For quite some time now I have been eyeing the book, The House Where God Lives: The Doctrine of the Church, written by Gary D. Badcock, a professor at Huron University College in London, Ontario. It has been on the shelf at the seminary's bookstore, but at nearly $27.00 (for a paperback!), the pricetag is rather steep and has kept me from purchasing it. It is unfortunate, because the bits I have read from it are good.

One of the chapters in the book focuses on the relationship of the Church and modernity, a discussion in which Badcock largely employs the critique of Reinhard Hütter, professor of theology at Duke Divinity School. About a decade ago, Hütter published a book called Suffering Divine Things, where he argued that "the church in the cultural context of modernity faces a distinct and massive problem." Badcock continues:

In the classical Christian tradition, the church was acknowledged as the setting in which it is uniquely possible to come to know God as the one who draws us into relationship with himself through the crucified Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit. By contrast, the historical path taken by the church in modernity has emptied it of this foundational theological confidence. We find ourselves in a situation so fundamentally shaped by modernity and its doctrine of the free individual that the individual subject now stands even at the center of what passes for ecclesiology. Instead of the church appearing as the context in which we are shaped by the Word and Spirit of God, the church is here reduced to rendering functional service to the modern doctrine of the individual. Under the conditions of modernity, Hütter maintains, the individual has become the 'end of the church'.

While the church's service to modernity in this respect might have made it culturally 'relevant' in a certain narrow sense, when viewed from the standpoint of the doctrine of the church as a strictly theological theme, the result is clearly problematic. The problem can be seen in several sectors of church life: on the one hand, in 'the service-jargon pervasive in contemporary church growth talk,' in which the market reigns supreme and the gospel must do it homage, or on the other, in something even worse—though it is, to be sure, a function of the same pressures—'the kind of free metaphorical constructivism characterizing especially North American Protestant theology in its more progressive representatives'.

Hütter maintains that what is missing from such approaches is any clear commitment to the church as locus of the distinct practices of the proclamation of the Word of the gospel of grace and the celebration of the sacraments, by which alone the triune God of the Christian revelation can be known, obeyed, and enjoyed. In Hütter's judgment, the importance of these practices has been generally belittled under the influences of modernity, as the religious experience of the individual has instead been refashioned and mediated by other means. The consequence is the pervasive spiritual and theological impoverishment of the church, which lives by the Word and sacrament or not at all (291-292).

A forceful critique, to be sure, but an accurate one. And nowhere is this more evident, perhaps, than within the context of the American church, which has been largely shaped by modernity and driven by the notion of individual freedom since its founding. It is unfortunate that critiques like this need to be made, but the "spiritual and theological impoverishment" that Badcock speaks of is a palpable reality in the modern church because it has sought, even if not intentionally, to find its source of life apart from Christ.

The life of the church is always and only Christ. We share in Christ and all his blessings by faith, and that faith is produced in us by the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Word and in the sacraments (Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 65). When these are lost, the very life of the church is in peril.

You will have undoubtedly noticed the absence of a post yesterday yet again. What I will do today as a result is not post on the next point on the list but instead revisit, to some degree, the very first point in the series, which had to do with theme parks.

Recently, I finished reading Andy Crouch's book, Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling, and was interested to notice that he had something to say about theme parks midway through the book. In chapter six, he is discussing humanity's rapidly increasing isolation from the wilderness of the world as technology develops at an astonishing rate. To illustrate the point, he writes:

This extraordinary isolation from wilderness deserves a name. It is what makes our generation's moment in history so different from our ancestors', and quite possibly from our descendants'. Let's name it after Walt Disney's masterfully modern cultural invention: the theme park.

In the theme park, culture's triumph over nature seems to be complete. Indeed, the theme is more powerful than the park: Even the shrubs at Disney World look like Disney characters. All the vestiges of wildness have been carefully pruned. You have no more to fear from the Shark Tank than the Tower of Terror—you may get a thrill from each, but the theme park is carefully designed to eliminate all real risk.

The theme park is a much safer place to be a human being than the wilderness. Or is it? It may be harder to be a human being, as Genesis understands a human being, in a theme park than anywhere else. For if human beings are made in the image of God, creative cultivators of God's creation, the theme park gives them precious little space for such image bearing. There is nothing for me to create or even to tend at a theme park—employees (or to use Disney's term, 'cast members') do the creating or tending for me. Unlike the Garden, the theme park is not a place where you can get hurt—or if you do, it's not your fault, and you can sue. And to keep you from getting hurt, in the theme park, you are never alone. Not only are you accompanied by throngs of other park guests but by omnipresent representatives of the theme park corporation, there to ensure and (if necessary) enforce enjoyment of the theme park on the owners' terms.

The critique of theme parks is spot on, but does this mean that Crouch is advocating a return to the wilderness? Not at all. The Garden, though it is a place where God as Creator has given mankind all he needs to have a good life, remains an uncultivated wilderness, and it is man's responsibility to make something of it (a calling to culture, as Crouch says). But, he adds,

only because of [God's] gracious and terribly risky withdrawal does the serpent have the opportunity to tempt the man and the woman. And only in the provisional absence of the Creator do the human beings have the opportunity to twist and degrade their divine image by reaching for what the serpent craftily and deceitfully describes as 'be[ing] like God, knowing good and evil' (Gen 3:5)—as if creativity and cultural responsibility were not much more deeply 'like God' than mere knowledge.

This leads Crouch to conclude that neither theme parks nor wilderness are good places in which to be human.

Both may be enjoyable to visit (though I have my doubts about theme parks), but our ability to enjoy them actually requires qualities that only culture, the garden of humanity, can provide. Woe to the traveler who ventures into the wilderness without taking advantage of cultural resources like maps, compasses, hiking boots, tents and accumulated millennia of wisdom about ways to survive in the trackless world. Woe to the tourist parents who have developed no capacities for creativity and cultivation in their own children—they will wander through Disney's surgically sculpted paradise fending off endless complaints of boredom.

Our world is unevenly divided, to say the least, between wilderness and theme parks. Most of humanity lives all too close to wilderness, at the mercy of a creation whose original good wildness has been made implacably hostile to human flourishing by the Fall. A privileged billion or so can choose to live in theme parks, where neither the dangers nor the beauty of the created, fallen world intrude on a manufactured environment of amusement. But we were made for neither theme parks nor wilderness—we were made for a place where we are challenged to become creators and cultivators. We began as gardeners.

Since this is getting lengthy, I will stop at this point. What do you think? Do you find yourself living in the theme park or the wilderness? Is Crouch's distinction helpful in understanding our calling as Christians?

This post continues a series that will address many of the points on the list compiled by John Muether entitled, "Resisting Modernity: a How-to Guide." You can find the list in full here, and all the posts in this series here.

10. Don't listen to Christian radio, either. It is the new form of itinerant preaching, and thus it erodes our commitment to the ordinances of God.

I have woefully neglected this series in the past month, but am pleased to return to it today. With today's point, I think it might be better to refer to Christian audio as opposed to radio, simply due to the variety of ways we listen to preachers these days (mp3's on our iPods, streaming audio, and so on). At any rate, the problem with Christian audio is largely the same as that of Christian television, that it focuses very directly on a powerful figure and feeds a cult of personality.

One pertinent example comes to mind. John Piper is all over the internet in recordings of various sorts, be it conferences or sermons preached at his church. He has garnered a lot of respect and admiration, and indeed, much of it well-deserved. But here there are a few problems. One, people have become so enamored with his preaching that they begin to feel their own preacher is inadequate. Furthermore, churches without pastors who are searching for one begin to increase their expectations in the hopes that they can secure their own John Piper for their next pastor. As a result, many good and faithful men are left without pastoral positions because they failed to meet the unattainable expectations, and many churches are left without a shepherd. I don't say this to pick on Piper, just to illustrate something that has become a reality in our churches.

Muether's point about eroding our commitment to the ordinances of God the most important thing here. When people become so dependent on a popular preacher, they begin to let go of their dependence on the local church. The local church is where corporate worship happens, where the people of God come together to pray, sing, hear the Word of God, and partake of the sacraments together. Where the elements of worship are participated in and partaken of by the body of believers, that body is fed and nourished by the Spirit of God. However, if we become so fixated on hearing the preaching of some popular preachers we may begin to think that we are fed sufficiently only by hearing a recorded sermon, and subsequently give up meeting together with the people of God. In doing so, we cut ourselves off from our life source and begin to starve ourselves.

There is a flip side to the problem too. Preachers who achieve such repute also find themselves in high demand. Constantly asked to speak at conferences and events, they can be under a great deal of stress. And interestingly, they too will find themselves being pulled away from their local church, and thus face many of the same problems as the people who come to hear them.

Certainly, I want to avoid diminishing the blessing of being able to hear some of today's great preachers through the various mediums of technology. And indeed, we should spend some time listening to some of the things available to us. We just need to be wary that our commitment to hearing them preach does not replace our commitment to the Church and all that goes along with membership and participation in a local church.

This post continues a series that will address many of the points on the list compiled by John Muether entitled, "Resisting Modernity: a How-to Guide." You can find the list in full here, and all the posts in this series here.

9. At the very least, do not watch Christian television.

I would suspect that I do not need to say a great deal about this point, especially if you have been the victim of Christian television programming here in the United States. When I moved to Florida, I couldn't believe how many Christian television stations I had access to here. Most of them I have since blocked. Before I wrote this post, I typed "Why is Christian TV bad?" into Google to see what kind of results I would get. One of the first was a question someone had asked on Yahoo! Answers: "If I set up a Christian TV channel, how long will it take me to make £1,000,000?" Most of the people who answered the question agreed it would not take that long.

The very fact that the question was asked, even if done tongue-in-cheek, is reflective of the fact that when people see Christian television programs, that's immediately what they think of. And they certainly have good reason to. A prevalent feature on the bottom of the screen during a good amount of Christian programming is that ubiquitous 1-800 number inviting you to call to make a donation, phone numbers which have been called a great many times by a great many people. Last year's Senate panel probe into the financial statements of the top six televangelists raised quite a stir because of the alleged financial misconduct of these television personalities. Is all this money going towards the Lord's work, or is it a scam that's padding the pockets of the stars? The fact that an investigation was even called, and common sense itself, would lead us toward the latter.

We could go on, but let's leave the financial side of this alone for the moment. Do these ministries offer any spiritual benefit? It's hard for me to say. Perhaps seeing one of these people on television was the catalyst that led someone to faith. We cannot exclude that possibility. On the whole, though, we need to realize that whatever the intention may be, these ministries ultimately reflect modern culture more than biblical Christianity. Again they are characterized by the hallmarks of modernity—fixated on the individual (what faith can do for you), consumer-driven (here's what you can get if you believe in Jesus), driven by greed (you get Jesus, I get your money, we're all happy).

At the risk of becoming crass, I want turn the discussion over to you. Let me pose a few questions, and please offer some of your thoughts in the comments. What does Christian television say about us as Christians? What of the quality of programming? How does it reflect our view of culture? Is it an appropriate use of this form of media? I hope you'll take a minute to leave a thought or two, or raise any other questions you think would be worth discussing here.

This post continues a series that will address many of the points on the list compiled by John Muether entitled, "Resisting Modernity: a How-to Guide." You can find the list in full here, and all the posts in this series here.

7. If you cannot [stop watching television], then refuse to use the remote control. Remove its batteries. Remember John's warning against the "lust of the eyes"—he's not referring to pornography.
8. For the same reasons described in #7, do not subscribe to cable television.

Perhaps by now you've noticed a couple of significant themes running through this list that characterize modernity: consumerism and the autonomy of the individual. These two points again directly attack those cultural values. Throughout most of its existence, the television has served as a means to satisfy the "I want it now" mentality of our society. The addition of the remote control, as well as later developments like cable TV, satellite, and TiVo, have only served to bolster this sentiment so well expressed in the lyrics of Nirvana's 1991 smash hit, "Smells Like Teen Spirit"—here we are now, entertain us!

Readers will know from the last post that I am not anti-television. But there are boundaries we need to draw, and I think Muether gives us some good suggestions to get started. He references 1 John 2:16, in which John speaks of the lusts or desires of our eyes. The context of that verse is verses 15-17, which read:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

Television, in perhaps the most pointed way of all forms of media, makes plain the things of this world. Every time we watch television we are bombarded with the values, ideals, and underlying religious convictions that shape this culture. When we are subjected to that hour upon hour, it in turn begins to shape and mold us. The things of the world become the things we desire. One of the simplest ways to stand against that influence is to restrict the amount of time the television is on, and to limit the ease of access you have to it.

As I have mentioned before, there are good things about television. All I am saying is that we need to be careful how we use it. Instead of simply turning on the television to pass a bit of time (which I am frequently guilty of), pick up a book and read a few chapters. Go for a walk with your spouse and talk with each other. Sit on your front porch and spend some time praying and meditating. Again, when we intentionally limit our access to something like television, we are less wont to use it to fill our time.

In the end, we can look at John's teaching in the passage above in this way: does our use of the television reflect our love for the things of this world, or does it reflect our desire to grow in the wisdom and knowledge of God, to do His will and to seek His glory?