Nick Bogardus

I’m telling you, Stephen Marche is brilliant. In this article over at Esquire, he just summed up the end results of people pleasing, the fear of man, actual creativity vs. mimicking, and what that reveals about a generation in a few devastating key strokes.

Why did we all laugh at Björk when she wore a swan but cheered Gaga when she wore Kermits?

Was it because Björk’s radical openness is terrifying in its boldness and uniqueness whereas Lady Gaga’s subservience — her obvious posiness — is reassuringly slavish?

Don’t we all enjoy, in a sick way, how obviously she would do anything for our attention?

Why do we want that?

What is wrong with us?

Is it that Lady Gaga is representative, outside of whatever private crisis has led to her deep need to please, of a generational shift?

Isn’t it telling of the millennials that even their most radical pop star, their rock ‘n’ roll monster, is fundamentally a pleaser?

So doesn’t Lady Gaga represent, in the end, a profound closing of the collective soul rather than an energetic bursting-forth?

A maze with no exit rather than a path to new worlds?

Or in 2011 has everything worth saying been said and everything worth doing been done and ripping off the recent past will have to do?

That there is no escape from the maze and so all we can do is expand it?

While you’re at it, check out my other posts on Lady Gaga

Mars Hill pastor Justin Holcomb, author of Rid of My Disgrace: Hope & Healing for Victims of Sexual Assault, on a Christian being a missionary in culture.

ROCK: Do we really have to keep up with the culture just to make our message relevant and easily understood?

Justin Holcomb: Any good missionary is going to learn the language and customs of a people group so that they can effectively communicate the truths of the gospel. It’s important to understand the culture around us for the same mission-minded reasons. But in being a good student of the culture, we never compromise on the God’s truth, or personal holiness.

ROCK: Some articles you wrote features some giants of the faith like Luther, Calvin, Edwards etc. Are their messages still relevant in this digital age?

Justin Holcomb: Absolutely. A high view of Jesus and the Bible is the great heritage these men have passed down to us. That’s always timeless! Many people aren’t prepared (or not interested) in the depth of much of this scholarship. But the great thing about the technology and social media we have at our disposal is that we’re able to share the core ideas of these great thinkers and for those that are interested in reading more in-depth, the distribution channels for books and materials is literally just a click away.

ROCK: At a personal level, how did culture shape you as a Christian and a pastor?

Justin Holcomb: My aim is not to shape culture. My response to God’s love is to worship him, love my wife and children well, and serve on God’s mission where he has me. We need more pastors doing that and stop trying to change the world.

You can read the rest of the interview here.

Read the whole story here. Bottom line is that he faces execution by hanging on Wednesday because he apparently converted from Islam to Christianity.

When asked to “repent” by the judges, Youcef stated, “Repent means to return. What should I return to? To the blasphemy that I had before my faith in Christ?” The judges replied , “To the religion of your ancestors, Islam.” To which he replied, “I cannot.”

Breaking Radio Silence

I haven’t posted anything in over a month because, in addition to planting Mars Hill Orange County, I had the opportunity to join a church planting cohort with six other pastors from all corners of the US. It has been brutal in terms of traveling - if anyone has any travel health tips I welcome them! - but it has been a great experience and I’m grateful to be in the company of great men with passions for Jesus, their families, and their cities. Actually, I’m on a plane heading home now and am about to jump out of my seat with excitement to see Kim and Eva.

MTD & Liberal Whateverism

Anyway, I’m happy to break the radio silence for Christian Smith. His book, Souls in Transition, was incredibly helpful for me in understanding the Millennial generation and still serves as a oft-referenced resource. From that research, Smith helpfully diagnosed the spiritual malaise of America as “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”. Smith is back with another helpful term to describe an aspect of American spirituality, “Liberal Whateverism”.

I have been studying the lives of American teenagers and emerging adults for the past decade. In our recently published book, “Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood,” my co-authors and I describe the larger world in which liberal whateverism makes sense. Many emerging adults have few considered moral bearings, are devoted to mass consumerism, routinely become intoxicated and engage in casual sexual hook-ups, are civically and politically uninformed and alienated. Our story is not a tirade against “kids these days.” It is about wider, deeper problems in American society and culture — concerns that should trouble liberals and conservatives — which show up in disquieting ways in the lives of youth.

Be sure to read the rest of the article here.

[H/T Justin Holcomb]

A Massive Culture Shift

There is a massive shift happening right now in our culture. The ink and pixels that have spilled on the change are markedly hopeless and without answers. To see the tip of the iceberg, we only need to look at the LA Times from last month. The nuclear family is now the minority of households in California.

“New census figures show that the percentage of Californians who live in “nuclear family” households - a married man and a woman raising their children - has dropped again for the last decade, to 23.4% of all households. That represents a 10% decline in 10 years, measured as a percentage of the state’s households.
Those households, the Times analysis shows, are being supplanted by a striking spectrum of postmodern living arrangements: same-sex households, unmarried opposite-sex partners, married couples who have no children…new sorts of households - blended families; bands of middle-class singles who live and vacation together; families that were once called “broken” - are increasingly the standard.” LA Times, US Census Data Show California Families Changing, June 22, 2011

Actors in Limbo

What it means to be a family is being re-defined, largely by a tectonic shift in gender roles. In the Wall Street Journal, Kay Hymotitz argued that because women are moving ahead more quickly and in greater numbers in our advanced knowledge economy, that husbands and fathers are now optional. This, she says, has created a situation in which today’s pre-adult male is like an actor in a drama in which he only knows what he shouldn’t say, and in which most men in their 20s hang out in a “novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance.”

Perhaps the things that really need redeeming are the church’s lack of a voice in what it means to be a man or woman.

Untethered, Lost, Mute, and Passive

In Hanna Rosin’s article in the The Atlantic entitled “The End of Men,” she paints a nearly identical picture of the alpha-female dominating mute and passive males. “He can be sweet, bitter, nostalgic, or cynical, but he cannot figure out how to be a man. ‘We call each other man,’ says Ben Stiller’s character in Greenberg, ‘but it’s a joke. It’s like imitating other people.’” 

The New York Times described this new “emerging adulthood” as a block box where 20-somethings delay reaching adulthood, often until their 30s.

The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain untethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.

Don’t Focus Just on the External

Of course that is true in the church, only you can replace the Teach for America jobs with short-term missions trips. For all of the time and energy spent on “redeeming the arts”, “redeeming cities”, and everything else we want to attach the word “redeem” to, perhaps the things that really need redeeming are the church’s lack of a voice in what it means to be a man or woman. Exerting so much effort on people’s activities is only addressing externals, symptoms. Chances are if a guy can be a man who loves Jesus, reads his Bible, gets a job, leaves his parent’s house, and loves one woman, then he will also be effective wherever God has called him, be that the arts or in business.

One important thing that needs to be pointed out about this cultural shift described in the articles above is that it is turning us into autonomous individuals. Mrs. Hymotitz even went so far as to say that husbands and fathers are optional in this new economic paradigm. While we might bandage the need for relationship with loosely-defined friendships, these float on the surface of lives marked by selfishly avoiding commitments, being untethered to romantic partners, or permanent homes.

Perhaps the most loving, most prophetic thing the church can do is to call men in their 20s to love Jesus, read their Bibles, get a job, to leave their parent’s house, and to love one woman.

Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

In the face of the confusion, hopelessness, and lack of any answers from our culture, one of the most radical things the church can call Christians to is back to God’s design for men and women. Men and women were created to cultivate and steward God’s creation—to rule over it as his representatives. But what is often underemphasized is that we were created to do that together. God made men and women in complementary ways to reflect his trinitarian nature, his covenantal love in marriage, and his authority and submission in the church. This ultimately points toward the unity that will exist when Jesus comes back for the bride he loves. All of this is his love towards us.

The Call

Perhaps the most loving, most prophetic thing the church can do is to call men in their 20s to love Jesus, read their Bibles, get a job, to leave their parent’s house, and to love one woman—according to the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and the New York Times, no one is doing that.

This article originally appeared on The Resurgence.