Wide or narrow?
OK, this is getting a bit like an obsession, but I looked on the IMDB message boards to see what other people thought of the film Saved!. There are several message threads consisting of Christians arguing with people who would not call themselves Christians. There is such a huge culture gap that the same arguments just go back and forth. Each has their own prejudices and narrow viewpoint. It makes me wonder if part of the duty of a Christian is to offer a wider viewpoint, not a narrower one. Perhaps the retreat into a closet of Christianity (I think I mean the evangelical sort) has been a move in exactly the opposite direction from that intended.
I begin to think back to the time when I was involved in running a Crusader youth club. We would take a few minutes at the end of each evening of fun and frivolity with the aim of getting the youngsters to take away just one new thought. No hard sell, no preaching, just trying to stretch the mind. It seemed right, and maybe there was more to this than we realised.
The popular view of Christians seems to be that 'we' try to get other people to swallow the whole thing accompanied by some magical instant transformation. That's true in some circles. I don't think it's right however; it just results in arguments about Leviticus which the critics seem to have read more thoroughly than the Christians.
So, is there anything in the thought that the job of the Christian (please don't start quibbling, I know it's not the only job or even the prime job) is to attempt to help people to widen their viewpoint, and that the tendency in the recent past has been to narrow our own?
I begin to think back to the time when I was involved in running a Crusader youth club. We would take a few minutes at the end of each evening of fun and frivolity with the aim of getting the youngsters to take away just one new thought. No hard sell, no preaching, just trying to stretch the mind. It seemed right, and maybe there was more to this than we realised.
The popular view of Christians seems to be that 'we' try to get other people to swallow the whole thing accompanied by some magical instant transformation. That's true in some circles. I don't think it's right however; it just results in arguments about Leviticus which the critics seem to have read more thoroughly than the Christians.
So, is there anything in the thought that the job of the Christian (please don't start quibbling, I know it's not the only job or even the prime job) is to attempt to help people to widen their viewpoint, and that the tendency in the recent past has been to narrow our own?
posted by Peter and Heather King at 4:06 pm
1 Comments:
Yes, we do narrow it up and the way we do that is to make subtle (and sometimes far from subtle) demands for cultural shapeshifting so that we can get people through our hoops. This is often at the expense of denying people the freedom and the right to enquire and probe with awkward questions etc. That's one of the reasons I baulk at Alpha - too slick and glossy - pretends to allow for questions but has a strict hidden agenda of answers designed to bring the enquirer right back to the hoop they have to jump through - I haven't forgotten about us getting together - but with new job, house move etc. very chaotic just now - house sale almost complete so in the next couple of weeks I will at least garb a beer with you . . .
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