This baby is coming today!

Wrapping up week # 3 of reestablishing daily writing and about to turn a corner from one focus to another.  This will wrap up most of the high level, fly over view of a lot of the notes that have been pitched into my Notes App over the past few months about deconstruction and after today, will move toward the notes that are more in the rebuilding pile, but acknowledging there will be a bit overlap with occasional forays back into the deconstruction side to explain what's being built or rebuilt.

In other words, for writing's sake, the new thing is going to take focus from this point forward.  Instead of "What's does Wade seem mad about today?" we will move to "Where is God leading Wade?".  It's funny, one of the most common questions I'm asked is, "Where y'all going to church now?".  Very few, like two people, asked where I am "with God" in all this change that's happened.  And that summarizes a lot of what I've been working on taking apart - this framework of how we think about God through "church" almost exclusively.

Probably the biggest deconstruction target for me is Christian subculture.  I remember a time when it was "the thing". I thought it was God's will for everyone to live in and share the goodness of what I thought was a uniquely helpful subculture that would benefit anyone who'd lean into it.  It would bring you closer to God and it would make you the light of the world and salt of the earth.  And then I could see cracks forming in my mind about that idea.  Mind you, this was a longer process, like from mid-late '90's.

As the wheels were beginning to come off of Christian subculture for me and it had not only lost its luster, but began to stink, along came some revival in the form of contemporary Christian music.  There were artists who genuinely were good musicians and writers (early on) that spoke about the hope of God for the world, for hurting people, and for anyone trying to make sense of following God or Jesus in this crazy world.  They had the look and the message.  And then it went really commercial.

At some point that music style morphed into more of a worship music approach - instead of music as to observe, take in, and savor, it turned into performance art where more and more of what was cranked out was "worship music" - sing-a-longs with lots of hooks, heavy emotion, and its own fashions.  And alongside this music devolution were a host of weird Christianity versus the world things with politics, entertainment, and other aspects of culture.

To be a good Christian, you needed to enjoy the rhythm and flow of church life.  Christianity actually kinda, sorta changed into church-ianity.  The good news of Jesus was "you can come be part of our awesome subculture.  We're safe for the kids you're raising and we have positive and encouraging music!" And there are many people in my life that this cookie cutter culture did not fit and they were essentially told "If you want Jesus, you gotta come through us. Jesus is the open door and we're the screen door."

Culture is the sum total of what humans create - all the physical things we dream up and make, all the ideas we have, our language, values, norms, and anything artistic or creative - it's all the stuff we do.  Over time, people make up their own stuff, their own culture and, basically, that's their subculture.  It's similar to other parts of "dominant culture", but different enough that it sets itself apart and its members see themselves as different from the overall direction of all other subcultures (aka dominant culture).

Christianity has or IS its own subculture (in the US) that, in my experience, has often overshadowed the gospel and even replaced it with its own goals and message.  It's way less about a way of seeing life or having a worldview that is good news for the world and more about enjoying a certain slice of life.  And if you ask the average person what the gospel or good news is, they'll tell you about their church experience and will have a hard time explaining much anything else.

Church is more about having a community and, to a degree, some of those communities don't really care whether or not the focus is on God and what he's done and is doing among us through Jesus and his Spirit. Some people are actually pretty open about that.  And I kind of get that. People want a safe place with relatively predictable people and environments where they can take their kids, find some common ground, and know they have a people they can rely on in troubled times.  Nothing wrong with that at all.

But church doesn't have the market cornered on community like that.  I think people like to think they do, but they don't.  Don't get me wrong, it does community well, but that is available in other places to some degree - and sometimes in better quality.  I regularly hear from people who have been a part of AA or other recovery groups that they wished that church was as helpful and encouraging as the recovery groups they were part of, but they simply weren't. 

If time permits, I'll unpack all this in a more formal sense at a later time, but to summarize for today, the gospel isn't that you can have a nice group of people who gather each week to "have church" and the occasional potluck.  There are some amazing things about being part of a local congregation that can bless your life in crazy good ways.  And yet many of those things have little to no direct connection to the good news of Jesus. 

So, I turn the corner on this good Friday and wish you and yours well.  Grace and peace to all.