Lessons From Plastic Army Men

When I was younger I used to love to play with my little plastic army men. I would go out in my front yard and build forts out of tree bark, leaves and sticks. For hours my friends and I would build the best and strongest fort we could. Then we would take turns throwing bombs (small rocks) at the other person’s fort, and whichever fort was left standing won.

Unfortunately now that I am older I don’t play with plastic army men. I have resorted to going to coffee shops and living a boring, mature life. But I think a lot of Christians live like they are the army men I used to play with getting bombarded by rocks, so they create this fort to protect themselves. They have this plastic army men fort mentality when it comes to living in the world.

I think it all comes down to how we want to respond to culture. Will we barricade ourselves into a fort so we don’t’ interact with culture? Will we just go with the flow of culture? Or will we drive culture?

Lately I have seen a lot of the first option. Christians are barricading themselves into their holy huddles so that they don’t interact with the culture around them. Instead of trying to escape culture, they actually create their own culture. This takes the shape of Christian t-shirts, Christian businesses or Christian music. I have heard of churches having a MORP. This is the opposite of the Prom. They dress up, bring flowers, take pictures and sit in church listening to Michael W. Smith. Some Christians think that culture is evil. They feel the need to create their own healthy version of culture.

But I don’t think this is the best way to go about it. Tom Shefchunas is the middle school pastor for North Point Christian Church and in his blog Coach Shef, he talks about this idea of Christians driving culture instead of hiding from it or creating their own culture. He says that 75 years ago, Christians were the ones driving culture, but things changed. In his blog he writes,

For most of Christian history that is exactly what we did (drive culture). It wasn’t until the last 50-75 years that we started to quit thinking offensively and started getting defensive. We gathered our flocks and went and hid behind our walls. We now longer sponsored Woodstock…we made our own little own Christian Woodstock. We stopped proclaiming truth through our art and talents and started pointing out what we didn’t believe was art.

What if we stopped making Christian music and created great music that proclaimed truth? I found this WEBSITE for Christians who want to listen to secular music but want the Christian alternative. It is just sad, because Christians aren’t driving culture. We are trying our best to look like culture, but we are just creating something that isolates us from the world we are trying to rescue.

What if Christians stopped getting offended and we became offensive? What if we stopped having the plastic army men fort mentality when it comes to living in the world? What if we started to drive culture again?