BLOG 1/30/18. RESPONSE TO RELIGION: DISMISSIVE DIS-INTEREST
I have sometimes written that the dominant religion among the emerging generation is self-satisfied humanism. Maybe I need to revise that and designate it as dismissive disinterest. The fact stares one in the face all the time. ‘Religion’ doesn’t even register with such a huge swath of the emerging generation. It doesn’t matter if they have grown up in the proximity or the context of some Christian institution – even if they were baptized in infancy, they can be totally ignorant of the data of the Christian faith, but even more, not at all even interested in it. They are more likely to be consumed with their iPhones, or in a culture that has little place for contemplation of history, or of the meaning of life, or ultimate reality.
A couple of generations ago, British missionary Lesslie Newbigin (whom I quote in the blogs frequently) returned from a fruitful career in South India to England, and observed that it was much more difficult to communicate the gospel in the West than in India since the West had known the gospel, had built up anti-bodies against it, and were now seemingly impervious to it. But even before him, British World War I chaplain and poet G. A. Studdert-Kennedy, said it more colorfully in a poem entitled: When Jesus Came to Birmingham (England):
When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged him on a tree.
They drove great nails through hands and feet and made a Calvary;
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red were his wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap.
When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed Him by.
They would not hurt a hair of Him, they only let Him die;
For men had grown more tender, and they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain.
Still Jesus cried, ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do,’
And still it rained the winter rain that drenched Him through and through;
The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see.
And Jesus crouched against the wall, and cried for Calvary
Here we are again—a generational culture so often expressive of this dismissive dis-interest. It is quietly and perniciously invading and infecting what one would assume were places of Christian influence. Professing Christian parents don’t guarantee immunity to this cultural darkness. We need to be realistic about this, but not succumb to helplessness. The Spirit does create curiosity and spiritual hungering through the lives that incarnate God’s love and good works, and their knowledge of God’s New Creation (even though these dismissive and disinterest persons may have no category with which to process it).
At the same time, there is no guarantee that a ‘Christian church’ or a ‘Christian home’ will produce Christian faith. Somehow, those living in such churches and homes need to be intentionally informed about: 1.) the tribal religions of one’s cultural setting; 2.) the basic data of the life and teachings of Jesus and the implications thereof; and 3.) or have their eyes opened to the fact that they are drifting rootlessly in conformity to so much of the rest of humanity, whose response to Jesus is to “simply pass him by” with dismissive dis-interest. Stay tuned …
[Again, my latest book: https://wipfandstock.com/homebrew-churches.html.]
