"Changing" the World?

What are the "buzz words" of mainstream evangelical Christianity? I'm sure there are many which probably change quicker than you can say "evangelical." But I cannot help but note a few in particular that have lately been on my mind.

Perhaps I run in the wrong circles (very possible) or my mind zones in on a few particular words or phrases within most of modern day Christianity, but it seems like the more "radical" or "extreme" you can "transform" culture, or your life, or your neighbor, or your nation, or your church the better. Such conversations and ideas filtered strongly into a class my senior year at Hillsdale... I then realized that yes such people actually exist hoping to "make the world a better place." This is what a certain professor of history at Hillsdale calls the "transformational impulse" found within American Christianity.

Naive youthful optimism perhaps? Maybe... it does not take much to get carried away with this language. You can find it all over the world and it's desires. Transform your career, dating life, personal fitness, heck even your pet into something amazing and incredible and most importantly, irresistible. The world has much to offer in terms of temporary comfort and happiness which when based on empty promises for one to "just do this or that" brings "hope" or "change" into the lives of people looking for meaning and fulfillment.

I fear this might be an instance of the worldly culture and vocabulary influencing the church and not vice versa. Certainly Christians experience some sort of "transformation" upon receiving grace. The promise of Romans 12:2, however, does not seem to be one of dramatic weight loss or a Republican controlled Congress. Rather it is one of surrender and conformity to the will of God and our place and calling in His image.

Perhaps the most radical, extreme, or transformational action would be to accept our calling and responsibility within the realm or place God has immediately called us to. We are all sons and daughters, brothers or sisters, and for many of us future husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. Each day we interact with many people from co-workers to friends to the lady who rings up your beer. Most importantly we have the church, the Body of Christ which has been given specific instructions of how to carry out the work of Christ on earth while keeping in mind our ultimate purpose. Perhaps the truly radical idea would be to live the truth of God's word without placing our own conditions on what that means.

I refer to two quotations to finish my post. First Kevin DeYoung is a newer name in the reformed evangelical movement. The epilogue in his most recent book offers some noteworthy thoughts on living a "radical" Christian life:

Our jobs are often mundane. Our devotional times often seem like a waste. Church services are often forgettable. That’s life. We drive to the same places, go through the same routines with our coworkers, buy the same groceries at the store, and mow the same yard every spring and summer. Church is often the same too—same doctrines, same basic order of worship, same preacher, same people. But in all the smallness and sameness, God works—like the smallest seed in the garden growing to unbelievable heights…. Life is pretty ordinary, just like following Jesus most days. Daily discipleship is not a new revolution each morning or an agent of global transformation every evening; it’s a long obedience in the same direction.

Second, C.S. Lewis is always a great way to conclude right? This is the final sentences from his essay titled "The Weight of Glory."

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealing with another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit- immortal horrors and everlasting splendours. This does not mean we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously, no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner- no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latita the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.