cool and puffy

In Colossians, Paul says the following.

"These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow."

I recently read an article in the New York Times about a wonderful church in New York City where the music is explosive and exciting, and the feel was described as something tolerable because it was minimal on the Jesus talk and a little more confidence building of its patrons.

Our generation has seen a lot of puffy peoples, the shadows Paul talks about cast down from the 20th century onto post-modernism. It seems (I infer because I was born in 1982) during the 1970's, during the rumbles which bubbled into Reagan and the Moral Majority, Christianity in America began to take an idle notion of great and puffy wisdom. The Church shot a middle finger at culture and said, "you are with us or against us." The stake of political loyalty and moral homogeny was driven into the ground and a flag of Christendom was flown from it.

Our generation is riding the momentum of its crash on a speedy slide right up into the alternative side of the pendulum. Francis Chan, a pastor in Simi Valley, CA, has worried that maybe he is not preaching Jesus' gospel because his church attendence is so large. He implies, if the Gospel is so alternative, and people will oppose it, why is he growing like gang busters? What an excellent question.

Somewhere between the offensive nature of false humility and the shallow winds of cultural submersion is the Truth. The Gospel is not offensive, but some people categorically refuse to accept the unjust, unfair implications of grace. They are not offended, they are simply calculated with reason and a complete dismissal of the spiritual. We cannot force them to accept the philosophy of Christ with relevance. Nor are we to puff up on podiums of religious dominion and resign ourselves to an offensive tone so toxic that the church fades into an irrelevant and ancient cultural staple.