Snippet: Our Inner-cultist

snip·pet | ˈsnipit | noun a small piece or brief extract.

Here’s one from Tim Challies after establishing that one major characteristic of a cult is a lack of diversity of thought:

“A little honest self-examination will probably reveal that we all have a cultist lurking within ourselves. We may pay lip service to diversity, but when it comes down to it we find that our natural instinct is toward uniformity—a uniformity to our own emphases, our own convictions, our own preferences.”

“As we look around a church we ought to see people with a wide range of differences experiencing the deepest kind of unity—different races and ethnicities, different ages and socioeconomics, different convictions on politics, different convictions on education, different convictions on vaccinations, and so on.”

This is much much harder than it sounds.

And while I completely resonate with what he’s saying, I wouldn’t want to accuse someone of being cultish who wants to be in a church that reflects their black, Korean, hispanic, or other cultural heritage in music and preaching styles.

Same goes for those who prefer certain expressions of the music and preaching styles of the dominant American western culture.

All that being said, you can feel it in your gut that something’s wrong when a church is almost completely without diversity culturally and politically and where all agree on masks or vaccines, private or home or public school choices, and so on, whether reflecting the views of the right or the left. Unless, of course, that’s the church air that you breath.

But it really gets cultishly creepy when seemingly everyone basically shares the same criticisms and prejudices against any cultural expressions, political leanings, school choices, or vaccination opinions that don’t match theirs.

When I was in seminary (1980-83), the school hosted a special seminar on cults and how to help people caught up in cults. The speaker was an expert on the Jim Jones inspired cult that ended in the Jonestown Massacre in 1978.

I’ll never forget his advice: If a loved one is getting caught up in a cult, make every effort to let them know you are waiting for them with love and open arms. The day will come for most of them when they will see their mistake. Those who stay will stay because they feel they have nowhere else to go.

Snippet: "The anxiety of self-creation"

snip·pet | ˈsnipit | noun a small piece or brief extract.

Here’s a snippet from an article by Ian Harber and Patrick Miller on “How to Prepare for the Metaverse”:

“The anxiety of self-creation is already crippling Gen Z and Millennials. The church may be the last place that accepts you as you’re made, not as you’re projected.”

Last week when I was sick, Lois did a pharmacy run for me and came back with some generic Sudafed since we were running low.

She bought the 12-hour version. I asked her why she would do that. She explained that that’s what she prefers. Take one tablet and forget about it.

I said I hate the 12-hour. What do you do at 6pm if you took it at 6am? She said, “Why do you have to be so picky!”

At that point I realized the hole I was digging for myself, the ingratitude of my attitude, and I apologized.

But the next time she goes to get some meds for me (two, maybe three years from now), when she faces the array of choices, she’s not going to remember my preferences. But she will remember I’m picky, and if she can’t get ahold of me to clarify what I want, the anxiety of a confrontation or argument for “getting the wrong thing” will set in.

I know. I feel it every time I go to the grocery store to get the one thing she needs for a recipe. I never seem to have enough information about what she needs when I face the array of choices.

Anxiety.

If you came of “internet and streaming age” in the last few years, take all that anxiety the rest of us have felt and feel about the choices we have to make and apply it to aspects of life and of our identity). An array of choices the rest of know weren’t even choices anyone could make or few cared to make a short time ago.

And the sense that you have to make these choices is the only world you’ve ever known.

Anxiety.

These choices are sold to us as the arrival of freedom and authenticity and happiness.

Again, for some younger folks, this is the only world they’ve ever known.

I grew up in a world that constantly insisted you can be anything you want to be. And it took decades of hearing this before It became common for some to question it.

“I’m a 17-year-old girl who hasn’t played one day of any sports in my life, and you say I can be an WNBA star if I want it badly enough? And, oh yeah, I’m barely five feet tall.”

Seriously, it’s only been in recent years that I’ve heard a consistent questioning of what now most people see as a false promise.

No, you can’t be anything you set your mind on to be.

And no, you don’t have to live in the dark side of that lie thinking you’re a failure because you failed to launch the next Amazon, rise to fame, or run an ultra marathon.

Look around. Almost everyone you personally know and love and respect have been as incapable as you to accomplish any of those kinds of things. And they’re still precious to you.

And yet here we have a whole new mantra, a brand new lie about choosing whatever identity you prefer.

And even bigger lies coming soon to a metaverse near you.

We need to be that church mentioned by the authors—a place that accepts you as you’re made. Yes, also loves you even as you seek to project something that you’re not, but not by entering into the lie that will destroy you in a thousand different ways. And then spit you out.

Photo by Egor Myznik on Unsplash