Counter Cultural

There's an ironic pattern in the Scriptures that most of us never notice. That is, a large number of our favorite characters have rap sheets and prison records! What's that all about?

Joseph did some of his best work in a dungeon. Moses never made it to jail, but he was under investigation and was forced to flee his homeland. Samson was locked up by the Philistines. David spent years trying stay ahead of an arrest warrant. And of course, many of the prophets were threatened, arrested, cast into lion's dens and mud pits, etc., etc.

Then there's that criminal Paul who wrote the majority of our New Testament. Four of his letters are actually classified as "prison epistles" because they originated in a Roman dungeon. A fifth letter, 2 Timothy, was written later during Paul's final incarceration in Rome where he died at the hands of a government agent swinging an ax. Of the other apostles, 10 were executed by government agents and assorted enemies, and one other was sentenced to exile on a prison island. James, the brother of Jesus, was arrested, tried and executed by the government. And even before any of this took place, the founder of our faith was arrested, tried and executed.

Life is so comfortable here in these United States that we can't even relate to the folks who wrote the Bible. We think we're victims of persecution because popular TV shows depict Christians as ignorant buffoons. Happily for us, they don't arrest and prosecute ignorant buffoons in the country. We complain when problems crop up because it seems like God is breaking His promises that we would be rich and comfy, but where exactly did God post those particular promises? Not in the New Testament, I would daresay.

The prison records of so many biblical heroes remind me that the Church of Jesus Christ is counter cultural. We were never called to win the acclaim the secular culture, and certainly not to adapt to it. We are here to challenge that culture; to defy it and subvert it in the name of Christ. We use the term "culture," but the early Christians simply called it "the World." Overcoming the world was not about leaving the Earth; it was about defying the cultural machine that seduces us all with lies and false promises.

In an age when believers feel so sophisticated and trendy when our beliefs and convictions are affirmed by a Hollywood motion picture, I think about Paul languishing in a dungeon before being dragged down a dark corridor to a chopping block. The affirmation of the world is not at all what we really want or need. The affirmation of Christ will come to us when we wholeheartedly embrace his distinctive truth and stop trying to conceal it in the robes of pop psychology and positive thinking.

This is on my mind a lot, so I'll peel off another layer of this onion next week. In the meantime, stand firm.