Change the right thing.

So when most people think of Christians what do they think of?  How is it that God’s offer of hope to the world has become known by so many satirical images?  Rigid, judgmental, simple, one dimensional closed minded;  all pictures that much of the world conjures up of those professing Christianity.  How did this happen?  I think we must consider two factors;  the war against truth, and the knowledge of good and evil.  All the other factors, such as culture and politics, media and education, are simply tools in the war.  The real war takes place beyond the veil…let’s not fool ourselves.

If we want to examine the state of flux in the church today, most conversations will attempt to answer the question, how has the church lost relevancy, and what must be done to regain it?  The sad irony is that the most likely answers are modern resurrections of the very reasons that the church becomes irrelevant.

You cannot set people free from the knowledge of good and evil by modernizing your knowledge of good.  The war the church has fought historically has not been our failure to maintain a culturally relevant presentation.  It has always been the same war.  Are we turning desperately needy people back to a real and meaningful answer, or are we looking for ways to present the knowledge of good in a better more relevant package, hoping people will finally “get it right.”

More exciting knowledge of good.  More technologically savvy knowledge of good.  More edgy knowledge of good.  More flashy knowledge of good.  More doctrinally accurate knowledge of good.  What is the common theme?

No matter what the method or presentation, human capability, and the clever or persuasive urging for men to use their own resources to please God, is still returning to the foundational problem that Adam and Eve carried out of the Garden.  They left us all to live out of the powerless, death-filled, man centered knowledge of good and evil.  My knowledge, and your knowledge no matter how it is presented, communicated and motivated is simply an insufficient answer.  Once the new package fades, the answer is still insufficient and the ever-present Hope of the world hangs in the air, still and always available to those who come to know that in and of themselves they are stuck.

Relevance is not a cultural issue.  It is a human issue.  Respond to the real need of the human race with an open door to the Creator of the universe, and the Source of all Life and you will be relevant in any culture.  Re-package religion and you will simply take the next step in an ongoing cycle.