Inoculation Concerns

One Piebald Life reader over dinner last night commented that "K-Love Christianity" could effectively inoculate kids/adults to Christianity. Inoculation is essentially giving someone a weakened strand of the virus so that you build up an immunity to the virus. This happens with the gospel when we/churches/Christian communities/Christian radio stations offer a watered down, cliche-driven version of it as the real deal. Some people reject it. Perhaps it is well that they should. It is not the fullness of the gospel itself.

Doing campus ministry in the south, I'm keenly aware of the opportunity for people to reject a watered-down, enculturated version of Reality. If I ask my students how many of them know someone who spent a year or more in some sort of Christian community after age 12 but are not currently pursuing faith in community, nearly every hand goes up. I have dozens of students who are active in my chapter who are in various stages of overcoming their previous inoculation in order to embrace the real thing.

And so I am torn between a realization that K-Love Christianity is what genuine faith looks like for many people (and hence desiring to celebrate and make room in my heart for a genuine appreciation for those folks) and the desire to present a more thoughtful, fully-engaged, nuanced and (dare I say?) sophisticated understanding of the gospel and how it applies to our lives.

I'm not even really close to striking that balance at this point. Perhaps for now it is enough for me to have identified the tensions and pray for the Spirit to help me to live in them.