On Being Counter-Cultural
Growing up in the evangelical/Southern Baptist world, which was mostly fundamentalist then, something I kept hearing over and over was the need for us to be “counter-cultural.” We were not to be “worldly.” What this usually ended up doing though, whether this was intended or not, was creating a culture that mirrored secular culture, but was a G-rated version. That was the “counter” part. Same culture, just the Disney or the Thomas Kinkade painted version.
Of course, this was hardly “counter” to anything. It ended up just being a sanitized, crappy, kitschy, cheap knockoff of popular culture, whether art, music, movies, dress, or dance. It was never about actually critically addressing and deconstructing the deep negative aspects of American culture (capitalism/greed, racism, sexism, gun violence, empire, war, etc.), and living counter to such; in fact, it was actually a capitulation to that very culture.
The Real Problem
The reason the emphasis was on the G-rated part and a supposed “morally” pure and clean contrary version, was so those deeper aspects could be ignored or even protected. This way we could feel good about those aspects, because, well, we’ve identified the real problem. It’s not that we are racist or worship mammon; the true problem is we took God out of our schools, R-rated movies, and women dressing too immodestly.
And that capitulation brings us to our current moment. That capitulation is, partly, what gives us a person like Trump (who can easily manipulate such people) and the people who follow him or think him the lesser of two evils.
The Kingdom Was Divided
We live in a time of unrest, discontent, fear, rumors, lies, and foreboding. There was a time like that in the life of Israel in the 8th century BC as well. In fact, that time was filled with the most momentous events in their history as a nation. This was when the kingdom was divided between Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Israel would eventually fall to the Assyrians and Judah would fall to the Babylonians in the 6th century.
It was a time of intrigue and shifty alliances. Rumors were rampant and people were fearful. So the Lord spoke to Isaiah. If we truly want to be counter-cultural, maybe we should heed the words given to Isaiah for that time, which seem to mirror our time very closely:
11 …For the Lord spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying: 12 “Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread… –Isaiah 8
Perhaps being counter-cultural is simply not to walk in the ways of people given to conspiracy theories and fearful of everything or who fear the wrong things. Maybe being a people of truth, honesty, and integrity, even if it means losing political or cultural capital, are the true hallmarks of being counter-cultural. And such marks never have to be conveyed in some syrupy, kitschy, shallow, and garish form of some sort, which is then mistaken for some imagined superior moral purity or witness.
Just a thought.
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