The Intersection of Faith and Culture
I wondered aloud to my mother if I could start to trust life again. If I could start to live without looking over my shoulder,
waiting for it to fall apart again, as it had so many times. I can’t remember her exact words but they were
completely clear. These two streams cannot flow together. A life “lived” in fear or lived in freedom. It’s
one or the other, and every time you make a decision in fear, you go further down the path of just
existing.
For me, Micah’s ASD places a lens over aspects of Christianity that I’ve been able to peer through daily. The ideas of Good Samaritan love towards the outsider, serving the poor, and cultivating community have a fresh perspective when “outsider,” “poor,” and “unconnected” refer to ASD children who live with social deficits.
Whatever the earthly future holds for the church and human culture, evangelicalism and modernity will be carried into it. Whatever postmodernity and post-evangelicalism are, they are because of modernity. And despite shifts in style, the substance of both evangelicalism and modernity are very much with us still.
Like those silk webs that come out of nowhere and wrap themselves across our skin, our negative thoughts wrap themselves around our psyche. Soon, a day that started out good gets tangled up in negativity. We begin to grumble, chastising ourselves and others. And like those pesky spider webs, we wonder, “How can we swipe away negative thoughts?”
Two years ago, l became disillusioned with the church community. In my old church l had felt judged and ignored. Health issues had prevented me from attending church regularly here in Bochum and my few attempts to connect with people had been met with little response. I became disappointed and retreated from the community.
However, that evening l felt like l was a part of something. The same Christ that was in me, was in everyone here in this room. Tonight, we were all connected: l did not feel any rejection.
I tried to avoid conviction for a long time. But no matter how many excuses I could conjure up, I’d always end up facing the reality that I still fell short, that I was still a sinner. Conviction was just a harsh reminder of my failure to get better. What good could come from that? But as I studied the Scriptures, I began to see that they do not treat conviction as something to be avoided, but rather as a gift from God that draws us closer to Him.
