Finding Malachi 3:16 People

“Then those who feared the LORD spoke one with another; and the LORD listened and heard, and a book of memory was written before him, for those who feared the LORD and who honored his name.” (Malachi 3:16, World English Bible, a public domain translation)

My life as an adult Christian was sidetracked fairly early on by my being hoodwinked into involvement in an abusive, cultic church. I am grateful for my escape from that church several years ago. Yet the years since I regained my freedom have not been without struggle. That struggle has been in figuring out whether to fit in the prevailing evangelical culture, to fit into a typical evangelical church, to find nourishment, guidance and community within this culture and its typical churches. It is a struggle which I have largely given up. I am too different from the prevailing American evangelical culture. And it has become decidedly too weird – there's too much that I can't swallow.

So right now I don't attend church regularly, although there are “relevant” trendy wanna-be megachurches nearby that would dearly like my attendance. One such church sent out a mailer before Christmas with a picture on the front titled, “CSI: Christmas Scene Investigation.” The font and layout of the lettering and the associated picture were, of course, very similar to the logo for the CBS Television series “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.” Maybe they thought I was a TV addict. (What's funny is that this very “original” idea for a Christmas sermon series was also seized upon by a few other churches throughout the U.S. at about the same time.) The church that sent out the mailer is doing its best to be trendy, and even has a website (www.coolchurch.com, if you can believe that! Wow, a cool church!), where the church is described as having “refreshments from our Life Cafe..., rockin' worship, the sermon via the big screen, and everything else that provides a 'Come as you are' feel...”

Lots of pastors want to be cool nowadays. So many of them are trying so hard to be “cutting-edge” that they don't see how ridiculously similar they are to each other. A while back, there was an article on another blog, titled “Purpose-Driven Pastor Season,” describing the sight of hundreds of “Purpose-Driven” pastors descending on Irvine, California for the annual pastors' conference with the big fish, Rick Warren. The picture on that blog post is rather funny, as most of these pastors are wearing the same style of pants! (How do middle-aged pastors enhance their “coolness” anyway? Should they learn skateboarding tricks? That might hurt!) There are so many large churches with “Starbucks-style” coffee bars that they may give Starbucks a run for their money. Tomorrow, there will be thousands of churches across the land where one can hear simplistic, inspirational sermons on confronting life's daily problems, sermons chock-full of anecdotes taken from sports, because everybody knows that that's how to relate to us guys. Before and after the sermon, there will be a rockin' good show from a kickin' praise band, because everyone knows that that's how to reach the youth.

To all of this I have said, “No thank you!” And since it is so prevalent, there are therefore a lot of Sundays in which I'd rather do something else with my time than try out a new church. What I'm looking for is people who stand for Biblical truth without being legalistic, overbearing or domineering. I am also looking for people who are gentle toward each other without compromising the Bible. My cultic experience introduced me to people who erred on the side of severity and legalistic harshness. But the present evangelical culture seems to be erring on the side of compromise (although more and more wanna-be megachurch leadership teams are throwing in a bit of severity and harshness of their own).

Yet pilgrims need companionship and community in their pilgrimmage. Fortunately, I have been finding a sort of community in the large number of bloggers who are now writing about their experiences of recovery from the darker side of American evangelicalism. I greatly appreciate some of these bloggers. I can tell from their writings that they are still dedicated to obeying Christ, that they are still willing to submit themselves to the Word of God, even if that means living out that Word as strangers among strangers. We can talk to each other as equals and learn from each other, and no one is trying to sign anyone else up to be part of someone's religious empire.

I have particularly enjoyed a post from the Detox Church Group titled, “Pilgrim, Make Progress.” It seems that the Detox Group finds the present evangelical culture to be as hard to swallow as I do. (Good to hear from you guys again, by the way.) There is also an excellent recent post on the Internet Monk site titled, “The Gospel-Believing Christian In The Midst of Legalism,” in which the lure of legalism as a means of producing immediate behavioral results is explained, as well as a description of why this is dangerous and wrong. And I always learn something from the posts on the Blog of Lema Nal. Then there is the Autonomy of the Believer blog's recent posts on tactics of control and domination used by “Word of Faith” pastors against their “flocks.” I also appreciate the recent Gale Warnings posts on the author's personal working out of strategies for dealing with anger.

These bloggers are people who are “working out their own salvation,” including the process of recovery, and blessing the rest of us by sharing their experience of that process. If we can't find spiritual nourishment within the institutional church in America nowadays, at least we can feed each other.

Facing Our Fears - The Gang Problem

This earthly life holds unpleasant realities. It is therefore not surprising that people want to escape those realities, nor that they use such means of escape as drugs, alcohol or a change of scenery, among other things. But our present times are days in which people are losing their means of escape. Christians in particular are called, not to escape, but to a mission in the world – especially in our particular localities. If the dangerousness of that mission makes some of us hesitant, maybe it's time to face our fears intelligently.

America is a nation that needs the Gospel, and not in some abstract sense, nor as a message delivered from a distance by standoffish messengers. America is a sick nation, as evidenced by moral decline on every level, in every area of society. One symptom of that sickness is the proliferation of gangs in recent years.

A factual overview: A recent post on John Robb's blog Global Guerrillas (http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/02/manufactured-tribes.html) titled “Manufactured Tribes,” describes how economic depressions cause people to shift their associations to line up with “primary loyalties” – family, friends, community, etc. Unfortunately, community ties in this country are often very weak. Family ties have also been weakened over the years, leading to high divorce rates, child abandonment, and so forth. That leaves many young people vulnerable to groups such as gangs which create new primary loyalties, as in, “Yo, schoolboy, I'm from the Fullerton Town Tokers! Where you from?”

Mr. Robb quotes from a 2009 FBI report that states that current gang membership in the U.S. is over 1 million people, a 25 percent increase from 2005. These members are distributed among several types and sizes of gangs. Fifty-eight percent of state and local law enforcement agencies now report that gangs are active in their jurisdictions, as opposed to 45 percent in 2004. In some communities, gangs commit 80 percent of the crime and outnumber police 5 to 1.

And gangs are proliferating in the Pacific Northwest, migrating upward from Southern California and other places. Their signs are becoming increasingly apparent. How then should we look at them?

Some might associate gang activity primarily with certain ethnic groups. Such an association would be easy and tempting, yet dishonest. For American pop culture has itself become gang-tinctured. From hip-hop to gangsta music, from televised NBA games to the explosion of gang-themed movies like Hood Rats, the glorification of gang culture is being sold to youth from every kindred, tribe and people. There are black gangs, Latino gangs, Asian gangs, white gangs, Russian/Eastern European gangs, and so forth. Many young men (and women!) have learned the slow menacing shuffle, the scowl, the proper way to wear a baseball cap sideways, and what to do with a spray paint can.

Much can be said about the stupidity and destructiveness of gang culture – its worship of random violence, its destruction of those things of value that benefit a community, its destabilizing effect on everyday life. Much can be said about how stupid and undesirable the invasion of gang culture is at a time like this, when the nation is faced with economic collapse and troubles caused by declining resources and environmental damage. Much can be said about how evil, wrong, and deserving of punishment gang-bangers and wanna-be gang-bangers are, and it would all be true. But here are a couple of questions, in line with the theme I have been considering for the last few posts:

1. How should Christian peace-makers (strangers and exiles on the earth) respond to the presence of gangs in their communities? What is the Christian response? (My two cents: I don't think it's agitating for tougher laws.)

2. What is the New Testament telling you to do about this? (You, as in you personally.)