ken wilson online

Many of you are cringing. Not to worry, this post won’t be a laundry list of American evangelicals at our worst.   There’s only one thing worth mentioning and it trumps all the others: at our worst, we’re more concerned with being right than being evangelical.  It’s the saddest thing about American evangelicalism today, how much passion we have for being right and how little for being evangelical.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with being right, unless it keeps you from being what you are meant to be.  And in this case it does.
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If I were a thoughtful reader of this blog, I could imagine being annoyed by the message coming through. What’s got this guy so hot and bothered?  Why does he even bother to identify as evangelical if he’s got such a withering critique of  American evangelicalism?  He talks as if he’s a Jesus freak, but most of the time (lately) he’s talking about issues: climate change, birth control, Darwin, and the rest. Why doesn’t he just listen to NPR instead of criticizing evangelicals for tuning in to Rush so often? I can imagine being annoyed by this, not because I have such empathy skills, but because I have dear friends who wonder about me.  People I respect and have the highest regard for. So here’s what’s bothering me: I think without really intending to, American evangelicals, as a movement, have turned half the country into the new Samaritans.
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Something’s happening in American Evangelicalism. We are waking up from a stupor. We are attempting to fear our founder more than we fear our movement’s group think.  Because He is asserting his proprietary rights over His brand–a brand which has been the subject of trademark infringement for too long.  We are standing up to be counted as  conscientious objectors to the evangelical culture war that has been distracting us from the evangelical mission.
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Got your attention, didn’t I?  Yes, I’m going to post on abortion and birth control.  Because we have to start talking to each other across the culture war divide.

But first: pause for a moment, lower your hackles, and consider the term, “war.”  What does it evoke?  A battle unto death.  Prepare to kill, prepare to die, that’s what war is about.  And there are times, perhaps, for war. But the followers of Jesus who care about the teachings of Jesus are not to be war enthusiasts. The war that counts, we’re told, is the one that is NOT waged against flesh and blood.  Can we agree on that?  So when we are talking with another human being, when we are struggling with other human beings over issues, war may be the LAST metaphor we should rely on to frame our discussion.   If the teachings of Jesus matter to us, that is.
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Man, do I feel optimistic lately.  Why?  Because of my kids.  They have a different take on the world, and it’s a take the world is due.  We baby boomers have taken things as far as we can with our current Oldsmobile. Our battles lines are firmly fixed, but from their perspective, wearing thin.  Now it’s time for us to listen to their take on the world as much as we’ve been yammering on about ours.  Then, having listened and learned, we’ll be able to see what we’ve been through in a new light and offer, not more information (they can get it faster than we can generate it)  but what they actually crave from us: wisdom, the one thing it takes time and experience and trial and error to gain.

The culture wars are boomer wars.  We inherited them from our fathers who lived in a binary world of good and evil neatly separated by geographic boundaries.  The evil empire was over there, far away from our fields of presumed good. I actually played cowboys and Indians assuming the cowboys were the good guys.  Pick up sides and duke it out; we boomers did it every day all summer long playing baseball in the streets.  May the best side win.  One side fits all.  Side in. Side out.  Are you on our side or the side of our enemies?  Neither, says this newer take on the world before us.  Maybe it’s time for us boomers to sit down, shut up,  and take off our shoes.
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