Unserious

The Punks Called and Said Wake Up!

Influencers, both Christian and otherwise, are making us unserious. More than that, they are making us dumb. Social media is designed to keep us engaged and the algorithms privilege fear, outrage, and simple to remember sound bites. The influencers who bubble to the top are adept at harnessing the algorithmic trends and they profit off of those clicks, likes, and shares. But if we see these influencers as authoritative we can end up a very unserious people.

One of the most dangerous aspects of our influencer led culture is that simple binaries are the setup and ultimate result of this simplistic sound bite content. Add to that the flooding of our feeds with AI driven content that is usually false or at least misrepresented and we end up with confusion. Human beings are not created to be simplistic false binary creatures. We are complex and, according to the Abrahamic religions, created in the very image of God (imago Dei). There is no scripture I know that describes a simple God. If there were, religion itself would be less diverse and compelling.

Why is this dangerous? False binaries allow us to create ever shrinking in groups and ever expanding out groups. We turn disagreement into evil. We allow the algorithms and unserious people to label human beings as evil, demonic, or worse simply based upon ideas. Now, I will be the first to say that some ideas are evil, but just disagreeing on monetary policy is not necessarily evil. But neither is disagreement on most ideas. Yet, that is what we are allowing to happen to our own thoughts. We allow influencers and politicians to tell us that those who disagree with us or are different are evil.

I cannot tell you how many times clergy in my denomination have made comments like “you can’t be a Democrat and be a Christian.” Yes, some also make that claim about Republicans so lean into the complexity. That mindset is one in which we can easily dismiss criticism about “our” team and only see the bad in the “other” team. But sometimes I just want to scream because the absence of hyperbole means someone means it. Right now, I feel that the twin political parties in the U.S. are failing us as a species, but maybe that’s because they are also buying into false binaries. Voting for a Democrat does not make you evil or unChristian; neither does voting for a Republican. Both major parties have failures and policies which can be anti-Christ in the broad sense. This is one of those subjects that just makes us look dumb. It gets so bad that some claim you can’t be all sort of things and be Christian. One example is Socialism. There are countless Christians throughout the world who are socialist and that fits within faith just fine. But, that doesn’t stop those who would divide from trying to make a different claim. Here’s an example:

Jim Garlow was a pastor. Now he is a political activist and influencer who left Wesleyanism for the New Apostolic Reformation’s embrace of Christian Nationalism. This clip was prior to that, but he was already following a path that led to a false binary. Plus, the claim is just downright false. Scripture and Socialism are not in conflict any more than Capitalism and scripture. The comment is also ridiculous because it ignores reality. But it riled up the audience because their binary world agrees with him. But life and faith are so much more complex than this performative crap. Human beings are more complex and our brains are capable of holding multiple ideas at the same time without being inconsistent. But the influencers don’t profit off of human complexity. As a new Green Day line states “nonsense is [our] heroin.”*

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The performative nature of influencers can even make us dumb. When we see the world through these false binaries we can even miss the actual meaning of things. I encounter this when having discussions with people who have been discipled by influencers like Mike Winger or Alisa Childers. These are Christian YouTube stars who make a lot of binary type arguments. Alisa’s primary idea is that anyone who disagrees with her specific understanding of Christianity is involved in “another Gospel.” Childers is shaped by a Reformed theology and a tinge of fundamentalism such that any deviation is considered wrong. For her right thinking is more important than a right heart. But Childers often misunderstands that very ideas she is opposing. Her binary thinking deceives her when she encounters complex ideas that don’t sound like she expects. This is the same problem with Mike Winger who has even claimed that a source is making the opposite argument that the source makes. But binaries lead to these kind of conclusions.

During COVID and the summer of anti-racist protests I saw the way missed meanings get coopted by influencers. When I heard people who were countering anti-racist protests and chanting “back the blue” using Rage Against The Machine’s Killing in the Name Of as an anthem I was shocked. I guess they latched on to the lines “Now you do what they told ya,” “And now you do what they told ya (now you’re under control),” and “Fxxk you, I won’t do what you tell me” as though this was a general anti-authority song. But it is something totally different than that.

Here’s a link to the song. It is explicit so keep that in mind. But I think the Punks are asking us to pay attention which may require some shocks to the system.

Killing in the Name Of is an anti-racist and anti-fascist anthem. The song doesn’t hide this idea.

Some of those that work forces
Are the same that burn crosses

Those who died are justified
For wearing the badge, they’re the chosen whites

Yes, it seems dumb to pick a song that says the opposite of what you are arguing as an anthem. But that’s what I mean by this idea making us dumb. Performative engagement is not a serious endeavor. Instead, it is deeply unserious. Influencers can appear smart or brilliant because they want to be seen that way. Even the shortest sound bites are highly scripted affairs, designed to entertain and drive a particular viewpoint. Jordan Peterson and Stephen Crowder do this with clips of “debates.” They use poor logic that sounds good, but is designed to setup the random student or person on the street to look foolish. Sure, they don’t use notes, but they don’t need them for scripted and rehearsed content.

But it is incredibly difficult to counter these influencers as a pastor. Discipleship in community is hard compared to a simplistic list of things on which we need to think correctly. Discipleship in community requires us to get into the complexity of human experience and thought. In fact, this often confronts us with the fact that our binary political idea may not be Christian after all.

Enter the idea of Punk. This is a disruptor. A shock to the system like Rage Against the Machine when understood in context. But even more relevant is a prophetic number from Green Day; American Idiot. Here’s a link and yes some explicit language again, but they are calling us to pay attention. We did not and here we are.

Welcome to a new kind of tension
All across the alienation
Where everything isn’t meant to be okay
In television dreams of tomorrow
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow
For that’s enough to argue

Don’t wanna be an American idiot
One nation controlled by the media
Information age of hysteria
It’s calling out to idiot America

How incredibly relevant for this past week. Lost in all the discussion of ABC pulling the Jimmy Kimmel Show suddenly, is the deep why. Ultimately, this is the end result of an ever decreasing number of companies controlling the news and entertainment we have access to. When the FCC chair threatened broadcast license holders, Nexstar was all too willing to put pressure on ABC. Why? because Nexstar wants the FCC to change the rules so they can own even more local TV stations across the United States. Today it is Jimmy Kimmel, but how much influence is Nexstar already putting upon the news produced by local TV stations? Local news has been the last place of straightforward reporting because it is local and closer to the stories in our communities. But if someone like Nexstar can force ABC to do its bidding, how much more can they influence local news stories? That’s how our information is controlled and how influencers manipulate information and ideas to create their moments of influence.

But what does this have to do with discipleship? When the media we consume is controlled by those who profit if we are the idiots in the Green Day song then we should be careful. When a pastor or teacher is working with faith and teaching but it sounds different than what the influencers are telling you to believe who’s right? That’s a trick question because discipleship is more than trite and simple answers. The truth is that truth matters and is often at odds with culture - even Christian culture. Discipleship is a deeply communal experience in which we are becoming like Jesus as a community. There is a reason Paul is constantly comparing the Church to a body. We are the embodiment of Jesus on earth in this period of straining toward a perfect new creation.

Thinking in the binary also forces us into inconsistencies and credibility gaps. This is probably the way we end up disappointing people who encounter the Gospel. The moments when our consistency goes out the window based upon our own conceptions, we lose any credibility.

We can get so dumb that we forget the important things. I’ve seen a few testimonies this week shared by fellow denominational clergy. In almost every instance, there is an opportunity to use the testimony as an example of one of our distinctly Wesleyan doctrines - prevenient grace. Rather than give all of the credit to an influencer, serious discipleship would take the testimony as an opportunity to show how God’s prevenient grace works to woo us toward relationship with Jesus. But maybe the Holy Spirit is just a bit too punk for us to handle.

I think we'd rather be the people lining up to be destroyed in the Ramones Blitzkrieg Bop than prophetically calling people to awaken to truth. "Hey ho! Let's go!"

Tell ya what, Wake Me Up When September Ends

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* Look Ma, No Brains!

For a more philosophical take on how we understand our current moment, here's something from my friend Aaron Simmons:

When Debate Becomes Bullshit