Tales From the Boring

I subbed today at a local high school. This isn't really a strange event, though. I mean I sub pretty much everyday. Today was just a particularly boring day. Seriously I did virtually nothing. I gave an assignment and let them work while they talked quietly. Thrilling, I know.  I did, however, get to do one thing throughout the day. As the students got louder I would warn them that they were getting too loud. Yeah, I know what you are thinking. how do I get that job? Pretty much just apply....It isn't hard in Fort Wayne.

Despite the crushing boredom, I did come away with some pretty cool sociological research. High schoolers can't stay quiet. At least not a whole group. And by 'quiet' I don't mean 'silent.' They can definitely stay silent if you make them. Some even do that on their own, but ask them to keep a low volume and that is just right out.

What's funny about this is that it always happens in a predictable process. It starts with the warning. That is the lowest their volume gets. At this point everyone is whispering. Then someone either gets bold or just slightly excited and their volume gets a little bit louder...enter the new normal. That is now the volume that almost everyone now talks. Their response times are incredible, too, because it sounds like a jump in volume. Slowly this process repeats, and the volume goes from quiet to loud and it is fairly hard to notice for a while.

As I was noticing this trend, it made me think a lot about our churches. This is almost the exact same process that allows worldly culture into the church. Just look back through history. As the church begins to accept more of society in the church, more then creeps in. Then someone calls the warning that it is getting too loud and it drops back again, more than it needed to. (Enter the Amish and Non-Instrumental churches)

It is this process that I have been noticing a lot in my generation. We are getting pretty loud. Now I'm not calling for a reset, and I definitely don't want to fall back to a whisper; that is too far, but we do need to check how much culture we allow into the church. This is no clearer than it is in the area of sexuality. I know, sexuality has been beat like a long-dead horse, but it is a very good benchmark for how my generation views culture.

There are a lot of people in the 18-35 age bracket that have effectively removed sexual sin from their minds. Its like its not real anymore. They don't see a problem with sex before marriage. They don't see a problem with porn. They don't see a problem with homosexuality. It is all in the name of being more acceptable to culture. Here is the problem, Christianity is not supposed to be acceptable to culture. Christianity is supposed to be separate from culture. *Please note that this doesn't mean having a completely different sub-culture that is essentially culture's younger brother with all of his hand-me-downs. What I mean by separate is that as Christians we are meant to be distinguished by the choices we make, the things we endorse.

Christianity sets a pretty high bar when it comes to sexuality. Our sexuality is meant to glorify God. It is an act that God has blessed, but just like any gift from God, he lays down the ground rules for how it works. It is a covenent union between a man and a woman. The problem that I see is not the sinning. That isn't the problem. That problem becomes when we no longer acknowledge a sin as a sin.

Sexual immorality has become the norm in young Christian culture. I often hear the excuse that we can't expect purity in this hypersexualized culture. I don't buy that. Namely because purity was something that was expected of Christians in the hypersexualized culture of first century Rome. Last I checked we don't have sexual relations with prostitutes as part of the worship to state-sanctioned deities. Christian purity was one of the main ways that Christians were different than the culture of the rest of the world.

So this goes out to my generation of Christians: We are getting a little loud. I am not proposing that we live like Puritans, but please can we start checking how much culture is creeping into our theological thought?