Word and Deed
As we seek to live “redirective” lives, we will find that we must do so with a powerful combination of words and deeds. The Christian life was never meant to be merely words or merely deeds. Whenever we lean too heavily on one and minimize the other, we distort and derail the mission.
One of the strengths of many evangelical Christians is their belief in the centrality of God’s Word and of human words to communicate the gospel. Words are absolutely vital to the Christian mission; without them we cannot communicate Christ and the gospel. However, sometimes evangelicals speak about the “priority” of word over deed in such a manner that it seems like they’re saying, “Well, if I had to choose between words and actions, I’d choose words.” But this is unhelpful. It’s like saying, “Well, if I have to choose between telling my neighbor about Jesus and refraining from serial adultery, I’d choose to tell the neighbor about Jesus.” But we don’t have a choice between verbal evangelism and faithfulness to our spouse. Similarly, the Christian community should not choose between speaking the gospel, on the one hand, and participating in social ministries and cultural activities, on the other.
Another one of the strengths of other evangelical Christians is their belief that the Christian faith ought to be lived out. These Christians recognize the hypocrisy of speaking the gospel without obeying Christ. They participate in social ministries and seek to redirect culture toward Christ. However, sometimes they focus so much on the social and cultural aspects of our obedience that they seem to be choosing actions over words.
It’s as if they’re saying, “Well, the people around me have had Christianity crammed down their throats for so long that I’m going to focus my energies on showing people the way that Christ brings change to a person’s life socially and culturally.” But this is profoundly unhelpful. Unless your neighbor has the gospel spoken to her, she will not know how to interpret your actions.
True and False Worship
What is at stake here? Nothing less than true and false worship. Nothing in a culture is entirely neutral. Cultural institutions are either directed toward Christ or against him, or perhaps they are an inconsistent mixture of the two. When God’s people neglect cultural engagement, they do so to the detriment of society. To ignore culture is to ignore the cultural institutions that shape people’s lives and that will point people either toward Christ or against him.
James K. A. Smith recognizes this reality when he speaks about “secular liturgies.” We are familiar with the word “liturgy.” When we speak of liturgy, we are speaking of a set of rituals and words used in public worship, usually in a Christian church’s worship service. However, any set of practices becomes a liturgy when it plays a significant role in shaping our identity. Secular institutions are liturgical because they provide a matrix of practices and rituals that inculcate a certain (un-Christian) vision of the good life. They misdirect our loves and desires. They skew our basic attunement to this world by pointing us away from Christ and toward a certain idol or cluster of idols.
Smith argues that the mall is a fine example of a cultural institution with a secular liturgy. The mall is a concentrated and intense location for the practices and rituals associated with consumerism. For many people, the mall functions as their primary place of worship. It holds out a certain vision of the good life: “the hip, happy people that populate television commercials are the moving icons of the consumer gospel, illustrations of what the good life looks like: carefree and independent, clean and sexy, perky and perfect.” This vision is communicated by the mall’s “evangelists”—TV commercials, magazine displays, and Internet advertising.
People who worship at the mall are those who are drawn to its vision of the good life. They compare themselves to the carefree, sexy, perfect people portrayed in the ads and decide that they must shop in order to become more like those people. Implicit in their shopping, therefore, is the idea that the mall provides a certain sort of redemption—a salvation acquired by purchasing goods and enjoying services. The mall’s liturgy, therefore, is antithetical to Christian liturgy because the mall’s vision of the good life is different from the Christian vision of human flourishing, and its salvation is an alternative to the salvation provided in Christ.
As Christians, therefore, we want to take advantage of every opportunity to shape our cultural activities toward Christ. If the Christian community neglects the cultural aspect of its mission, in effect it is saying, “To hell with culture!” But we cannot do this. Every cultural activity is an opportunity to practice discipleship, to employ words and deeds in Christ’s service, to orient our lives toward Christ.
Bruce Riley Ashford, Every Square Inch: An Introduction to Cultural Engagement for Christians (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015), 129–132.
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