christian sub-standard culture

The last couple weeks, I have been pondering the cultural insulation that Christians have built in America. In my teenage years, I grew up hanging around with non-churchgoers or secular people, as Christians like to call them. As my spirituality grew with Christ, my time spent around non-churchgoers grew nonexistent. My inability to fully comprehend the Gospel and the dominant church sub-culture present today shielded me from interacting with the “secular” world and its people. Somehow the mathematical transitive property was applicable to real life. If I interacted with secular people in the sinful world, I was interacting with sin.

The Christian sub-culture is the less creative sanitized imitation of popular culture. Merchandise is uniquely labeled or inferred as Christian by means of stamping on the name of Jesus or scripture. Everything is repackaged to make it more acceptable to consume, from music to clothing. This is not to dismiss the talent nor usefulness of such things, but it demonstrates the cultural divide Christians create. Not only in consumptive materials, it is also prevalent in social relationships and interactions.

Christian sub-culture divide does not exist in its merchandise nor image, it exists in our personal engagement with the world. Christian merchandise is the palpable material extension of our desire to subdue and censor the world around us. To eliminate tension and produce a safe house for believers to be emancipated from the reality of sin. The sub-culture that is ostensibly protective and encouraging ultimately becomes a hindrance and obstacle in faith.

The cultural vacuum disconnects believers and non-believers. Communication is intermittent and defensive. The people God wants to reach are the same people excluded. When a boy grows up in the sub-culture and then loses his faith in college, the blame is on the popular culture and not on the Pharisaic rules of the sub-culture his faith was based on. Christians cannot change the world until they engage it. The cultural bubble must burst to fully adhere to the command of “love thy neighbor”, including myself.