Unfortunately, much of my experience of church has been “check your culture at the door.” It’s as if they had bouncers posted in the entryway with plastic boxes for us to put our real life in for safe keeping while we were in the house of God. These metaphorical guard/clerks would hand us a tag with our number on it so that, upon leaving, we could collect all our music, movies, TV shows, comfortable clothes, and opinions and reassemble our lives in the parking lot. Inside the church, we’d talk about those “evil” people out there, how bad TV and movies are getting, and how Jesus is going to come back to kick their butts (although we’d never use that word inside). We’d strut around and crow about being on the “winning team” and being holy people. Then we’d leave the building and plunk down our eight bucks to see the same movie everyone else was seeing.
Back when I pastored a traditional church (stop laughing, it happened), I did a nontraditional thing and took a survey. Part of that survey inquired about favorite TV shows, radio stations, and so forth. We learned something interesting: Our favorite shows were the current number one shows. We listened to the same radio stations as those people “out there”. Yet for some reason we acted like it smelled like roses when we…well, you know.
I understand that group identity is maintained by its unique cultural elements, and this alone isn’t necessarily a negative feature of the church. But I believe there is something fundamentally wrong with our hypocritical (yes, I used the H-word) attitude towards our own culture. I could look at this issue from countless angles, but for now I’ll leave it at this: Why should we check our culture at the door of the church?
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