Tinkering

“Evolution of Dance” on YouTube tickles my funny bone. Yes sir, it sure does.

Today’s quote comes from Mark Stephenson over at ‘The First Epistle of Mark’ called ‘Exposure and Contamination’:

I think many young Christians, many emergent, think they are strong enough to be in the world and not be contaminated by it. They think too highly of themselves. Our pride comes before our fall. We have rejected “churchianity” and “christianese” in favor of diving headlong into the world. And maybe this is where Jesus calls us to be. But many of us are not ready to be there. We are over-exposed to the world and under-exposed to the voice, presence and power of God. And so, right and left, we are being contaminated. And instead of spreading the gospel, we are infecting the next generation of disciples with eight parts world, one part God.

Do we understand how much we allow culture, absent of God, to influence us verses how much we allow God’s influence in our lives? It is a question I often ponder.

Jason Clark’s follow up entry to his post yesterday called “Cultural Neutering” has given me the quote of the day:

“Christians should not embrace a postmodern worldview; we must not adapt to postmodernity . . . but we do need to incarnate the timeless in the timely.�

I think Jason is quoting Duffy Robbins here, but I am not certain. Still, it sums up in a catchy little phrase the whole of my post “Creating a Relevant and Distinct Culture“ from yesterday.
This post, called “Failings of Cultural Responses” balances out some of the statements Jason made yesterday.