In recovery, the idea of “working someone else’s program” is about being fixated on what someone else is doing… ignoring my life because it’s easier to “fix” someone else’s. It’s probably one of the “issues” of the blogosphere and demonstrates just how codependent most of us are!

So, I have to take responsibility for myself – no matter what someone teaches or says. I can’t say, “So and so said this…”, I have to say, “I chose to believe this…”. This is my life. I’m not a victim. I chose what to believe and implement in my life.

I love your idea that Christianity is meant to transform culture and not be conformed to culture. Amen, Brother!!!!!
Now, if we could just convince everyone else that that’s true…

Thanks for the response.

You said:

I don’t personally know any communities who “accepted their own hypocrisy and continued and grew, survived and thrived”, but at the very least I like the sound of their authenticity!

I was thinking of the Catholic church for one. (The Protestant church for the other, though that takes more thought for most people.)

When we join a congregation that picks and chooses its beliefs based on the whims of whoever is making the whims these days aren’t we by nature “working someone else’s program”?

Christianity as it is practiced pretty much everywhere I have seen it is conformed to culture not transforming culture. That is not to say some conformation is bad–much of it is neutral. But when we look at the institutional church today it is conformed on almost every level.

Again, blame Scott.

Seen a lot of false lovers. Seen a lot of religion. Seen a lot of people who had complete vocabularies of “love and grace” but dispensed it in ways that were controlling, mean and crushed broken hearts.

While that can be very discouraging at times, all I can do is try to answer the question of how do I stay authentic for myself, and nobody else.

I’ve done a lot of work in recovery. One of the principles that you learn is that all you can concentrate on is “your side of the sidewalk”. Everything and everyone else is up to God. So it’s become harder for me to tell other people what they should do and more important to me to simply examine my own heart on a constant basis to see if I’m being congruent with what I believe is truth.

I don’t personally know any communities who “accepted their own hypocrisy and continued and grew, survived and thrived”, but at the very least I like the sound of their authenticity!

Yeah, many of the best people I’ve ever met are “unchurched”. But, having said that, I still can’t “work any body else’s program”… I just have to do the best I can to be the person that I think Christ died to create, and that’s it.

As for Scott, I’ll deal with him later!!!

What if the very organization encourages people to become not lovers but false lovers?

What happens if being a part of the organization you learn how not to truly care while appearing as if you care?

Is it possible the “community” we speak of isn’t really a community of people who are attempting to live like Christ, but a community of people who are being systematically trained not to live like Christ but to live religiously?

Diet makes the point:

“A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse.”

Really? Are we seeing this as truth? I see just the opposite. There are many communities who saw they were far from the ideal they started with yet continued and grew by simply accepting their own hypocrisy.

Are they Christian any longer? Beats me, but they survive and even thrive.

In my experience the people I find the most loving are those who have never been “churched”.

Scott sent me. Blame him.

The KEN LEE video was hilarious! I don’t know how I missed that one.

Blessings
Jim Drake

I’ve said this to my daughter. I’ve said this to myself.
And I like the addition of becoming the director of the movie of your own life!!

Great tips!

Thanks so much for joining us ’round the cultural watercooler at Ethos last week.

I would love for you to join us again this week with a post on your blog.

The more of us that gather the more exciting it becomes.

“None of us are as smart as all of us.”

Thanks so much!!!

Also,

I would be love to have you add my blog to your blogroll.
My URL is:
http://www.randyelrod.typepad.com

Thanks!!!!

Randy