Personal note: This was the blog I did not want to write. I put it off and tried to avoid it. The truth is I had to come to some very uncomfortable realizations about the church I love.
On October
1, a man deeply committed to evil launched the bloodiest shooter attack in U.S.
history on a concert on the Las Vegas strip.
It created immediate media frenzy.
The concertgoers and by-standers began posting videos, photographs and
commentary almost before the shooter took his own life. In the media storm everyone wanted his or her
voice to be heard and to be portrayed as compassionate and caring. Churches across the nation had special prayer
services, watches, masses and candlelight vigils providing a note of
spirituality to this dramatically horrible event. The phrase “Praying for Vegas” graced almost
every outlet of social media.
While
prayer is the appropriate response to any tragedy we should have been praying
for a long time. There are heroic, great
Christians with a strong Christian witness serving in Vegas and their work is
not in vain. Any perceived negativity is
not meant for those who have become missionaries to what might be called “America’s
Corinth”.
However,
the “Pray for Vegas” flourish may reflect a problem in the American church’s
culture. Before I make a specific assertion,
let’s note several observations.
Consider
this:
- · In September of this year 58 people were killed and over 200 wounded, not in Vegas, but in Chicago.[1]
- · According to Yelp there are almost 100 strip clubs in Vegas. It has been called the Strip Club Capital of the World.[2]
- · According to one website that studies and reports on black market economies, there are 30,000 prostitutes in Vegas.[3] In one police raid girls as young as 13 years old[4] were found working in the Vegas sex industry.
- · Vegas’ city fathers (and mothers for that matter) have intentionally marketed Vegas with a marketing campaign, “What happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” that is a blatant appeal to the most base nature of fallen humanity.
- · In the last 30 days (as of this writing) there were 126 Islamic attacks in 26 countries, in which 1,102 people were killed and 1,116 injured.[5]
- · In the US there are an estimated 3,000 abortions a day.[6] That is roughly the same as a Vegas shooting every 25 minutes, around the clock.
We are very selective in our
moral outrage! Why?
As
we consider these great tragedies, many of which are in terms of sheer numbers
and much worse than the Vegas shootings, one has to ask, “Why is there so
little moral outrage on the part of the church?” Is there a reason that the
passions and energies of the church can be so excited by one thing and not
another? Why was there no outcry to
“pray for Vegas” as she marketed herself as a vacation spot for vice? Why is
the church both locally and nationally so selective in taking the moral high
ground?
Throughout
its history the church has had a tendency to take the shape of the predominate
culture. Today our culture is media
dominated and I believe that in many cases the Christian’s spirituality is media
driven. What ever is trending is what
gets our attention.
Often
the pattern is something like this:
1.
We see the tragedy as presented by the medias in our lives.
2.
We are caught up in the emotion associated with the tragedy and have a
strong emotional reaction to that tragedy.
3.
We express our emotions, often mimicking the emotional reactions we see
in the media.
4.
We often feel that our participation in this flood of emotion will in
some way make a positive difference.
5.
Having had our cathartic experience (posting a video, lighting a candle,
or liking a post of a video of someone lighting a candle) we go on unchanged in
an unchanged world.
If
you ask me if I am just being cynical, I would ask you, “Are you still praying
for Vegas? Are you praying for the
children in human trafficking in Vegas and other U.S. cities?”
Is the Media driven culture
hijacking Christian spirituality?
Could
it be that as Christians we have mistaken emotion for spirituality and that our
spirituality is media driven? Our emotions are drawn to those events that garner
media attention and we respond accordingly. With the rise of visual media we are tempted
to think with our eyes. As Francis
Shaffer said, “He (the viewer) knows, because his own eyes have seen. He has the impression of greater objective
knowledge than ever before. For many, what
they see on television becomes more true than what they see with their eyes in
the external world.”[7]
The
great problem with a media driven spirituality is that it easily becomes a
media manipulated spiritualty. There
need not be a grand conspiracy. If the
dominant cultural and media establishments share a common worldview they need
not conspire to exert the pressure in the same direction on Christian
sensitivities.
For
example, we might find a circumstance in which a church that held a traditional
view on a subject would be labeled negatively and congregations that held a
more progressive view would be presented in a more positive light. Christians with a media driven spirituality
could be swept away with the accompanying emotions.
While
it would be wrong to suggest Christians should not be engaged in the media
available to us, we must be careful to think prudently. Here are three suggestions that might help
prevent Christians from being manipulated by the media and led astray.
Re-evaluate our involvement
with all media outlets.
As
we approach any media outlet, be that mainstream, talk radio, entertainment or social
media we need to make sure we know why we are engaging and what we want to
accomplish. We need to have a plan for our participation with the media. We can do this by asking some simple
questions:
How
is this related to God’s will and calling for my life?
Why
am I choosing this medium to do this?
How
am I going to use this media to advance God’s calling on my life?
When
will I know that I am reaching my desired objective?
Once
that objective is reached how do I need to re-evaluate my involvement with the
media?
We
can go to the media to be informed, entertained, conduct business, or just to
keep up with friends, but we better not go there without an intentional
approach in mind.
Prioritize the study of
Scripture
If
the foundational beginning of our spirituality and consciousness is anything
other than scripture we cannot help but end up in the wrong place. In the early church it was scripture that
shaped the spirituality of Christians.
There can be no doubt that the church needs to be aware of its cultural
context. However, we have, in my opinion,
over-emphasized cultural sensitivity to the detriment of our commitment to
scripture. The seeker sensitive and
seeker driven approach to the life of the church might have brought us to a
seeker driven spirituality, which results in a faith that is pushed by the
currents of culture. In our context, the
currents of culture are the media.
Biblically trained Christians are not apt to be manipulated about moral
high ground.
Think critically
Many
committed Christians engage with the media without serious reflection. While they are deeply committed to Christ
they tend to not think critically. To often the media has become the background
noise of our lives. We often approach
media without the realization that there is an agenda behind what we see and
hear. From Michael Savage to NPR to Oprah
Winfrey to Justin Bieber to this writer, everyone has a reason to be, a message
and agenda. We must learn to measure
what we see and hear against God’s word; in so doing, we learn to think
critically. By laying the ideals we encounter in the media with the statements
of Scripture we can discern truth from falsehood.
A
fun exercise to learn to do this with is by measuring church music against
scripture. This is a great way to see
that both traditional and contemporary worship songs have examples of Biblical
and un-Biblical messaging. By training
ourselves to think critically about ourselves we can then move on to news,
entertainment and culture.
We do not need less prayer.
When
we face the next tragic moment that will surely flood the media we do not need
less prayer. We need less sentimentality
disguised as a spiritual moment the only purpose of which is to make us feel
better, but makes no difference at all.
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