american synchretism

hi readers all over the world (if you exist at all…) this is another rant from me…
Like I said, sometimes I feel like an alien. That applies to my own secular belgian culture and the evangelical and pentacostel churches I know alike, but it applies even more to some ‘christian subculture’ from other places that I sometimes encounter, which may be promoted as the one and only real christianity in its purest form, or something like that…

Take for example the american evangelicalism. Some of its culture and tradition is very weird to me, and focussing on very irrelevant details which mostly distract from the gospel instead of bringing people closer to Jesus’ eternal Kingdom… Like Marc Driscolls macho-sexism, or the patriotism interwoven in some forms of american christianity, or the whole pragmatic approach to evangelism which seems more like world conformity than anything else. I don’t buy any of it, and though some of it may be cute and harmless, I am affraid that lots of this kind of synchretism are very harmful to the gospel.

And if the church culture you are in in a middle european country is a bad imitation of some american church culture that wouldn’t even be relevant in its own surrounding would, then something is wrong.

We have to contextualise the gospel our way. We don’t have to repeat the irrelevant mistakes of another culture in ours because lots of evangelical and pentacostel churches have american roots. That’b be a very bad idea. We have to get to learn Jesus Christ as the way, the Truth and the Light, and make that true in our own life. And we have to find a way to contextualise that in our own world. We don’t have to use language and structures from another time (when they did still work) or another continent (where I hope they work) to our own culture to bring the gospel.

We have to live the gospel, bring the gospel, and let christ transform our (sub)culture and change our life… And it is unavoidable to have a certain degree of ‘synchretism’ when we are ‘everything to everyone’, or american to the americans, goth to the goths, african to the africans, flemish to the flemish people, to paraphrase Paul. But we as europeans do not need the enlightened american culture to understand the gospel… We need more Jesus, and less hypes, less consumer-capitalistic synchretism, less weird fundamentalism,…

More Jesus, more Father, more Spirit in our lives!!!

shalom

Bram

I’m an alien

hi imaginary readers:

a confession; I’m an alien on this planet sometimes… My own secular post-catholic belgian culture is not mine, but the evangelical and pentacostel churches I’ve grown up in all feel strange to me too. It feels like I never belong anywhere for a 100%.

I don’t fit in in any segment of this society. I’m bored of the status-quo and safety obsessions of the middle class. I’m hardly survived the mentality of the working class when I was working among them for 2 years, and I’m still puzzled by that. It might just be very evil of me, or I’m just too different from the people I was working with, I don’t know. I know I am kinda intellectual, but most of people who go by that label just irritate the peanuts out of me. I don’t have much experience with real rich people, and upper-class stuff, but again I would most likely be bored to death among them… I guess I’m some kind of artist, or wannabe-artist, I don’t know. I don’t fit in.

That doesn’t mean I don’t love people who are inide the categories I described… Au contraire,… I love all kind of people, and even those I don’t like I’ll try to understand and love, and find any common ground with them… Only that might cost me lots of energy…

On the internet I can read lots of stuff, from any kind of writer in any tradition, subculture, or whatever. So I can read what I like, and I don’t even notice most of what I don’t like. That must have it’s advantages, but yet I’m still only moving in my vague segment (whatever that is) without seeing the big bad world outside… Maybe that’s not the best idea either…

I don’t know much, I don’t understand much of this alien planet. But I’m glad that one thing did work out for me: The relationship I’m in is a present from God. If I had to imagina myself a wife I would never have come up with anywthing close to her :p (that might just be a lack of imagination, though on the most areas people say I have too much imagination…) And even though it will never be perfect, the most amazing thing is that it is just a shadow and a vague reflection of something beyond what I can imagine!

YEs, then there is something beyond this world that I know I belong with. or Someone, te be precise. The wholly Other Trancendent and yet Omnipresent, Alpha & Omega, whom I know through Christ Jesus, the one I want to follow. I know He’s the One I belong with. And yet I run off into the nothingness so easily… I get distracted by the opium for the people the new media offer me. Or I just get lost in my own head… How I can be distracted from the Lover, compared to whose love the whole world is just something that could be dissolved in a glass of water, is one of the most dark mysteries, but it’s like that, and that’s the way it is..

And all the time He’s there. Calling me into His Kingdon that is at hand, but which still will only be fully realised at the consummation of all time. Which is beyond my mind, but I know that’s where I belong. And I know that all sense of home that I have in this world somewhere relates to Him, and His Creation, which still points at His greatness is so many ways… And this Kingdom could never be  forced into our human categories without losing it’s essence…

so maybe I should be the alien…
shalom

Bram