I am in the midst of writing final papers for the completion of my second year at Duke Divinity. Jesus Land, Bonhoeffer's Ethics and a practical ministry plan are vying for space in my mind, but I cannot help but find myself distracted by blog posts, laundry and creases zigzagging across my wall. Normally these things are of little interest to me, but there is something about the pressure of performing that makes me want to run to safer spaces. This crack in the wall for instance. It is about as foreboding as the kittens on icanhascheeseburger.com.
Success. I feel its pressure every day, mostly from preceptors who have the power to hand out pointy or round grades. It's nerve racking! I read an interesting chapter out of Soon Chan-Rah's book he presented to us in class, The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity (a must read fyi). He offers a strong critique of "success" as it is known in American mega-churches. He claims the church is captive to market driven materialism evident in the church growth movement in white western churches. This places money, number of individuals and growth as the apex of church achievement. In school it is how many A's you received, how many big-wig professors know you by name and the brilliance of your comments during class. In both cases, these are easily marked, identifiable characteristics of success. But most fail this test...
Soon Chan goes on to identify the differences between primary and secondary culture and their characteristics. Primary culture is tribal culture, often characterized by face to face association, the unspecialized character of that association, relative permanence, the small number of persons involved, and a relative intimacy among participants (Rah, 99). In short, people know one another and cannot survive without these integral relationships. "The result of intimate associations, psychologically, is a certain fusion of individualities in a common whole, so that one's very self, for many purposes at least, is the common life and purpose of that group" (Ra, 99). This leads to the creation of community itself.
Secondary culture is characterized by secondary relationships. Relationships are based on services rendered, not knowing another person. In fact, it is often more efficient not to develop relationships, or at least a genuine interest in others. This places individualism over community, production over information. This creates tension as ones reality is the individual agains the world, or sometimes the nuclear family versus the world. This is just a snapshot of the culture in which we find ourselves as Americans. We are efficient but non-relational. I struggle with how to reconcile this with the attitude of Christians found in Acts 2:42-47. We place productivity and information over human contact and relationships (Rah, 102). How can Christians create culture around primary instead of secondary tendencies? More importantly for my present context, how can success be redefined relationally through primary culture? Is it right to do so?
I am rattled by secondary culture. It rips my soul from my body... it seems un-human, which is to say un-Christlike (no it's not heretical... check out Bonhoeffer's Ethics "History and the Good [2]"). I cry out for community, why do I have to fight so hard to find it? I guess because we live in a culture that is secondary in nature. Give me face to face interaction or give me death!
I want to hear what you have to say! Please weigh in your own thoughts on success and what it means in our cultural context, or your own... vocationally, personally, etc.
To my fellow Div. Schoolers you will make it! Hear the words of Julian of Norwich "All will be well and all manner of thing shall be well."
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