redemption gone wrong

staf told me that my blog should be more lighthearted. so as a birthday present to her, here is a lighthearted entry!

i think one of the most painful things to experience is when christians try to redeem a part of secular culture, but fail miserably. christian rock is the first thing that comes to mind, what with CCM and koo chung and youth group praise teams. but i'm not going to talk about worship bands, even though a lot of them try very hard to sound like U2. then there's stuff like sports, and the countless examples of youth group basketball tournaments turning into a bedlam of 5'6" korean gangsters, 6'4" white/black ringers and a few on-the-court death threats. music and sports are great topics, but i want to look at more subtle areas of culture and society. so i'll start with humor.

i was in an officers meeting in my youth group, which were held in my pastor's small office. we were waiting for him to come, so one of us poked around his bookshelf and found a small white book called "the christian book of clean jokes". we all burst out laughing as he walked in, and my pastor got really pissed and the whole meeting was awkward cuz of that.

anyway, there are better examples of how christians fail to redeem comedy. here are some horrible xian jokes:

Q: what books of the bible do you read for direction?
A: Luke! Obadaiah!

Q: what book of the bible serves as an endorsement?
A: Habakuk (pronounced, in a thick korean accent, "have a coke")

i can't think of any other ones. which is surprising since i watched a whole dvd of christian comedians a few months ago with my family group. i must have blocked it out of my memory.

anyway, related to humor, the song and dance is an aspect of secular entertainment that christians desperately try to redeem. but the examples of failed redemption are endless. one blatant example is when, at my youth group's retreat, we would have a song and dance that would describe the rules. each year got exponentially more ridiculous, to the point where they had to stop the tradition. that year, a group of girls, all wearing low-cut white shirts, pranced around singing modified lyrics to an N'Sync song. all i remember was their "band's" name - N'Chink. needless to say, that was a failure of redemption at its worst.

but i will go on. in college, i found that the most painful thing to sit through a body-worship or christian dance routine that, from the start, was destined to fail. i wish i had footage from this past AMI revolution but these soldiers will have to do. i know everyone is well-intentioned and that probably a few people in the congregation are blessed by their awkward movements or muscle-strained smiles. but usually it's more like watching a child's piano recital. you're just so nervous that they're going to mess up, that you can't enjoy a thing. i have to look away and think about something else. and to be fair, it's mostly because the people that are watching don't know what to do with themselves. it's awkward when the performers' energy level is a few stratospheres higher than everyone else. so there's no hootin' and hollering. just blank stares. except for me - i'm usually looking down, or trying to make eye contact with someone else who looks like they're in pain.

i used to think that redemption was the way to go, and i still think that redeeming society and culture can do a lot for the Kingdom. but over the years, i've seen so many failed attempts. it's sad when events are geared towards performance, events that hinge on the redemption of the secular, end up looking like a clumsy attempt at preaching salvation. is it trying to do too much with too little - too little creativity, talent, understanding of society... or is it that we're so tethered by an orthodoxy that everything has to have a cheezy jesus spin when we know we can say something more meaningful in a more creative way?

that link was a joke. habajoke. but if you are a church leader and you're reading this, take heed - redemption gone wrong is more painful than just letting it be. conceding a few things to the secular world isn't so bad. let's pick our battles wisely.