A Ramble About California

I grew up here, yet after five years it all feels very strange. Since we don't have a car right now, my wife and I have done a lot of walking around. They're the same streets we used to walk on, the same paths we used to take, the same landmarks, and instead of feeling like we've come home, it feels like we've landed in a foreign country. It's not because of all the signs in Korean, Vietnamese, Spanish, and half a dozen other languages besides English, though to be sure it's something I haven't seen in years. You don't quite get this kind of a linguistic salad in rural Tennessee, Idaho or Arkansas. No, I'm not sure what it is to be honest, and to be honest, for a while there I didn't think we would ever come back here.

If you're not from Southern California, it's kind of hard to explain what it's like here. I remember one time the director of a camp I was a counselor at encouraging us to go back and be a transforming witness in our own hometowns. The way he spoke, he assumed that we all came from small towns where everyone knew everyone else. I don't think he could have imagined the three million plus people all crammed together and on top of each other. Here, it's entirely possible to only encounter people you know at work, school, and home and to not run into anyone you know just walking around town or going to the grocery store or theater. Every time I would open up the Rand McNally road map and show friends from out of state what Southern California looked like, they would usually comment with something akin to “Oh wow...”

Southern California culture tends to be all about “me”. What can “I” get out of it? How can “I” be successful, happy, and get more out of life? How can “I” be a better person? This kind of thinking is pervasive everywhere you look, from the way people drive to the way they interact with each other face to face. And many of the churches don't appear to be any different.

The type of Christian faith and practice around SoCal tends to be focused on “me” as well, and many pastors tend to cater towards a self-improvement mentality. One's Christian faith is all about making them a better person, overcoming addictions, overcoming abusive pasts, and sometimes evangelization campaigns here begin to sound very similar to pitches for a weight loss commercial, “Come to Jesus and be a better 'you'!”

The problem with this statement is the assumption which it makes on the outset, which is that life is all about “me”. That the goal of the Christian life is self-improvement. “What is the point of doing something if it doesn't make me a better person?” This sounds like a perfectly good question and a moral basis on which to start.

It isn't. No for us. This is the delusion of self. It is especially not about oneself as it pertains to the Christian. Life for the Christian is all about union with God by Grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Life for the follower of Jesus Christ has one end in view, and that is standing before Him at His judgment seat and being deified by Grace. The “me” centrism based Christianity is antithetical to this purpose. Rather than building “me” up, I am to shed “me” completely; being clothed with His uncreated energies through faith in Jesus Christ and transformed by those energies into what God is by nature. The path of Jesus Christ requires abandonment of and death to “me” that I might be rescued. He and His Saints said this repeatedly and lived it in practice. This isn't self-improvement because it requires the total destruction of one's self in order to make progress.

Southern California also tends to be all about having fun, and getting the most pleasure out of life. With the beach right on the doorstep, ski slopes an hour's drive (or two), two theme parks and resorts in semi-walking distance, and countless restaurants, theaters, museums, and places to play it is a cultural mandate here to amuse yourself in someway. It can be said that Southern Californians truly live for the weekends like no one else in this country. Because of this any form of suffering tends to be regarded as anathema. SoCal is all about feeling good, and suffering just doesn't. And yet it is through suffering that we make progress towards that union with God through Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself told us that if we wanted to follow behind Him we were to pick up the means of our own torturous execution and fall in behind Him. This, by its very nature, involves suffering and not returning wrong for wrong.

The truth is that it's hard coming back here after five years of being completely apart from this kind of cultural influence. It feels like we're getting hit with wave after wave of “Me!” “Fun!” and “You gotta have this to be happy!” after being left alone on our own for so long. It felt a little like whiplash after we got off the bus from which, three weeks later, we are only just recovering.

Now, we are going through the hard task of trying to live, find work, get the kids ready for school, and fit in here again while at the same time not being assimilated by SoCal's culture. This is the hard task. We used to ask the question, “How are we as Christians supposed to live in this world without being a part of it?” And I feel like our journey over the last five years has been God's answer to that question as He taught us how to live without the distracting influences.