Great is Artemis of the Ephesians! Opposing the Goddess and the Other Adventures for Youth Workers

GREAT IS ARTEMIS OF THE EPHESIANS!
OPPOSING THE GODDESS AND OTHER ADVENTURES FOR YOUTH WORKERS
by Rodolpho Carrasco
in Youthworker, March/April 2000

[ Rodolpho Carrasco is associate director of Harambee Christian Family Center, an urban youth ministry, and on the pastoral team of Northwest Fellowship-- both in Pasadena, California. He also writes a regular column for three Southern California newspapers. In addition to his mission of incarnational ministry, among his major interests are folklore and mythology and their impact on culture. ]

She was a third-year college student, smiling slightly, eyes radiant. Her group presentation on Harambee Center -- the urban youth ministry I codirect in Pasadena -- had just ended. She was among eight students who used Harambee as the subject of their course, "Methods of Studying Religion." The mid-December occasion was festive, marking the conclusion of the course as well as the semester, and Indian cuisine was served to the 30 people in attendance.

Patiently she waited to talk to me. I finished another conversation and turned to her. She gushed compliments. But then she rattled off a familiar tale:

"I'm on my way to India," she said. "I grew up Christian in Minnesota, but during high school I quit going to church. The people at church weren't any different from anyone else. Now I don't know what I believe, but I'm exploring, and I think India is going to be cool.

"But meeting you guys and learning about Harambee, wow!" she exclaimed. "I didn't think Christians could be like this, helping your community in all the ways that you do." She stood with her back straight and chin up, oblivious to the cold night air, and although she didn't say so, she seemed ready to give Christianity another shot.

Popular Spirituality: What's a Youth Worker to Do?
I should have felt great about the interaction. After all, a fallen-away believer is reconsidering her faith. But instead I was annoyed. I was annoyed by her desire to go to India.

Many people seem to think something awaits them in India. Consider pop music. The Beatles went there in the '60s, Led Zeppelin traversed "Kashmir" in the '70s, Love and Rockets rode the "Express Kundalini" in the '80s, and Alanis Morissette returned from India in the '90s to stand naked in a busy American intersection. These sojourners made the trek toward ancient mysteries, seeking out Hindu teachings for some sort of personal rebirth or heightened consciousness.

The young woman I met that night is now living in India. But these days it isn't necessary to do it the "Alanis way" to discover what Hinduism offers. Although a distinct world religion, Hinduism's basic ideas get wide play anywhere Christ isn't acknowledged as the only way to find peace with a personal, Creator God.

Two of those ideas are self-realization and the oneness of all things. The former, according to Hindu teachings, says: "You are it" (i.e., "You yourself are that which you are seeking to know.") Inside you is something divine, the key to understanding all things. As for the latter, famed mythologist Joseph Campbell writes that below the plane of conscious living lies a deeper truth, namely that "I and the other are one." This parallels the Buddhist concept of nirvana, in which the individual soul ultimately disappears, absorbing into the divine.

But American popular culture identifies self-realization and the oneness of all things not as Hinduism but as our "popular spirituality." Christianity is indeed a part of it--but not unique: "You call it Jesus, another calls it Buddha, a third calls it Higher Power. But we are all talking about the same thing." This idea permeates seemingly every piece of entertainment America consumes. Today it may be considered our nation's true religion, dominating not just the sphere of entertainment, but of politics and education as well.

When Christianity is watered down and blended into all-everythingism, it's difficult to defend--or uniquely affirm. I believe that's why many of the young people I know, when pressed, have difficulty explaining why Jesus isn't Shiva, Buddha, or a contemporary incarnation of the Mother Goddess or the Great Earth Spirit. This bothers me because youths--especially the Latinos and African-Americans I work with--need a clear understanding of what redemption through Jesus Christ means for their futures, for eternity.

What's more, the projected, rapid growth of media-on-demand (cable and digital subscriber lines delivering movies and music as well as Web sites) means that Hollywood spirituality will occupy a progressively greater share of our youths' minds and hearts. More young people who've grown up in Christian homes will continue to journey to India (in mind, if not in body) because they still haven't found what they're looking for.

So what's a youth worker to do?

Examine the "Objects of Worship"
During my first year at Stanford University--where I'd transferred after two years at Biola University, a Bible-focused Christian college in Southern California--I got into intense theological discussions in which I tried to convince others that Jesus was the only way. My "combatants" wanted to talk about how different religions and spiritual perspectives explained life's unpleasant circumstances. But I made sure to not talk about alternate spirituality, continually bringing the conversation back to propositions about Jesus as the only way to God.

Theologically, it was Me 11, Stanford 0, as no one could break down my arguments (Biola and Josh McDowell prepared me well.) But you know what? Not one person was convinced enough by my spirited defense to take hold of Jesus for themselves and enter the Kingdom.

Later I made the connection between my Stanford discussions and the Apostle Paul and his evangelistic experience on Mars Hill in Athens (Acts 17:16-34). Paul doesn't use the type of high-pressure, let's-talk-only-about-Jesus approach that I used with my fellow Stanford students--and that showed me a different way of engaging nonbelievers.

But when I looked deeper into Paul's speech regarding the unknown god in the Areopagus, I discovered something else--something really critical to how we might engage our culture. A great degree of abomination was on display in the Areopagus. The inscribed images included depictions of all sorts of sexual acts associated with cult prostitution--pornography chiseled into stone. And Paul says that he walked around the Areopagus and "looked closely at the objects of worship."

Does Paul pull away from the culture he's evangelizing and its sinful objects of worship? No. He walks right up to them, studies them, and then talks about them from experience. The message of Mars Hill is clear: Christians--don't try to make others see the world the way you see it and don't hide from the culture you're trying to reach.

In short, evangelizing the lost means being willing to meet them where they're at, even if that place is a temple full of abominations.

Engage Culture through Film
This message may be difficult for some of us to accept because of its applications today. One critical application is film. I believe Paul's study of Athens' religious iconography is equivalent, at the very least, to Christians studying R-rated movies.

If this sounds offensive to some believers, it doesn't to David Bruce. For this pastor in Fresno, California, it's the only way to go.

When he's not pastoring PCC Church on the Move, Bruce webmasters a well-trafficked site, Hollywood Jesus. Here Bruce examines major Hollywood movies for spiritual content that points in some way to Christ. On almost every page of the voluminous site, Bruce echoes Paul's introduction to his Mars Hill message: What you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. Bruce does what he does because, as he says, "Kids don't talk about Shakespeare. They talk about movies."

Bruce's reviewing method is to figuratively sit alongside nonbelievers at the movie theater and make probing comments that might start discussions on spiritual issues. For example:

* Magnolia -- "After doing a partial strip tease for a woman reporter, Mackey dresses, and then she proceeds to strip Mackey totally emotionally bare with her probing interview."

* The Sixth Sense -- "It is amazing that in a film like this, filled with so many symbols of death and life, our film critics are reluctant to talk about its spiritual aspects."

* American Beauty -- "Looking for salvation in all the wrong places."

* Dogma - -"Silent Bob and Jay are the perfect prophets."

* And, of course, The Matrix -- "The salvation of humanity from the matrix of sin and evil is accomplished by the death and resurrection of a Messiah figure."

Even if we're not inclined to reach students at the movie theater, we may not have a choice. Many kids--including a lot of Christians--are consuming all forms of R-rated (and above) media, with or without our approval. If you don't believe me, just watch mtv[sc] at 11 p.m. A new, envelope-pushing drama called "Undressed" featured, in a recent episode, strong references to oral sex (the camera blocked the critical angle) and a long scene in which a lonely teen girl considers, uses, then rejects a vibrator.

And that's just television. The aforementioned movies have their share of scenes that might make you squirm, even if you don't consider yourself the squirming type.

Bruce isn't trying to explore the limits of Christian liberty. He reviews no pornography and insists that youth workers get consent from parents before taking teens to see movies. Bruce's point--and the point of HollywoodJesus.com--is much like Paul's on Mars Hill: The best way to engage lost people in a discussion about Christ is to meet them where they're at. Again, in the case of our popular teen culture, one of the places they're at is the movies.

Explain that Hollywood Spirituality Isn't Christianity
"Fine," you may say. "Let's engage teens through the movies. But what should we focus on?" Bruce suggests finding the spiritual lessons in each movie and starting from there. I would add emphasizing that Jesus isn't the same as other gods.

It's quite simple to say Jesus isn't Buddha, Higher Power, or Krishna--but when you get into the uniqueness of Christ, that's when you start pushing cultural hot-buttons. Yes, Christianity has made a resurgence in recent years, but I believe much of that resurgence is accepted because people view Christianity as just another way to God. To state that Jesus isn't like anyone else--that he's the only way--is to tap into Paul's discussion in 1 Corinthians portraying Jesus as a stumbling block.

An amazing passage in The Mythic Dimension by Joseph Campbell illustrates this idea--albeit from an adversarial point of view. Campbell wasn't a Christian. But because many consider him the foremost American mythologist of the twentieth century, he's a critical source for reflecting on the spirituality of pop culture. (His influence extends, for example, to Star Wars creator George Lucas, who's also chairman of the board of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, which disseminates Campell's writings.)

In a chapter titled, "The Occult in Myth and Literature," Campbell writes:

"When your gods are nature gods, you can go from one place to another and say, "He whom you call Indra, we know as Zeus." In Caesar's Gallic Wars, chapter six, one finds the author describing the deities of the Celts, but he gives them the related Roman names, Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva...such syncretism is characteristic of all peoples of the world, except the Semites. Imagine any Hebrew saying, "He whom we call Yahweh, you call Indra." No indeed!"

No indeed is right. Yahweh don't play that it's-all-good religiosity. Yet the stumbling block for popular culture is saying Jesus is distinct--and it reinforces all sorts of things about Christianity that most of the world finds repulsive.

Is Artemis of the Ephesians Really That Great?
In spite of the anger that Christ's uniqueness inspires, I've found that discussions about this don't have to be aggressive, in-your-face, or any other stereotype our culture regularly broadcasts about Christians. When we shed light on the facts and incarnate the gospel, nonbelievers can have genuine encounters with the true and living God.

And the facts are very simple: Humanly crafted religious systems cannot fill the proverbial, God-shaped hole inside us.

The issue, then, becomes how we manifest Christ before people and popular spirituality. From my Stanford experience, I know that Christ isn't principally manifested through verbal interaction. While I've advocated a certain type of discussion in this article, I've done so because discussion is a critical part of a larger, much more effective evangelistic tool at our disposal--incarnation.

For better or worse, we want to experience God. We want to see visible manifestations of his love. We want to feel his pleasure. Christians aren't the only ones yearning for this--so are non-Christians. Everybody wants to see his mighty hand. A miracle or two wouldn't hurt, either. We all want to feel what Jesus felt. We want relationship, to hear his answers to our questions, and--if at all possible--not through a printed book. We want to find truth through the hot, odorous breath of a living being.

I think that's what prompted the young college student at the beginning of this article. She and her class studied Harambee for signs of life--that is, signs of real spirituality--and each came away with their own anecdote. I'm not saying Harambee is so great nor that I'm so special, but one unique thing we do--something these students evidently hadn't seen much of--is go after broken, hurting people and absorb them into our lives. Single mothers. Kids without parents. People in and out of jail. Gangs, drugs, death, sexual and domestic abuse. We deal with it all.

Which is to say, we live with it all. Our staff lives on the same block as the ministry. We see people seven days a week. The violence impacting the people I serve is the violence that impacts me.

My point is that--more than our theology--the lives we all lead make an impact on others. Not that theology isn't important--it goes hand-in-hand with incarnation. But our lives must back up, to some degree, the great biblical claims of God's uniqueness that we defend.

At least that's what the young woman told me: "I didn't think Christians could be like this..." Although we made all sorts of Jesus-is-the-only-way statements to her and her fellow students, that's not what she was talking about.

She saw the possibility of a new life.

The copyright for these materials are owned by Rudy Carrasco.  These materials were use with permission by TechMission