I find that what passes for righteousness among Christians these days is sort of a bland niceness; a generic morality; an inoffensive civility based upon the prevailing conventions of our culture rather than the scriptures. I say this because even a basic familiarity with the life of Jesus reveals that He was none of these things.
How is it then that Christians have turned "following Jesus" into such an insipid and innocuous affair?
Think of Jesus - who was/is He? Nothing less than the incarnate Son of God, who lived a life of obedience to the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. It's into His image we're being conformed (Rom.8:29). Peter says that however else our salvation may be described we have been made "partakers of the divine nature" (2Pet.1:4).
You'd think being drawn up into, even infused with the very life of the Triune God would be something hard to ignore. You'd think that this would have an effect which someone would notice. This is precisely what was true of the early Christians. They were known as ones who had "turned the world upside down" (Acts 17:6).
But, though we may formally confess to believe the doctrine of the Trinity, we are more often practical Unitarians. We do not comprehend the Triune richness of the Christian life and so turn it into a system of ethics. Instead of living the life of Jesus we simply try to be good. While Jesus obeyed the will of the Father in the power of the Spirit, we're more prone to follow the prevailing canons of niceness.
For instance, one of the sacrosanct laws of niceness in our culture is that polite company doesn't discuss religion or politics. Jesus, not being schooled in niceness (or not caring), routinely violated this convention claiming to be the Son of God, Savior of the World, the King of Israel or some other outlandish thing! I mean - how boorish! We modern evangelicals, on the other hand, are fastidious in conformity to our culture's values.
In marriage and parenting for instance we are ignorant of (or have rejected) the profoundly Trinitarian dimension of the image of God we bear in these relations. So, not knowing what else to do as married people raising kids we simply do the best we can aping the culture's values in these things. We don't turn to God for guidance because we don't view our marriages and families in theological terms. We don't see them as signs or symbols proclaiming the glory of the Triune God.
Given this, all that is left to us are principles and mechanics of behavior recommended by marriage and family therapists or psychologists. In other words, there is nothing distinctly Christian about most so-called Christian marriages and families. Is it any wonder why so many of them are in trouble? Is it any wonder that we in the Church have nothing of real power and hope to offer a desperate world?
My wife has a saying, having gone head to head with a superior at work for example, that it was time to "wear beige and smile" - which is to say it was time to be innocuous, non threatening, conformist - until things cooled down. While this may be politically wise when you are working for change within an organization. It's a completely different situation when, through lack of life, you've become unnoticeable - when you're a cipher because you don't stand for anything revolutionary, have no ideas that set you apart, or have no skills that change things for the better. My fear is that the Church of these days is the latter.
