Thoughts on American Christianity, Part 1

One of the great blessings of living abroad is the gift of being outside of the American culture and being able to see it differently than from within. I lived in Spain for four months and in Mexico for a grand total of about five years. Both experiences were incredibly enlightening for me and some of my greatest spiritual growth took place in those times. In fact, I had a much harder time re-adjusting to life back in the States than I did learning a new culture. I had heard missionaries saying the same thing for years at various mission conferences, but I never quite believed them fully. I mean, how hard can it be to become re-acclimated to your own culture, especially one that has virtually anything you could want?

I think that is part of the problem. We are so used to having so many of life’s conveniences, that we spend our days trying to make sure that we, and our families, are as safe and comfortable as possible. Many of us work to make money to purchase things that either entertain us, make us feel good about ourselves, or meet basic needs in extravagant ways (spending a great deal in regular visits to our favorite restaurants or buying houses far above the average need), among many other things. I am certainly guilty of doing or desiring to do all of these things! Having these things is the American Dream, isn’t it? And isn’t the U.S. a country founded on Christian principles? How bad can it be?

The problem that I am having is that I don’t see the American Dream anywhere in the Bible. In fact, I see something quite opposed to it, but we tend to try to make the gospel fit with our own culture rather than the other way around.

One of the reasons that we love John Piper is that he is so passionate for the spread of the gospel and decidedly un-American (but not anti-American). Some time ago, I was at a Christian fellowship group with some wonderful, Godly people, most of whom I didn’t know all that well. The group was reading through Don’t Waste Your Life by Piper and the chapter (4, maybe?) had to do with laying up treasures. I found it ironic that we were meeting in the house of a family that was clearly very wealthy. What Piper teaches in his books is very difficult for us to actually put in to practice precisely because it is so un-American. After a brief discussion in which we sort of all agreed that Piper is right and we are all convicted, the leader of the discussion said that yes, he has some very expensive things in his very nice house, but he feels thoroughy blessed to have those things and if God took them away, he wouldn’t mind at all. He then said, “Besides, God needs rich Christians. He needs rich Christians to be able to reach out to other rich people.”

Nobody questioned that conclusion at the meeting, but something certainly felt a little off to me, although I didn’t feel like speaking up at the time. I thought about it a lot afterwards and realized that we (as a Christian community, not just those at that particular meeting) have so many things backwards. I wondered, how does all of this square with Jesus’ teachings to the rich young ruler to sell what he owned and give to the poor as a prerequisite to following Jesus? Was Jesus only saying it to him or is there a principle that we are supposed to apply to our lives? And what about the apostle Paul? His life, it seems to me, was exactly the opposite of the American Dream. He gave up riches and stature and power to radically love others in Jesus’ name. The more he followed Jesus, the more he gave up his wealth and comfort and stature in his Jewish community, and the more joyful he became. Jesus was everything! And Paul, even after giving up his wealth, was still able to preach to and show the love of Christ to the wealthy and prominent of the ancient Roman world, as well as the poorest of the poor. It seems to me that precisely because he gave up his worldly possessions that he was so powerful a witness to those that had so much.

It seems to me that most of us think that we can (and should) have both, even if we don’t ever say it clearly. We don’t fall for the “health, wealth and prosperity gospel” because it is clearly evil, unbiblical and no gospel at all. But are we really all that different? It is certainly a good thing to recognize that all that we have in terms of worldly goods could be taken away by God at any time. But for most of us, that is about as far as we get. We still go on storing up treasures for ourselves here on earth and it is largely encouraged and even admired by the Christian church.

We must look at our culture and our Christian faith and see that they are largely opposed to each other. We need to spend far more time in the Word and see how far we have strayed from what Jesus and others clearly taught about wealth. We are far too comfortable with the idea that we can be pursuing Jesus wholeheartedly while at the same time we are gaining wealth far beyond what is needed. American Christianity has fallen for this lie. If we really want to change our communities and our world, then we must stop looking like our hope is in the same things that everyone else hopes in, namely wealth, comfort and ease. Once we, as the body of Christ, start joyfully sacrificing ourselves and our possessions to be able to radically show the love of Christ to the world, we will be an unstoppable, happy witness to a lost and dying world.

More thoughts on American Christianity to come…