My American Christianity

I'm going to share with you the way my eyes have been opened while I have been here, and these are the some ways I am more American than I am Christian:

The Individualistic American mentality carries over to how I view my relationship with God. It is too much my own “personal” thing. I never even realized until now how it could be more community involved.

I read Bible verses and apply them to my own life situation…even commandments such as justice and mercy. I naturally have not seen the global perspective as I read.

I automatically want to defend “grace” over “works” for salvation because it makes me more comfortable to do that. I don’t want to realize the intensity of God’s commands to me. I subconsciously view my “works” as an added bonus to God.

I used to feel so comfortable tithing and even giving a little “extra” of my money for the Lord, when really my life must be constant knowledge that NOTHING is my own. In the same way, I view generosity compared to my upper middle class Americans instead of just finding out what it is as a follower of Christ.

Just as in each step of the “American Dream” is a step toward a greater life, I have also viewed each thing I do for the Lord as a step to being a “better” Christian. In that same sense, I compare myself with others in competition, often wanting to be the best instead of working in a community of believers God intended.

If I am “happy” God is obviously blessing me. I wouldn’t necessarily say that out loud, but my thoughts reflect it. I do not know the meaning of blessing- Suffering may be a crucial way God will “bless” me, and happiness merely leads to destruction.

I have the mentality of not being willing for someone to help or serve me…(once again part of my individualistic American mindset)…yet that is part of God’s community I have denied.

I confuse being “intentional” with becoming “stressed for the Lord.” There is a fine line between the two, and often, I think it is a virtue to be stressed for Him.

I see "success versus failure" as an important issue in what I do or in what others do for God instead of seeing faithfulness as most important.

I use God’s gifts for me in my own way for God. I figure out how it can best be used for “His glory” instead of truly seeking Him to see how he wants to use that. Once again, I think I know best.

I see repentance only as personal but not on a grander scale. The sinful social or political structures around me are “not my concern” and are not part of what I need to repent of….Yet repentance means "to change," and who ever said that I was exempt from working to change those sinful structures I dwell amongst?

If I am living life without persecution, I should probably question if I am actually following Christ the way I should....yet I contentedly live my life and do not question that. I assume that God is blessing me or I am doing things right. I never consider I may be wrong.

These are just a few of the ways I have found within myself and that God has convicted me about in the ways I have been desensitized. I have been re-reading a book I read for a Don Opitz sociology class last semester called Forgetting Ourselves on Purpose, and I want to quote some of the things the author says. It kind of coincides with this and what I have been learning as a student here:

“The students did seem to desire something deeper, something more idealistic, something different from what they were told constituted success American style. But awakening an exiled shadow government of compassion and idealism is risky business. These young men and women were only too aware of how alienating and constricting were the images of success and failure that the ascendant culture had bequeathed to them. But this knowledge was for many of them accompanied by a sense that they could not afford to look too closely, too systematically, at their own sense of alienation….we often seem to prefer the alienation that accrues from accommodating ourselves to a false consciousness of rigid social roles to the risk of inhabiting a world devoid of meaning and structure” (Mahan 30, 44).

Since my eyes have been opened to so much of these things, I realize all the more just how much I do not know. I see I have to fully rely on the Lord even for the things I think I know, because my mind may be so hindered and deceived by the culture ingrained into me.