Many times I have heard (and myself have said) that Christian faith in its most radical form is countercultural. The difficulty we usually have with recognizing this is that in so many ways, culture has co-opted our faith. For example, how often in public discourse do we hear that "America is a Christian nation." A great deal of ink, some blood, and a lot of emotional energy has been spent to make this assertion. But, if we are totally honest, we have not made America Christian but have made our Christianity American. Prosperity gospels, appropriation into political positions of the political spectrum (more in form than substance), secularization of religious festivals, and the like have all contributed to a form of cultural Christianity that has little to do with the core of our faith.
We shouldn't be surprised at this. We know that the love of God is strange to our culture which has become the land of the prenuptial agreement (what happened to covenant love?) the careful negotiating and the angry defense of right ad privilege.
Well, this same love was equally strange to the people closest to Jesus. It took the disciples a long time to wrap their heads and hearts around the limitless nature of God's love. Hard to forgive and be forgiven; confused as to why the Messiah was not also a political liberator; totally blown away about the manner of his death -- describe some and all of Jesus own disciples. The comfort here is that when we see their doubt and questioning, we feel better about our own. But still, we would rather not face those doubts and fears. Instead we wrap Jesus in more familiar cloth - that of our own social and political existence, even "dumbing down" the radical message of Jesus when we do so. The limitlessness and universality of Jesus' love falls to the exigencies of our cultural preferences. To the extent that we allow this, we compromise the Gospel's power to change the world in which we exist.
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