Confessions in a Time of Instant Gratification
February 10, 2012
Rod Liddle (We are not worthy! We are not worthy!) has a typically pungent article in this week's Spectator (Warning: usual caveats apply for the easily offended). There he deals with the culture of instant gratification that pervades modern British society; but the phenomenon is something of a Western pandemic, so the article has relevance in the US as well.
Reading the article made me think about church culture. The most obvious parallels, obvious to the point of being cheapshots, would be with contemporary worship. But I suspect there is a deeper, more important application.
Much of the democratisation -- or, perhaps better, the lumpenisation -- of knowledge today, where experts are made by simply reading a wikipedia article, is really a manifestation of the instant gratification culture. If I have to work at it, if it takes time, if I cannot grasp it at the first skim read, if I cannot see any immediate pay-off in studying a matter in greater depth, then it is not worth doing.
A church's confessional statement is a statement not only of what the church as an institution represents; it is also a statement of what the eldership of the church both believes and considers important; as such, it also represents an aspiration. It is the sum total of the doctrinal knowledge which the church aspires to have its membership reach. Tell people that baptism is not important by omitting it from your confession or allowing mutually contradictory views and guess what? Few if any in your church will ever consider it to be very important. The problem, of course, is that when a church does take a stand on such things, it usually involves a degree of complexity which requires a certain amount of effort and time for the minister to explain and for the people to grasp.
A church's confession tells you a lot about the church's ambitions relative to the teaching of the congregation, one more reason why confessional Christianity cannot be best represented by transdenominational movements. Historic confessions are particular and complex; and their particularity and complexity is inextricably connected to those same churches' understanding of the teaching office of the church.
Simple statements of faith are attractive. Often this attractiveness is ascribed to their catholicity, to the fact that they let as many people as possible in. They might also be attractive for a less worthy reason: their simplicity might simply be a function of a culture where nothing that is hard or takes time is considered worthwhile. Mere Christianity, with its minimal doctrinal demands, might also at certain times be a Christianity of instant gratification.
Reading the article made me think about church culture. The most obvious parallels, obvious to the point of being cheapshots, would be with contemporary worship. But I suspect there is a deeper, more important application.
Much of the democratisation -- or, perhaps better, the lumpenisation -- of knowledge today, where experts are made by simply reading a wikipedia article, is really a manifestation of the instant gratification culture. If I have to work at it, if it takes time, if I cannot grasp it at the first skim read, if I cannot see any immediate pay-off in studying a matter in greater depth, then it is not worth doing.
A church's confessional statement is a statement not only of what the church as an institution represents; it is also a statement of what the eldership of the church both believes and considers important; as such, it also represents an aspiration. It is the sum total of the doctrinal knowledge which the church aspires to have its membership reach. Tell people that baptism is not important by omitting it from your confession or allowing mutually contradictory views and guess what? Few if any in your church will ever consider it to be very important. The problem, of course, is that when a church does take a stand on such things, it usually involves a degree of complexity which requires a certain amount of effort and time for the minister to explain and for the people to grasp.
A church's confession tells you a lot about the church's ambitions relative to the teaching of the congregation, one more reason why confessional Christianity cannot be best represented by transdenominational movements. Historic confessions are particular and complex; and their particularity and complexity is inextricably connected to those same churches' understanding of the teaching office of the church.
Simple statements of faith are attractive. Often this attractiveness is ascribed to their catholicity, to the fact that they let as many people as possible in. They might also be attractive for a less worthy reason: their simplicity might simply be a function of a culture where nothing that is hard or takes time is considered worthwhile. Mere Christianity, with its minimal doctrinal demands, might also at certain times be a Christianity of instant gratification.
