no longer acceptable. What amazed me is the simplicity of solving the problem. It call comes down to love. But what astounds me is our capacity to become captivated by the problem, to continue trying what doesn’t work. Rather than listen to the fruit we try and pick it, not realizing the tree is designed to produce fruit. It’s just going to grow back.
More effort is not going to work. It takes a different story.
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Discovering The God Imagination: Reconstructing A Whole New Christianity explores a profound possibility. What if we’ve misunderstood the Gospel? What if our historical approaches to Christianity have been distorted by the very same problem they are attempting to solve? Available today from CreateSpace and Amazon. Order from CreateSpace and use code 5GFARGT9 to receive a 15% discount.
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