Hunter Baker offers insightful reflections from his time attending the Q conference in Nashville. An excerpt:
When I look at Q, its hosts, and the young people participating in it, I suspect I am seeing the cultural stance of those who have grown up in pervasively Christian subcultures. For them, rebelling means rebelling against Massive Baptist Church or Church Related University or Clearly Wealthy Famous Preacherman. Those are the holders of power in their world. It is little wonder to them that the dominant culture dislikes us. We are hypocrites. We don’t measure up to our own standards. And we are judgmental while the secular world is more understanding. Or so it seems to them.
But things look different from where I stand. I grew up as mainstream as mainstream gets. The big television networks, Sports Illustrated (and its swimsuit issue), People Magazine, Dave Letterman’s show, the newspaper funny pages — these are the influences that thoroughly defined my view of the world. I was aware of Christianity in a typical American and southern way, but it was just a given. It wasn’t anything I was very interested in or excited about. It was a cultural artifact. When I went to Florida State and moved into a dorm on campus, a couple of big things happened. First, I saw the way people live when they live in a thoroughly worldly manner. The drugs, the alcohol, the casual sex, the treatment of young women, the living for parties, etc. Second, I met the first really intentional Christians I’d ever known through Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. They were serious. They talked about Jesus Christ as a real person in their lives. They didn’t live a party lifestyle. They saved sex for marriage. They were interested in reading the Bible carefully and learning about theologians. And they were really just totally and obviously different from everyone else on campus. I was impressed. And when I finally joined them, I felt as though I stepped from a meaningless life with no future into something real and vital and with a destiny to it. For that reason, I was then and am now perfectly willing to be seen as other and alien by the dominant culture.
Read the whole thing. Baker nails it. We cannot change the world by being like the world.
HT: Nancy Pearcey