Meditation: Being Christian in America – Part 1

Then I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it does not see Him or know Him. But you know Him, because He resides with you and will be in you. I will not abandon you as orphans, I will come to you. After a little while the world will not see Me any longer, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live too.

John 14:16-19

color christmas lights as very nice holiday background

So… I have the
 dubious privilege of living on the same street as the twenty-first century
 Griswolds. Before Thanksgiving, decorations begin to go up, and there appears
 to be little rhyme or reason beyond more.
 Red and green lights, blue and green, red and white, flashing, running, and continuous-burning
 lights, Santa Claus, reindeer, blow-up penguins and snowmen, boxes and wreaths,
 directions to the North Pole, and even lighted grass, plus lights on the house,
 the trees, along the fence… Words are not sufficient.

In contrast, for the
 first time in my adult life, I did not decorate for Christmas – inside or out.
 I was going out of town for Christmas, which in and of itself is not a reason
 not to decorate. However, last year brought the household addition of the
 canine chew-monster. Visions of toppled trees, shattered glass, and stripped
 electrical cords danced in my head, ergo, no Christmas decorations. Almost… I
 did stake my large, red J O Y letters
 – with a white star on top of the O
 and Mary holding the Baby inside the O
 – in the front yard, the sole, decorative acknowledgment of the season.

The Griswolds down
 the street earned some sort of award for their decorations – “most visible from
 the Space Station” or some such. However, at my house at the end of the street,
 a strong front that blew through broke the brackets on the letter Y in my front
 yard. So, while my neighbors were lighting/blinding southeastern Texas in
 celebration of Christmas, my token decoration was: J O. That’s it. J O.
 Before I left for Christmas, I put my J,
 O, and fallen Y back in my garage to revisit another day. My neighbor’s J O Y – blue, green, and red, without
 reference to Christ at all – held steady through New Year’s Day. It was not
 Christianity’s finest hour…

The decoration
 fiasco is a reflection of a much larger picture over which I puzzle regularly –
 the picture of the relationship between our culture and Christianity. Once upon
 a time, they were perhaps too closely wed, but now our culture could hardly be
 further from Christianity. I don’t know about you, but sometimes, I look at the
 news (rather, I read it online) and wonder if we have collectively lost our
 minds. I read articles and Op-Eds or watch TV and movies, and I feel a bit like
 an alien. Many people in our society inhabit a world I cannot imagine, much
 less understand. And the question in my mind is always this: if He walked in
 our world today, how would Jesus reach the people? What does He want from us
 now? I believe our God endlessly pursues all human beings, and if that is the
 case, then in His infinite wisdom and complete knowledge of the human creature,
 how would He draw people to Himself?

The decorating
 scenario speaks to me precisely because I did a minimal and eventually broken
 testimony to Christmas, while my neighbor – without reference to Jesus Christ
 at all – overwhelmed the entire subdivision with what I can only describe as a
 garish and disconnected display of tasteless profusion, and won an award for it… I can’t seem to get past that part. It’s
 one thing to have bad taste, but it’s an altogether different thing to receive
 accolades for your bad taste. Although… It is hard to argue that his yard was
 as poorly done as my J O.

Every time I drove
 by his house, I wondered how the man and his family would respond to Jesus
 Christ if I were to offer Him. That’s rather a key point, you see. I would have
 to offer Christ, and therein lies my question. How on earth do we as Christians
 offer divine life and salvation to a blindingly superficial and gluttonously
 satiated world? Truly, I have no idea. What I do know is that our God loves my
 neighbors – all of my neighbors – and Jesus Christ died on their behalf as
 surely as He died on my behalf. Such being the case, how can I introduce Jesus
 to them in such a way that He becomes desirable to them?

In the preface to
 his book, How (Not) to be Secular,
 James K.A. Smith writes the following:

“(Y)our
 “secular” neighbors aren’t looking for “answers”… Instead of nagging questions
 about God or the afterlife, your neighbors are oriented by all sorts of
 longings and “projects” and quests for significance. There doesn’t seem to be
 anything “missing” from their lives – so you can’t just come proclaiming the
 good news of a Jesus who fills their “God-shaped hole.” They don’t have any
 sense that the “secular” lives they’ve constructed are missing a second floor.”

He is fundamentally
 correct. Our neighbors want more, just as my neighbor adds more each year, but
 they are not looking to Christianity or any other faith for the more they want.
 In 2016, over $16 billion was spent on cosmetic surgery meaning youth and/or beauty
 are a prominent “more” in our culture. In the last four years, self-storage
 construction has grown by an astonishing 500%, and Americans spent a whopping
 $38 billion last year alone just to store stuff. People definitely want more,
 but they don’t think Christianity offers it.

Jesus tells His
 disciples that they, as His followers, would have three things that the world
 would not have: 1) the Spirit of Truth, 2) the vision of God, and 3) life – everlasting
 and eternal as Jesus has. Think a minute about the enormity of what Jesus is
 promising: the Holy Spirit and Truth the world cannot accept will reside in us.
 Though the world cannot see God, we can see God, and finally, we will be given
 the same life is Jesus’ own life as the Son of God. Jesus, the Man, will live
 on, and so will we.

Here’s my question
 for us: how do we accept and live all that Jesus promised in a way that reaches
 the world? Or, we could just settle for our neighborhood. How do the Spirit of
 Truth, the vision of God, and the life of Christ exist in us in such a way that
 calls out and ministers to our
 neighbors? I would suggest to you that the first thing we all must consider is
 whether we have received all our Father wants to give. We certainly cannot
 offer something we do not have. If it’s not already here, the time is rapidly
 coming when we will have to choose between our culture and Jesus Christ. We
 cannot aspire to the things of God if we are invested in the things of the
 world, for the world can’t see or accept the life God gives.

This is the first of
 three meditations on this topic – Christian life in today’s society. Here, I am
 posing the question, setting up the challenge for us. I do not have the
 answers, but I think about this all the time. How does Jesus reach our world
 today? Before we can answer that question, the prior question presents itself:
 who do we have to be to offer Jesus Christ? Are we that person?

Pray about these
 questions with me. God answers prayers, especially prayers that reveal Him to
 the searching soul.

In Christ –

Elizabeth Moreau

© 2019