Guest post by Darryl Dash
Originally posted at my blog - but it's been in my mind in light of a certain guest being invited to certain conference lately. I'm including Tim Keller's comment at the bottom.
It happens to all of us: we find ourselves part of a group, and we start to look and sound a lot like the others in the group.
Young, Restless, and Reformed? Grab the ESV Study Bible. Read the latest Piper book. Listen to the Gettys. Download some Max McLean.
Middle of the road evangelical? I'm guessing you've got Hillsongs on your iPod. Your Max is Lucado, not McLean, and you own a book by Chuck Swindoll and/or Rick Warren.
If you are not part of these two groups, you may belong to a third. Except it's not a group or a movement. But love Newbigin. You read Scot McKnight. You enjoy when Tony Jones bugs the first group and confuses the second. You'd pick Wright over Piper any day. You still can't believe George W. Bush was president. You'd rather take pay cut than attend Willow's Leadership Summit. You buy fair trade coffee when you have the choice and you're a pacifist, except around really annoying fundamentalists.
I've come to realize that it's really hard not to become part of some kind of subculture. The problem is that many of the cliches become accurate. I've noticed lately that it takes someone else to point out my own tribe, because I sometimes don't even recognize the quirks of my particular group. I don't mind being idiosyncratic as much as I mind being oblivious.
It's why I am appreciating my friends who are not part of my subculture. I need to make a point of having lunch with them and enduring their gentle mocking when they see the quirks of my tribe, just as I'll gently mock them right back.
To my friends from other tribes - you know who you are - thank you.
It's also why I need to read widely so I don't get trapped in just one way of thinking. And it's why I continue to enjoy being part of a denomination that isn't comprised of people just like me.
I don't have to like everything about the other subcultures, but I sure need them to save me from my own.
Tim Keller commented:
Funny post, Darryl. But you don't have to be lonely. Join one group, but don't situate yourself at its very center. Hang out with members of the other two groups. I know people at the very center of each group will not trust you if you do that, including those at the very center of your own. And that will occasionally make you wince and maybe even a bit alienated. But there are lots of people in each group that also live closer to the edges of the group's borders - and they like you are open to more than superficial relationships with people in the other ones. What do you think?
4 comments:
Just wondering if you would have included that comment if it was written by some random person or if you chose to include the quote because it was written by Tim Keller?
Great question. Not sure. It's a great comment, and it doesn't hurt that it's Keller - but I did wrestle a little with that question before posting.
I wouldn't worry about, being that it's Keller probably adds some credibility to what is being said since he's publicly very identified with new Reformed movements (Gospel Coalition et cetera). Actually, it would be interesting if Keller would unpack his words a bit further and discuss how he achieves this balance himself given his public position. Who does he read/engage with outside his own tradition and how?
Well, I think I'm mainly part of the Young Restless & Reformed subculture- you know, I think the ESV Bible is THE inspired Word of God, John Piper's my hero, and the Getty's are awesome. LOL
But...i also love Hillsong and have it on my iPod.
Kind of eclectic...I might.
Good post! :)
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