Fenced in geese!

Christian Culture

In the 19^th century, Soren Kierkegaard told a parable.  It goes something like this:

In the barnyard are fat geese.  They are enjoying food, safety, and security.  Then one day in the fall a flock of wild geese fly overhead.  The barnyard geese start to run through the yard – squawking and flapping their wings, but never going over the fence. They had gotten too comfortable inside the fence.

Perhaps our challenge as Christian men is to consider which flock we are in.  Are we imitators and squawkers or are we really going anywhere?

Be a risk-taker and go over the fence.  Think outside the box.

Modern Christian ghetto thinking is to get people saved.  As primarily an evangelist, I am all for that.  But saved from what?  Many people come to Christ for different reasons.  Save me from my poverty; save me from my addictions.  My aim is not to deny them that, but to help them realize it is salvation from sin they need.

Great, but now saved to what?  Many modern-day Christian leaders want you to get saved to Jesus and to heaven.  But my experience, both personal and as an observation, is that you need to get saved into modern Christian culture. Lets extract you from your place and put you in here with us.

To explain, when you get “saved” you are supposed to quit smoking, cut your hair, and stop riding motorcycles.  That was what I was told.  Here I am 30 years “saved” and I’ve only succeeded at half those requirements.  For a time I even crawled into the Christian ghetto but found a loss of touch with the culture of the lost that I was to get “saved”.  I began to think and feel I was so different from them that I couldn’t communicate with them.  We no longer had the same language.  I needed to get out of the ghetto and get back to understanding the culture I was to reach.

Typically, Christians live in their own culture, losing touch with the culture around them.

How do you define a culture?  It is defined by:

1)    Language

2)    Belief system and values (this may be religion)

3)    Music and art

4)    Dress

5)    Family structure

Recently, on a trip to Mexico City, I took a trip into “Crapo Market”.  It was vendor after vendor with items for sale aimed at the subculture of Goths, skinheads, and hippies.  There I was, in Hispanic Mexican culture, observing a subculture that was typical of any North American city subculture.  It was the same dress, art and music, post-modern belief system and values, and same language.  Though the language was Spanish, the terms and idioms used were peculiar to that Goth subculture.  And in it all I saw no one trying to reach them for Jesus.  My hosts were even sceptical about our visit there.  My short observation told me this was a subculture not being impacted for Jesus.

What is my point?  Christianity in its origins was a culture creating, impacting movement.  In its origin, it was guilty of  “turning the world upside down”. It impacted and changed the Romanian empire.  It literally saved Ireland (see the real story of St. Patrick), it reformed England (re: John Wesley). It was the moulding tool for the shaping of culture in the initial Canada and United States.  We are the salt and light of society.  This means we are the saving agents of society.  We are historically the culture shapers of society!

Back to story of the geese.  Isn’t it time we go over the fence, be risk-takers, think outside the box, escape the ghetto, and be the culture shapers we are supposed to be?