I’m not much today for long-wided introductions. This past year I found four things that affected me or changed my outlook.

1. The realization that Christians don’t want Christian art or culture.

Probably the hardest blow. Christians simply don’t care about seeing their faith in expressed in art at any significant level. They’d rather find hidden or crypto-Christian meanings in secular culture. If its popular, suddenly Jesus can be found in it, or more accurately He can be tortured out of it.

Most of the activity around Christian culture is due to the artists, who are in a dilemma. A Christian artist is both Christian and artist, and it’s hard to compartmentalize the two aspects of themselves. Art is done for art’s sake, but also the Christian wants to serve God in some way too by doing it. It’s not like building a table or painting a house: we can’t just divorce Christianity from it except in the basic ways anyone does a work.

However, now that the Christian culture seems not to care or want them, they are in a huge pickle. It’s either be faithful to the faith and write books no one reads, or shrug, and try and insert crypto-Christianity into essentially secular books. Or give up entirely. Not a good thing at all.

2. The beating up of outcasts.

I know, no one likes Mark Driscoll. But watching him get POUNDED on despite actually having no wrongdoing apart from a bad management style, a brash persona, and bad theology chilled me. This wasn’t like say Jim Bakker or Robert Tilton, who made a mockery of the faith by massive, overt charlatanism. It all boiled down to a people simply not liking him.

The thing is though, Christianity has always been a refuge for the outcasts. But I start to see now that the outcasts are turning on each other.

Like prosperity theology. I know it has issues that need to be addressed. But among certain subsets of Christians, apparently it’s SUCH a demon that it needs to be mocked and anathema. You have tiers of people now, and prosperity gospel Christians or charismatics get consigned to the lower strata. Not argued, or debated, or worried over things-it’s literal in/outgroup signalling.

That’s really dangerous in a faith which is supposed to be for the weakest or the most shunned in our world. Because anyone could be a Driscoll if enough people dislike them. If they see that yeah, even Christianity has its cool kids and its losers, well…

3. Mental illness

Having to realize I suffer from panic attacks and mild depression was also a pain. The idea of mental illness, or probably more accurately genetic determinism, is going to be a big problem for the church.

Christianity as we know it tends to assume that all people are more or less rational actors. Yes, original sin, but generally the idea is that we can be moral or follow His commands once we’ve accepted the faith. However, the idea that we might be affected by our brain chemistry really throws a wrench in this.

Like being able to love one another changes dramatically when you are up and loving or manic one day, down or depressed and antisocial the next. Or fearing not isn’t something you can now trust God for, it’s a part of your brain that just fires up at random, often having nothing to do with events. The problem the church has with homosexuality is similar: if its a genetic or determined condition, it’s a lot different from a person’s moral choice. It would be like sinning if you had a broken leg, a point made pretty devastatingly in parody in the book Erewhon by Samuel Butler.

I don’t know what will happen. This is probably something bigger than most people think.

4. Hollowing out.

The new Star Wars movie sucks.

Why?

The old Star Wars movie was something new out of old. Lucas weaved together disparate things like old serials, samurai movies, and more in order to make something startlingly fresh and original at the time. Time has dulled us to how revolutionary what he did was: go watch most 60’s SF movies and notice how clunky and campy they are.

But the new Star Wars? It does nothing but cannibalize on itself. it exists not because it was new or someone’s vision, but solely because Star Wars needs more Star Wars. It’s a zombie, continuing to lurch under its own power, and Star Wars as a cultural artifact was tired and stale about the time the Clone Wars hit.

The world is like this now. Nothing new, or creative. Just repackaged stuff done by committee. The Avengers? Let’s take everything out of them and make them a bland shell of their Ultimates self. let’s strip comics of their social commentary, even mild ones, and horror. Just explosions and fights every five minutes because that is what sells in China.

It feels like we are in a tired time. There’s nothing new or startling out. Our culture is safe and bland, because the rich people who rule us happen to want safe and bland at the moment.

***

As you can tell, it’s been a disillusioning year. More on what I think about the future in a second post.