Secular Reporter Understands the Motivation for Contemporary Christianity

Pastor Joel and Pastor Carl of Hillsong New York City

In a recent report in a magazine that epitomizes the cutting edge of the Western pop culture, the writer explains the motivation for contemporary Christianity. “Hip” pastors aren’t fooling the world for a minute. Here is what the reporter said about Hillsong New York City: “I was witnessing the logical conclusion of an evolutionary convergence between coolness and Christianity that began at the dawn of the millennium, when progressive-minded Christians, terrified of a faithless future, desperately rended their garments and replaced them with skinny jeans and flannel shirts and piercings in the cartilage of their ears, in a very ostentatious effort to be more modern and more relatable” (Taffy Brodesser-Akner, “What Would Cool Jesus Do?” GQ, Dec. 17, 2015). She nailed it. Cool Christianity is about trying to be acceptable to the world, but hip pastors aren’t trend-setters; they are pathetic followers of whatever the world happens to be wearing/hearing/doing. If an “old-fashioned,” pre-21st century, dinosaur “fundamentalist” Christian happens into a cool mega-church, he or she is the one who is really dressed differently, the one really going against the stream, the one really marching to a different tune, the one not being conformed to peer pressure. The uber-cool female reporter for GQ understands exactly what that crowd is up to. They aren’t fooling anyone but themselves, if that. Cool Christianity is not about truth; it’s about being accepted by this generation and it’s about love for the sensuality of the world. Cool and Christ are contradictory masters, and you can’t love both. That decidedly non-cool James, from the first century, could tear up any megachurch with one message. “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4).

(Friday Church News Notes, January 8, 2016, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

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