"Shamed-Driven Pressure to Be Awesome"

"Is Paul’s urging to live quietly, mind your own affairs, and work with your hands (1 Thessalonians 4:11) only for losers?"

Marvin Olasky's question caught my attention because I'm working on a series of messages for October-November called "The Quiet Company," which includes a look at 1 Thessalonians 4:11.

Olasky's question introduced a must-read piece by Anthony Bradley. He warns that well-intentioned calls for "missional" and "radical" Christianity is becoming a "new legalism." It's a backlash whose time has come:

Living out one’s faith [has become] narrowly celebratory only when done in a unique and special way, a “missional” way. Getting married and having children early, getting a job, saving and investing, being a good citizen, loving one’s neighbor, and the like, no longer qualify as virtuous. One has to be involved in arts and social justice activities—even if justice is pursued without sound economics or social teaching. I actually know of a couple who were being so “missional” they decided to not procreate for the sake of taking care of orphans.

Bradley says the fad "has positioned a generation of youth and young adults to experience an intense amount of...shamed-driven pressure to be awesome and extraordinary young adults expected to tangibly make a difference in the world immediately." As a healthy alternative to the new legalism:

What if youth and young adults were simply encouraged live in pursuit of wisdom, knowledge, understanding, education, wonder, beauty, glory, creativity, and worship in a world marred by sin, as Abraham Kuyper encourages in the book Wisdom and Wonder. No shame, no pressure to be awesome, no expectations of fame but simply following the call to be men and women of virtue and inviting their friends and neighbors to do the same in every area of life.

Read the rest. And while you're at it, Matthew Lee Anderson at Christianity Today also has a critique of the collection of calls for a more intense Christianity:

The heroes of the radical movement are martyrs and missionaries whose stories truly inspire, along with families who make sacrifices to adopt children. Yet the radicals' repeated portrait of faith underemphasizes the less spectacular, frequently boring, and overwhelmingly anonymous elements that make up much of the Christian life....There aren't many narratives of men who rise at 4 A.M. six days a week to toil away in a factory to support their families. Or of single mothers who work 10 hours a day to care for their children. Judging by the tenor of their stories, being 'radical' is mainly for those who already have the upper-middle-class status to sacrifice.

...

The Good Samaritan wasn't a good neighbor because he moved to a poor part of town....He came across the helpless victim "as he traveled." We begin to fulfill the command not when we do something radical, extreme, over the top, not when we're really spiritual or really committed or really faithful, but when in the daily ebb and flow of life, in our corporate jobs, in our middle-class neighborhoods, on our trips to Yellowstone and Disney World—and yes, even short-term mission trips—we stop to help those whom we meet in everyday life, reaching out in quiet, practical, and loving ways.

 

Posted with Blogsy