Cultural Hermeneutics and Poster-People for Christianity

Yes, that's Justin Bieber reading a book.  Deal with it.  And no, I'm not Belieber.

It seems that my previous post was quite polarizing, and I was honestly very, very surprised.  The polarizing aspect of it was the notion of cultural hermeneutics, namely that our actions are subject to public interpretation, and this interpretation must be factored in in our witness.  There is nothing wrong per se about Tebow's "Tebowing" or Jeremy Lin's vocal thanking of God.  The issue at hand is that those actions become subject to interpretation outside the context of the Church.  Many of us are used to being open and gung-ho about our faith.  But many of us don't realize that this openness and gung-ho-ness is made possible in the context we live in.  Suburbia is a very nice place for this openness to become public.  After all, everything's nice and dandy in suburbia.  The statistical outliers in terms of income are either the über-wealthy or the one or two homeless people or refugee communities, perhaps, who live in town.  Fight it however much you want, but the evidence is plain as day that our environment plays such a powerful role in influencing our theology.

Another thing I've realized is that there needs to be an understanding of what the Church is about.  The Church is not about spreading the Gospel.  If only, then all we have to do is just leave a bunch of gospel tracts all over the place and hold John 3:16 signs at every public event known to God, humanity, and the aliens on Enceladus.  No.  The Church is about being the Gospel story to the world.  Evangelism and missions is the articulation of that Gospel story being lived out.  Consider the fact that if we go to Taiwan, Hong Kong, or China, we don't need to do much to convince them that we are not from Taiwan, Hong Kong, or China, even if we are fluent in the language.  Whenever we speak, we miss out on the linguistic nuances that make Chinese indigenous to Chinese-speaking countries, because we are Chinese-Americans.  How we dress gives us away - Taiwan winters constitute long-sleeved T-shirt weather for me, but for the Taiwanese, they wear poofy ski jackets as if it were below freezing!  We don't need to show everyone our American passports - they know because our existence simply does not completely mesh with theirs.  How we live in those contexts is, in other words, fundamentally asynchronous to their normal way of life.  The same, I contend, applies to our understanding of the Church.

Of course, this means we need to live out the Gospel story first before we know what we should say about the Gospel.  It may sound inefficient, but at least it prevents various forms of "Gospel" being presented in the open, some of which are downright heretical, and some that sound good but are completely counter-Christianity.  Now, it is easy to write those interpretations off as inaccurate, but the central idea I'm pushing is that once you present the Gospel, whether it is right or wrong, it is open to any interpretation of it.  Furthermore, even if one version of the Gospel is seen as incompatible with Christianity, the fact that it has been released to the public means that the public is free to do what they want with their interpretations of that un-Christian gospel.  This includes imputing that definition to all forms of Christianity.  That is why our missions and evangelistic strategies need to be ecclesiological (Church-minded); and that our ecclesiology be Gospel-centered.  There is practical wisdom in St. Cyprian's claim that outside the church, there is no salvation.

Because many of us are used to the Gospel being presented in one cookie-cutter way, a few things need to be addressed.  First:

(1) The Gospel does not have a unilateral interpretation.  In other words, there is not one absolutely canonical way to express the Gospel.  

Consider the fact that at one time in America, to be Christian is to be white!  In some isolated pockets in America, some churches apparently still believe that!  Now, it is easy for us to say, "How messed up are these Christians!"  But therein lies the problem: the Gospel does not have one exact interpretation.  If there were one unquestionably right definition of the Gospel, we wouldn't have white supremacist Christians, normal Christians, and those who do not hold to orthodox theological positions all claiming to agree with the same Gospel!  Of course, many of us have grown up with the Billy Graham interpretation of the Gospel, and so we think of the Gospel as salvation, meaning having made a conscious decision to choose God over the things of this world.  But there are others (Reformed) who would say that God has already chosen us; the question is whether we recognize that and respond by returning back to the arms of God.  There are still those who say that to affiliate with God is to affiliate with "the least of these."  And that's only the beginning!

Not all of these are per se wrong.  But what's important to know is that all are born from different experiences and perspectives.  Billy Graham's version of the Gospel appeals to many precisely because it offers a surefire way to know that you are saved - you've prayed that prayer and committed yourself to God.  The rhetoric of making a choice rings well within a free market framework as well, seeing as free market economics is about freedom of choice.  But liberation theologians who see the Gospel as affiliating with "the least of society" come from ministry backgrounds where they have seen the poorest and seen how the wealthy have held a stranglehold over economic and political systems in order to maintain wealth and power on their side.  Oftentimes, they note that the wealthy and the powerful were people who claimed to believe in the Gospel!  It is not surprising that most liberation theology has arisen from contexts of poverty, violence, and racism.  We may disagree with them, sure.  But the key is to realize that how we interpret the Gospel does indeed issue forth from our own experiences and interactions with the world around us.

(2) The Gospel constitutes a people, who then are sent as witnesses to God.

But despite the various interpretations, the Gospel does do at least one thing: it constitutes a certain people.  This notion of constituting a certain people is very unfamiliar from within evangelical contexts because we see faith as very individualistic.  That's not surprising - Billy Graham, who arguably was the father of modern evangelicalism, emphasized one's "personal relationship with God" which is often interpreted individualistically as opposed to having a relationship with a real God.  Nevertheless, such individualistic reading of the Gospel is not supported biblically.  Rather, the Gospel constitutes a people who are resident aliens in this world.  We live as a people in the liminal space in between this world and the world of Revelation.

This, of course, creates an issue with witness.  If we are not "of but in this world", how are we to interact with it, and to what extent should we be involved in it?  Some, of course, would forswear any affiliation with anything in this world.  The most extreme are the Amish in Dutch country.  But there are some who would say that we need to work within worldly structures to bring about biblical changes.  Some say that the entire structure needs to be replaced with one that is biblically informed.  The debate rages on.  But no matter what side we are on, we need to note one important thing:

(3) This witness is interpreted by the public, who then would render some sort of judgment on the Church's witness.

In a democratic society, everyone has a right to an interpretation of anything happening in society.  In fact, even in a socialist country like North Korea, people have their interpretations of public behavior - was everyone who was crying at Kim Jong Il's funeral truly saddened by his death?  Thus, our nation (as are Taiwan, Japan, and many other democratic countries) thrives on various opinions.  Opinions are not more than just one's interpretation of some aspect of society.

The Scriptures make it clear that the public is no barometer of cultural-exegetical accuracy.  What is truly good for the public may not be truly good!  That is why democracies are not always guarantees of what is right, because the underlying fallacy is that those living in democracies know what is right for them.  Consider the case of Greece, whose people hate the austerity measures yet wish to remain in the Eurozone, a position which self-contradictory since the only way to not need the austerity measures (or at least not need the severe version of it) is to leave the Eurozone!  Nonetheless, the judgment will be made by the public whether we'd like it or not.  What we need to be concerned about is that when public opinion swings heavily against important positions for Christianity, the hill we choose to allow the public to crucify us on is worthy of Golgotha, and not the neighborhood sledding hill.

And so we must return to the question of Christian witness in sports.  What I agree with insofar as Tebow and Lin are concerned is that they are a refreshing change from the stereotypical image of an American athlete.  We usually conceive of them in Greek-humanist fashion, as modern symbols of strength, glory, and fertility.  And to that end we don't see them much more than people who spend time in gyms, kiss trophies, and have random sex with random people.  BUT, to be consistent, I would argue that we should be just as enthused about Native American athletes, South Asian athletes, Muslim athletes, Hindu athletes, or even atheist athletes who apportion sports a measure of dignity.  This much I concede, and yes, I would support Tebow and Lin insofar as they further the art of playing football or basketball.

That the Twittersphere, Facebook-world, etc. are abuzz with Tebow and Lin's faith suggests to me that this is not the case.  What we cannot stoop down to is the notion that they are great BECAUSE they are publicly sharing their faith.  Why?  It is because Christianity is NOT about publicly sharing our faith in whatever way, shape, or form we think is good!  Evangelism is not a marketing ploy.  What is marketing other than persuading others that they need a certain product?  We don't, can't, and shouldn't be pushing for how much people "need" Jesus.  If this is our message, then yes, by all means, find 1,001 Jesus poster boys and girls, lift their names high, and have them proclaim how much they love Jesus.  But we need to realize that this does NOT translate necessarily to the wider public as "Oh, wow, I realize that I am a depraved creature!"  Because our notions of depravity are not a NFL quarterback or a Knicks player who majored in economics at Harvard University (note: the real Harvard, not the "Harvard of evangelical Christianity"... ugh, hate that unofficial ditty).

Where, I ask, is the faithful and quiet old woman who faithfully prepares the elements of Communion every Communion Sunday?  Where is the high praise for her?  Where, prithee explain, is encouragement  for pastors who do not hold high-falutin' doctorates, or even hold graduate degrees that sound good (note: Princeton sounds very good)?  Where is the love for the pastor who humbly never wrote a book, who can never approach the rhetoric of Barack Obama, Margaret Thatcher, or even the great St. John Chrysostom, but faithfully did his or her visitations, dispensed the advice in faith and wisdom, and truly loved his/her congregation?  I think that THOSE are the people we need to make as poster-boys of the Christian faith.  Why?  Well, they may not be famous, but that's not what we're about.  We're all about loving Jesus and loving our neighbors, and the world knows through our witness and service.  And what does that witness and service look like?  It looks like that faithful and quiet old lady preparing Communion, the undersung youth pastor that will forever be seen as not-quite-a-real-pastor-until-he/she-is-an-English-pastor, the un-PhD'd pastor who never wrote a book or went to some college or divinity school nobody really heard of, or even the pastor who never knew that there are 2 versions of the Ten Commandments (yes - I'm not making this up).

Such a witness, in my view, offers very few possible interpretations.  After all, when you choose to lift up banners of faith, you pick the most shining example.  The school always shows off its valedictorians, its Ivy-bound graduates, its most talented and creative students, not those who barely squeaked by with a 2.1 GPA.  So how else are people supposed to interpret a Church where we lift up the 2.1 student who couldn't figure out his/her dy/dx's from her dx/dy's, but still could sing "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."?

Of course, they could interpret it as delusional, unrealistic, stupid, "medieval", or anything like this.  But that's fine.  Because in a dog-eats-dog world, the winners can go climb the social ladder and ascend up to Cloud Nine.  But as for me and my family, we will go and serve the Lord.  And it is those people who have left glory for such service whom I want to be Christian poster-boys and poster-girls.  I know Jeremy Lin wants to be a pastor, blah-blah.  But I'll wait until this "Linsanity" is over and until he truly enters ministry before I'm willing to claim him as a prime example of the faith.