Speaking of fog, exvangelicals have a story to tell, don't they? I recently read a particularly insightful treatment published recently by Chrissy Stroop. While I may have disagreements with points made in the article, that's not what we're going to talk about here. Rather, Chrissy rightly puts a finger on a fundamental disconnect within evangelical parlance and practice that, if left unchecked, will threaten the movement's future.

Not to date myself too much, but... Postmodernism was a serious buzzword when I was in college. Brian McLaren had recently published A New Kind of Christian, and the war was on in evangelicalism. Don Miller later wrote Blue Like Jazz, which was a personal reflection on his own journey. Something not totally like my own Christ in the Fog, but I digress.

The early aughts brought a great deal of debate on the subject, the battle lines sometimes clearly delineated. Beyond the philosophical details of it, something was stirring from the deep: the rumblings of evangelical margins.

These concepts played out in the ways we all chose to share the faith. Friendship evangelism was in vogue at the time: Christians realized that the gospel is a stumbling block, and thought that relationships were the end-around play to get people to listen to and accept the truth about Jesus.

In my street-preaching days, for all of the boundary pushing we did, my little group eschewed the notion of manipulating people into hearing the gospel or associating with the church. For anyone who was kind enough to listen to us, they heard broken people trying to present a gospel of peace and healing. The idea that we would be good enough or attractive enough to merit someone asking us to explain Jesus - that concept turned our stomachs.

But beneath the panache of good intentions and fealty to the sufficiency of scripture, I'm lying if I don't admit that my greatest inner turmoil of the time was that I was aware I was treating people like projects, whether Christian or not. For those who were not saved, I had one job: keep speaking the gospel to them. No need to interact with their wants/needs/etc. because the prime directive is to get them in the fold. For those in the fold, I had one job: keep speaking the gospel to them (as in discipleship). A little bit of need to interact with their wants/needs/etc. but only as much as is warranted for discipleship purposes.

I had very little idea how to actually relate with anyone and approach them as a fellow human being, with the respect that entails. It's an abysmal attitude and one that treats a whole class of people as less-than - less valuable because they don't believe what I believe.

Such happens when we apply a veneer of gospel without dealing with insecurity and other psychosocial issues. My natural instinct was to thank God I wasn't like those people over there, while also feeling shameful for that lack of basic empathy. That dissonance bothered me deeply, and thus began the journey that resulted in a book about the fog.

We felt like we had mastered true objectivity in our gospel method. But we had barely scratched the surface of the subjective. We were afraid to go there. So afraid, in fact, that our diatribes against McLaren and Miller were hoisted upon the idea that they had nothing of value to say, because they had abandoned the foundation of truth.

Had they? Perhaps, but they also were dealing with a dissonance between the objective and the subjective that we were unwilling to admit existed. Everyone retreated to their battle camps - fundamentalists on the side of objectivity, and postmoderns took to subjectivity. And we all react to the other side as only a threat rather than a complex opportunity.

So now we have the exvangelical movement. People who have grown up in evangelicalism have recognized that there are ways and means and manners in the subjective life of evangelical Christendom that are antithetical to the very gospel it espouses.

Moment of truth for the church: how do we react? The strongest voices within the camp seem content to say these are marginal experiences. I.e. smile and wave, move along, nothing to see here. Does that seem right to you?

But as humans we have to interact with both the objective and subjective - not favor one over the other or ignore one entirely. Jesus himself is the embodiment of both together, so the pursuit of understanding is one of seeking to better know Christ.

As a whole, it's time for evangelicals to embrace honest discourse about how these sides of reality interact, rather than continuing an antichristlike attitude of dismissal.

References:

"The Colorful World of Oil and Water" by Bill Gracey 26 Million Views is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0