Adventures in Christianity: Culture Warrior

It has taken me a long time to reconcile the ways I've experienced religion to what I feel about it now.
There was a time when I didn't question much about Western Christianity. The Bible was interpreted to say certain things, and I generally accepted that at face value.
Liberals wanted to destroy faith. The media was owned and operated by liberals with a liberal agenda. The left became not only a caricature, but a convenient scapegoat to unload all of societies ills. And every damn one of them had some agenda or another.
High divorce rates? Liberals undermining the sanctity of marriage. Or the gays. They are still working on that one.
More teens having sex? Liberal media making sex not sacred.
Economy sucks? Liberal politicians who took money from hard working people and gave it to lazy poor people.
And it was our job to take on the liberal/gay/commie agenda and win back the country for God.
Looking back on it all now, it all seemed so contrived. What were our goals? Some were concrete, like banning abortions. I remember our youth group being shown aborted fetuses to make us all see how bad it was to kill babies. Shock and awe.
But we were just kids. We never imagined there was another side of the debate. We were told that babies were being murdered, and here were the pictures (and video) to prove it. This was shown to some as young as 14. What chance did we have? It took me a long time to figure out that maybe some women get abortions for reasons other than they sold their soul to Satan. Like rape. Or they would die if they didn't.
We often heard about the gay agenda. I distinctly remember a Sunday school class where we were talking about homosexuals and someone said he wanted to take a torch and burn all the gays (I obviously lived in a pretty small town). We all laughed. Except our Sunday school teacher. She didn't think it was that funny, because we were to love the sinner. But even that was a bit to much for us. Of course, no one had a solution to whatever their agenda was. The best anyone has come up with is praying the gay away.
I later found out the gay agenda is for them to be treated like everyone else.
And it went on like this. Earlier I asked what the goals were. The goal was vaguely defined as winning the land for Jesus by warring with it's culture. We would bravely assault the fortress of secularism. And when that failed, we retreated into our own self-sustained mini-culture, complete with its own music, books, and politicians. That more than anything is why the whole things feels so contrived. We never tried to engage culture with dialog. We only wanted to conquer it. When we couldn't conquer it, we became like mad scientist and engineered our own.
In all this lies my frustration. I was told to fight a battle for Jesus, only to find out much later that all I was doing was defending a status quo that was never my own, nor did I ever have a say in. Christians are supposed to have the inside scoop on truth because God Himself revealed the truth through Jesus and through the Bible. But we don't do any better than the rest of the world. We divorce just us often as the rest of western civilization. Conservatives look at just as much pornography. Also, we're probably just as gay.
So we gossip, lie, and sleep around just like everyone else. The only difference is we keep saying how bad it is everyone does it and how we all should stop.
Where does all this insanity end? I don't know. I suppose a good step would be to leave our Christian coffee shops and books stores and go to someplace that's not literally selling Jesus.
Also, maybe we should stop spreading such ridiculous misinformation about what going on in our culture. Homosexuals are not tricking young men and women into having sex with them. We could have honest discussions on the role of government over a woman's reproductive rights instead of knee jerk reactions.
Finally, we should pick our battles more carefully. Fighting poverty is a winner. Fighting Muslims? Probably should have taken a pass on that one.
In the end, I don't know what to expect. Will the church change? Maybe. To paraphrase an old hippie saying; What if someone had a war and nobody showed up?
What if we just stopped fighting what we can't (and should never be allowed to ) control?
Jesus said if we loved each other like we love ourselves, we've summed up the entire Bible just like that.
Imagine a faith with no sharp edges to cut ourselves on.

Saturday Night Weird

Just saw Lady Gaga live on Saturday Night Live. Now, I have a crazy high tolerance for weird. But this chick is wack, even from a performance arts perspective. I can't even explain it. Youtube it if you get the chance.

As a side note, I plan on continuing my Adventures in Christianity series, or AIC for short. I am just working on the series. So I may have a bunch of posts come up at the same time. Deal with it.

UPDATE: Weekend Update on SNL was pretty funny. Minus the Charles Barkley part.