Eugene Peterson on the challenges of being a Christian in America
The deeper problem, Peterson said, is that two things that are basic to the Christian life run counter to the American ethos. First, the Christian life is not about us, but about God. It is not like giving ourselves a makeover. “We’re in on it, but we’re not the subject or the action,” Peterson said. Ever notice how in the Bible, we always come in after a preposition? God with us, in us, for us. In an individualistic, commercial culture, where the self is the center of everything, an autonomous agent of transformation, we have lost this grammar of shalomwhat Peterson called “prepositional participation.”
The second principle of the Christian life that runs against the grain of American culture, Peterson said, is that the ways and means must be appropriate to the ends. “We can’t participate in God’s work if we insist on doing it our own way.” He cited two examples of “doing the right thing the wrong way”: congregation and Scripture. We consider both to be our matters, not God’s. Instead of forming communities that embody self-denial, sacrifice, and patience for God to become present in them, we form “consumer churches,” using commercial methods to attract people and cater to their wants. And rather than reading Scripture as a way of “listening to God revealing God,” we treat it as information for us to process to become more successful and enlightened people. In both cases, the ways and meansbowing to the gods of salesmanship and efficiencyare out of sync with the endsforming a community of believers submitting to God’s work within them.
