And pick the right hero

Sleep more. Live in the city. Get closer to the poor. Keep at least one book on the bedside table that’s 50 years old (or older). Focus on purity instead of morality. Shed the false Gospel of Work (a.k.a. the work ethic, whose boss is Mammon). Admit (this one’s really radical!) that our righteousness is like filthy rags.

These are some of the answers a group of pastors, scholars, activists, and artists gave the question, “How can followers of Christ be a counterculture for the common good?”

Elaborated in essays and interviews, the answers formed part of The Christian Vision Project, a three-year project launched by Christianity Today (CT) last January to “reflect on the shape of Christian faithfulness in the 21st century.” (The first year focused on culture; 2007 considers mission. The 2006 responses are all online.)

In sum

In an article in the December issue of CT magazine, project director Andy Crouch summed up the answers he got to the big question with a provocative challenge to pick the right hero for the time.

His suggestion? Daniel.

In the words of one of the people Crouch interviewed, “When Daniel goes to Babylon . . . he becomes the model Babylonian, while being no less a model for the people of God.”

What Daniel illustrates, Crouch said (and it’s also the title of his piece), is “the importance of knowing what’s unimportant.”

Crouch continued, “Daniel had some unlikely ideas about what was important and what was unimportant.” Although becoming thoroughly Babylonian in many ways, he insisted on a diet of vegetables instead of the king’s diet and he prayed three times a day, in his room where the windows faced Jerusalem.

“It seems that for Daniel and his comrades, being a counterculture consisted of surprisingly small decisions – small acts of reorientation to remind them daily that in spite of their privileged status in the capital city of the world’s most powerful empire, they belonged to another King and another kingdom.”

These small decisions prepared them for the dramatic choices they also had to make – choices that put them in danger of death – not to worship anything but God.

“To live as an exile, following Daniel’s example, requires us to ask of every feature of our culture, ‘Is this important?’ ”

We need one another in order to discern what’s important and what’s unimportant, Crouch wrote.

The resulting, and likely “peculiar . . . upside-down sense of the ultimate” might involve sleeping more or acknowledging the real condition of our righteousness. Whatever we discern together, Crouch reminded, will help us seek the welfare of the places we’re put without losing our spirit of exile.

—DD

Note: Mennonite Brethren will be working together this year to discern our interaction with culture. A study conference, “Culture, the Gospel, and Church,” is being planned for October 2007, to be held in B.C.