Reexamining What Culture I'm Supposed to Live Counter To

Somehow I don't think Jesus meant we should strive for HWLF stickers, WWJD bracelets, and self-labeling as "Jesus Freaks" or "Christ-followers"

This post was inspired by my gradual journey through the Old Testament and Freya India’s Substack GIRLS, specifically her two articles “You Don’t Need to Document Everything” and “What’s Become of Us?”.

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I am, for the first time, at 21 years old, reading through the Old Testament. I grew up going to church, hearing about Jesus, knowing the Ten Commandments, knowing to love my enemies and to pray for those who persecute me. Somewhere along the way, my childlike faith and knowledge gave way to middle-school insecurities, unquestioning high-school Christian girl masquerading, and college-aged criticism. Now, I don’t want to knock the necessity (or inevitability) of coming-of-age struggles. We all learn things differently, and I am learning that sometimes things you know don’t connect until much later.

That being said, in recent years, I have been a loud proponent for many culturally- and socially-rooted values. Some familiar ones might include the self-centered mantras, like loving yourself, body positivity, being comfortable in your own skin, doing what is good for you, and asserting your boundaries. Even in my friend groups of Christians, we would discuss our problems and conflicts, and one of us would insert, “Do XYZ, you don’t owe them anything,” “You should [social sanction of some sort directed at another person], you shouldn’t tolerate that kind of treatment.” And so on, and so forth. I was usually the loudest, first, or most assertive of these voices.

Not to say that I don’t think there is some value and merit in these things—even Jesus held boundaries. I don’t think God wants us to be in relationships or positions where we are ill-treated or even abused. I believe we should love and care for the bodies God’s given us, no matter what they look like. However, my values and reasons supporting these positions were all wrong; and because the reasons were all wrong, so was the balance and application of these practices.

Reading through the Old Testament, through a New Testament lens, I am seeing over and over again how God desires humility in us. Beyond the verses talking about how God hates the proud and draws near to the humble, the Old Testament is filled with verse after verse scolding those quick to take offense, those quick to anger, and those who do not forgive others.

How countercultural! This is where the GIRLS publication comes in. Reading India’s work, I was struck by how she calls for and yearns for biblical themes, particularly humility; and from humility, love, compassion, empathy, clear-sightedness, et cetera. She makes no explicit or implicit biblical references, and yet her work is largely countercultural and culturally critical.

If I were more humble, would I take offense and comfort my self-righteousness with “You don’t owe them anything”? If I were more humble, would I insist on boundaries that keep me from doing things which require some degree of sacrifice? If I were more humble, would I be obsessed with how my social media presence is perceived? If I were more humble, would I be compelled to compare my own beauty to that of someone else?

I used to scrunch my nose at those who called us to be “against the culture.” It felt like a dog-whistle to me—and maybe it is. I certainly don’t want to be in the same camp as those who seem to think the American church is oppressed, and we must stand guard against those who would like to see the fall of the American church and it’s socio-political power (Bishop Todd Hunter has several posts that touch on this, and Kacie M. has an excellent post titled “We do not need to fear living in a post-christian culture”). Perhaps it still is a dog whistle for that camp of Christianity, and it’s one that I think we should rightfully avoid. But if there is even a granule of truth in there, the granule is worth holding onto.

The truth is, the Bible does call us to live counter-culturally. It calls us to be humble¹ enough to not take offense and not hesitate to forgive. If you look at India’s posts linked at the top, she provides excellent, culturally-relevant examples of humility, as well as examples of our widespread absence of humility. Her focus is specifically on the affects of social media and technology on our social, moral, mental, and spiritual development and well-being. Her posts often culminate in a call to limit or ditch these negative influences, like social media, dating apps, or the pervasive marketing strategies seeking to convince us to focus on ourselves and buy more stuff.

Frankly, I think she’s right. While I haven’t yet mustered the courage and commitment to delete my social media,² I hope to one day delete my account altogether. What else can I do that would be so counter-cultural and Christ-like?³ How can I befriend people different than myself? Can I spend quality time with the unhoused? Do I put my money to charitable causes or shared resources, rather than another “must-have” pair of pants, or shoes, or beauty product, or tech accessory…even when it means I might look like I’m in the tax bracket that I’m in, or, heaven forbid, an even lower bracket? How can I live so that it is evident my life is for the Lord, and not for myself? How can I spend my days, my hours, my time and resources for the Lord, so that at the end of my life, I’ve lived for the Lord?

I think as Christians, we should consider these seemingly innocuous forms of counter-cultural obedience more seriously. We’re meant to look different. We’re meant to be a little weird, somewhat of a minority or outside group. Our values are meant to be different than the ones we’re sold and told—even in our modern, advanced, “Christian” nation of America. This is, in part, how we represent and share Christ. This is how we encourage people to answer the call to a higher way of living on this earth, the way of life eternal. This is how we keep our focus on what matters. In the book, Wholehearted Faith, co-authored by Rachel Held Evans and Jeff Chu, published for RHE posthumously, they say:

“Sociologists are of course stumbling upon something Jesus knew better than anyone. He understood that if you want to upend a community’s worldview, you have to tell stories, connecting truth to everyday experiences, as he does in the parables. You have to behave in unexpected ways, which, in his case, included turning the other cheek and healing on the Sabbath and hanging out with sinners. You have to be willing to share meals with other people, sitting with them and hearing their stories, too. And you might even have to cede some ground, surrender some pride, sacrifice some honor—dying, as it were, a thousand little deaths.”

I particularly love the final sentence: “…you might even have to cede some ground, surrender some pride, sacrifice some honor—dying, as it were, a thousand little deaths.” This harkens to the biblical theme of dying to yourself, seen in Matthew 10:39.⁴ What is more countercultural than that?

Take this opportunity, friend, to examine yourself. How can you live in greater harmony with your actual values? How can you adjust your values—die to yourself, as it were—so that you may be filled with less of yourself and more of Christ?

And for anyone who may actually be reading this, let me ask you: What practices can you share with me to increase my awareness as I go about my day-to-day, so when I come across myself in a mundane act in contradiction to my values, I can recognize it and correct it?

1. Turns out, humility isn’t a refusal to care for ourselves or the tendency to think of ourselves more poorly than necessary, but rather an understanding of ourselves compared to God and a refusal to believe the lies Ego and Pride try to tell us. It is loving first, and focusing on everyone’s value, rather than inflating your own. It is recognizing that no one’s value negates anyone else’s value.

2. Right now my social media presence consists of this Substack and an Instagram account. Most days instagram isn’t even installed on my phone, but still, the account is there and I still often access it.

3. Shane Claiborne and his friends at redletterchristians.org as well as in his Philadelphia-based community The Simple Way are excellent pioneers of what this vision could look like in a modern American context.

4. There are other verses which speak to this theme, and while I think they can be applied to mean dying unto ourselves, the other verses I’ve found seem to speak more to a physical resurrection in Christ when read in context, so I’ve left those out.