Reactionary Faith

I'm noticing more and more that many of us focus more on the kind of faith, or the religion, that we don't want to have than we do on our actual relationship with God.

Here's what I mean...or what I've seen.

You grow up in the church and see a lot of hypocrisy.  Maybe it becomes more about do's and don'ts, and less about a relationship with God...This bugs you and you decide to go in a different direction.   You know that this relationship with God isn't just a list of rules, so you reject all, or most, of what you've learned.  The bathwater is circling the drain along with the baby...and maybe that's good?

We react.  "They" were doing it wrong, so everything "they" do...must be wrong...right?

We don't want to be like those old school fundamentalists, because they can lean legalistic.  We say that they've lost their way and have revolved their faith around a bunch of rules.  They don't cuss, or drink or watch Will Ferrel movies, because they think it'll get in the way of their faith.  We think they've become more about the rules than the faith (we judge them - ironically) so we do the opposite.

It's not this cut and dry, but I do think that many of us fear being lumped in with "those kinds of Christians" (they make movies with Kirk Cameron, chew on TestaMints, hand out tracts and wear their faith on their t-shirts).  Because the youth group Christians can get wrapped up in the trappings of Christianity, we sometimes think their faith is just sort of silly...or churchy...or based on works.  So we go the way of "authenticity" or simply away from anything that smacks of our grandparent's faith.

We react to something that strikes as too hard, off base or just plain bad.  Our focus moves from something that maybe starts out pure to something that often is a little more palatable...or safe....but certainly not like the faith of "those people".  We laugh at the people with the wristbands, t-shirts, albums, movies and the entire churchy culture as having missed the point.  It's not about pop-Christianity, it's about authenticity.

And that's often where it ends.  We want to be authentic, to start a revolution, to live as modern day radicals fighting the pop-Christianity that's all about filling seats and making a buck!  We will not do that.  We will not be that.


And that's often where it ends...
with who we are not...and what we are not...