Chilling in culture's living room

Coffee shops function as the pop culture living room. And often, especially in urban areas, these living rooms attract a large diversity of people.

In his 2010 book, The Diversity Culture, author Matthew Raley, senior pastor of the Orland Evangelical Free Church in northern California, uses the word “diversity” in two different ways: diversity referencing the multitude of backgrounds and perspectives of people in the coffee shop, and the diversity of influences shaping the perspectives of those in the cultural living room.

Raley’s thesis is that too often Christians tie themselves down to textbook-type conceptions of unbelievers and their beliefs and thus fail to acknowledge that complex factor that shape most people’s beliefs.

He points to the fact that most of the people labeled with a postmodern worldview rarely, if ever, interact with such postmodern thinkers as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. Rather, their thoughts and attitudes toward politics, religion and ethics come from a cultural attitude formed from the diversity of voices in society.

“In trying to deal with the most significant cultural shift of our time, therefore, evangelicals are not sure what they face. They aren’t sure how the shift affects the individuals they talk to. Nor are they sure what their role should be in relation to those individuals,” Raley writes. Should they educate them about postmodernity? (Probably not a wise posture.) Should they try to accommodate their views? (Definitely not wise.) The sheer diversity of attitudes on the street is daunting. ”

He teases out the tensions accompanying this daunting diversity in his book’s three self-explanatory sections: “Understand the tension,” “Formulate the message” and “Apply the model.” Raley calls his readers to faithfully communicate the good news to those who need it.

“There is always pressure to redefine the faith so that it fits ungodly prejudices betters. For instance, some are experimenting again with the notion that people of other faiths will be saved as long as they are sincere. Some others want to blur the biblical standards on sexuality so that we seem less prudish,” he writes. “None of these faux-biblical positions will lead people to Jesus.”

In his conclusion, Raley tells the story of being in college and realizing that his cookie cutter perceptions about people and their beliefs hindered his communication of the gospel.

“My gospel was self-indulgent too. It consisted of the points I wanted to make rather than the truths people needed to hear. I wanted to say that there were moral absolutes, and I wanted to pile up the evidence. I wanted to prove the inerrancy of Scripture. I wanted to expound the doctrines of total depravity and election,” he writes. “All of the things I wanted to say are true. But most of my peers were trying to figure out if their parents loved them. They needed to truth of the gospel applied to them specifically. (Abstract coherence is one of the most insidious forms of self-indulgence I have. It allows me to ignore the hot problems around me in favor of cool formulas.)”

This others-conscience focus drives the gospel-formulations in The Diversity Culture.

The Diversity Culture: Creating Conversations of Faith with Buddhist Baristas, Agnostic Students, Aging Hippies, Political Activists, and Everyone in Between (Kregel 2010, $12.99), Matthew Raley

Come on, Chris

This past April, ardent self-proclaimed anti-theist Christopher Hitchens published his monthly article in Vanity Fair about the Old Testament's Ten Commandments. His article, "The New Commandments," leads with an intentionally evocative subhead: "The Ten Commandments were set in stone, but it may be time for a re-chisel. With all due humility, the author [Hitchens] takes on the job, pruning the ethically dubious, challenging the impossible, and rectifying some serious omissions."

Hitchens proceeds to work through each of the Bible's Ten Commandments (OT, Deuteronomy 5:6-21), giving various explanations about how that particular commandment came to be and its function within Ancient Israel. Then comes his grand conclusion:

What emerges from the first review is this: the Ten Commandments were derived from situational ethics. They show every symptom of having been man-made and improvised under pressure. They are addressed to a nomadic tribe whose main economy is primitive agriculture and whose wealth is sometimes counted in people as well as animals. They are also addressed to a group that has been promised the land and flocks of other people: the Amalekites and Midianites and others whom God orders them to kill, rape, enslave, or exterminate. And this, too, is important because at every step of their arduous journey the Israelites are reminded to keep to the laws, not because they are right but just because they will lead them to become conquerors (of, as it happens, almost the only part of the Middle East that has no oil).

As if this conclusion isn't convincing enough, Hitchens again rehearses the content from each commandment, this second time explaining what needs to be "pruned" from the commandments for a new context. And then after liberating his readers too-accepting minds, he offers a final verdict concerning one of history’s most recognizable teachings:

It’s difficult to take oneself with sufficient seriousness to begin any sentence with the words “Thou shalt not.” But who cannot summon the confidence to say: Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color. Do not ever use people as private property. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature—why would God create so many homosexuals only in order to torture and destroy them? Be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature, and think and act accordingly. Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife. Turn off that fucking cell phone—you have no idea how unimportant your call is to us. Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions. Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above. In short: Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form.

Since sometime during my college years, I've casually kept up with what Hitchens says. Naturally, I disagree with almost everything he propagates concerning Christianity and religion. But I have always appreciated Hitchens' breath of knowledge and his clever use of language in communicating his fervent dislike of any form of theism.

"The New Commandments" represents a fail by Hitchens. I expect more from this admired atheist. Aside from his surprisingly sloppy use of words, the author's conclusions about the intent and extent of the Ten Commandments are foreign to anything in the texts themselves, and Hitchens' lazy use of sources doesn't inspire much confidence in his research. Now, of course, an article in Vanity Fair isn't held to the rigorous standards of an academic journal. But if he intends to displace a body of teaching Jews, Christians and secular persons have embraced for thousands of years, then Hitchens should put a little more thought into his arguments. And where is that humility about which his subhead talks?