One of the less happy effects of Christianity is how it so often promotes mediocrity. This happens under the influence of what the Barna Research Group titled therapeutic-moral-Deism, which is when Christianity as a religion becomes a self-help program. Although I could spend time showing how this form of Christianity fails to really help people, the point is that this form of Christianity is sizably “woke” in that it assesses its success on how it makes people feel. In this regard, it is terribly postmodern because it is the audience’s feelings–rather than speaker’s intention–which determines the acceptability of a message. When Christianity’s goal is “feel-goodism,” the church is well on its way to becoming the world since the broader culture is the context from which many believers’ views on “how I should feel” are derived. Culture, which is the milieu of various opinions, trends, and controlled-media’s talking points, acts as a control on what the society at large can think and feel. Another way to say this is that culture, in our post internet days, is mass societal conditioning. This mass conditioning becomes a judge on the church’s messaging when the audience’s feelings determine the acceptability of a homily.
The combined and ongoing influence of “having ones feelings” validated cannot but promote mediocrity. Every person’s feelings become an end unto themselves; every person’s inherent god-made value gets postulated as the reason why we should validate their feelings. There is no collective good standard based on some criterion of excellence (I will dedicate a final paragraph to discuss objective, subjective, and inter-subjective truth). This therapeutic-moral-deism, masquerading as Christ’s image-on-earth, still has a moral component that some might argue makes it resistant to the cultural control. However, without the church’s message being based on Scripture—and its acceptability being based on how closely it resembles Scripture—the input from the church on what morals should be becomes decidedly muted. What happens, instead, is a incremental takeover of the church’s morals based on those feelings of the audience of what morality should be, formed and fashioned in the crucible of secular culture. This goes on, until at last, many of the straightforward moral judgements of the Bible become controversial to say even inside the walls of the church.
Why have I spent this time on this cultural-societal analysis? A sufficient morality, a challenging morality, is required for civilization to flourish whereas, for instance, professional sports are not. Nevertheless, professional sports promote the virtue of challenge and physical excellence (or prowess) in potent ways compared to the church, mutatis mudandi. In the corporate world, the challenge of how much capital an employee can generate is the meritorious standard by which that employee’s excellence is determined. DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) is making inroads to the corporate world too, which is a slow ebb towards mediocracy, in which merit is removed as the standard of judgement, and non-challenge-associated-ideas are introduced: skin color, ethnicity, financial class, and demographic-history. Notice how this all lines up with the first and second paragraph: (1) instead of the intent of the corporation or message of the church being the standard, it is the feelings, class, race, finances, or demographics of the audience which determines if something is acceptable or not. (2) This is nothing more than postmodernity in action: rather than there being an objective standard, the subjective persons (the audience) become the standard.
Whatever realm of experience we are discussing, the question is how to determine what excellence is. In sports, it is physical prowess. In corporations, it is maximizing capital generated for shareholders. In the church, it is the promotion of the superiority of Jesus Christ. Do not miss that I did not say that the church’s chief end is to promote morality. Morality is an implication or result of the superiority of Christ. Morality is not the goal; just as the Law of Moses was not the goal, but knowing and loving God (Deut. 6:4). A man who did many great evils, King David—rape, pre-meditated murder, pillaging, family in fighting resulting in death of family members, called a man of blood by God—was extoled and positively elevated in Scripture whereas the most moral law-keepers were vilified by Jesus. The starting point for the church is the accurate exposition and announcing of Scripture. This is the challenge, and this is the standard by which excellence is determined. There can be no other immovable foundation; all other ground is sinking sand, devoured by the cultural-societal sandy rot.
A real singing voice and impressive instrumental abilities are some other measures of how a church is doing in respect to promoting mediocracy. The pastor’s sermon reflecting or resembling what Scripture states is the standard for how we judge a church’s mission. There are subjective influences proper to our age and times which should be considered, but this consideration should only be done in the confidence that Scripture has saturated the messaging of the church. Is the superiority of Christ central, or is the church trying to be a moral police force on the culture, always emphasizing morality in His stead? The calling of God is the high calling of the Christ. It is not mediocre. “Do all things unto the Lord” is absolute challenge, a challenge I cannot imagine could be greater.
All this to say, challenge and striving for excellence is proper to the church’s ethos. Challenge is the inescapable reality of all things that are not infinite. To not be infinite is to be limited, and to be limited is to be a created thing/person. If we speak of challenge, then we also speak of competition since being limited will always imply a difference in ability across different people. 1 Corinthians 15 notes that we believers will not all shine the same, but differently according to our efforts, but there will be no envy. Can I compete without envy? I absolutely can: I can compete through efforts “unto the Lord” and in celebration of the other shining lights I enjoy. These efforts are not to overtake them, or to sniff out their lights, but to be inspired to greater efforts unto the Lord, all the while celebrating their excellence. Anyone who has played a sport seriously knows this experience. There are those we competed against who we respected and took joy in what they could do, even while we competed against them. Essentially, the high calling in Christ is to go beyond yourself to new heights in Him. Heaven will be an endless reality of joy and bliss, and a context of that heavenly reality will involve challenge. We will still overcome even then; we will not overcome others, or envy, or boast. We will overcome our present limitations to the next step of our ever growing capacities, and these capacities enable us to enjoy ever greater degrees of God’s infinitude. We will witness the overcoming of other heavenly believers and how far they have gone with God, and we will rightly desire greater intimacy with Christ. We will shine, and we will celebrate others’ shining, even as we are challenged by our limitations to take the next step in theosis, the growing divinization of the eternal saint, as Scripture states:
“Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires (2 Peter 1:4).”