What Makes This Book Different
“So do you want to know why you’re an outsider in this world? It’s not because the world is changing or because of a political agenda or because of a leader. It’s because you worship an outsider king who has invited you to glorify and enjoy him by becoming an outsider yourself.”
This is from the opening chapter of Patrick Miller and Keith Simon’s book Joyful Outsiders: Six Ways to Live Like Jesus in a Disorienting Culture. It is tempting for us to think that we are the first generation of “outsiders.” C. S. Lewis coined the phrase “chronological snobbery” to describe the mindset that assumes things have never been better or more enlightened than they are right now.
Many of us are guilty of the inverse side of this snobbery. We struggle to think of a time when things have been worse, especially for the church. The wind of culture is in our face. Church attendance is down. All manner of debauchery is up. Faith, especially the public kind of faith that is anchored in tradition and Scripture, is at times mocked and at other times actively resisted. Even among the faithful, holiness has fallen on hard times, and many are struggling to merely persevere.
“Even among the faithful, holiness has fallen on hard times, and many are struggling to merely persevere.”
It is true that we feel homeless in a post-Christian world, a negative world, a world that looks and feels like Babylon. But this shouldn’t surprise us. It has always been the case that kingdom people live in tension with a world that is at times openly hostile to that kingdom. Only a person who hasn’t familiarized themselves with the content of the biblical Gospels would be shocked by our status as outsiders in this world. Only a person who hasn’t heard any of the stories from church history would believe that things are worse today than ever.
The purpose of this book, then, is a little different from other books on the topic of Christians and culture in two ways. First, it does not set out to talk about the various ways that our culture is shifting and ways that the church may adjust. Those books are often helpful. It’s certainly worthwhile for Christians today, particularly those who lead within the church, to soberly reflect on the state of the culture today.
The authors of this book are content to let others perform that cultural exegesis. They take it as a given that Christians are outsiders wherever and whenever they live. The focus of these authors is on the various approaches to cultural engagement that Christians have employed both in the past and today. This focus gives this book a timelessness that other books on cultural engagement might lack.
“It has always been the case that kingdom people live in tension with a world that is at times openly hostile to that kingdom.”
Secondly, this book does not promote one way of engaging with culture as the only or even the best way for a Christian to engage. Most books like this are, to some degree or another, commentaries on Richard Niebuhr’s seminal book, Christ and Culture.[1] That book, written 75 years ago, laid out a taxonomy of different answers to the question of Christ’s (and the Christian’s) orientation to human cultures. This included answers like opposition (Christ against culture), agreement (Christ of culture), and transformation (a version of what he call’s Christ above culture). Near the end of the book, Niebuhr exhorted his readers to resist the temptation to choose one answer to the exclusion of the others (even though many readers see him favoring a transformational approach in his writing).
The authors of this book agree with that judgment. We should allow for the fact that different Christians will naturally have different approaches to culture because we are each different people. We have different dispositions, different personalities, different contexts, and we accentuate different biblical convictions. And perhaps this is the way it should be. The church is united, but diverse, which means we should give each other the grace to address the cultural question in different ways. They articulate this well toward the end of the book.
“I hope you received this book as a humble call for Christians to return to one of Paul’s central metaphors for the church: a unified body with diverse parts. We live together as outsiders in Babylon, and only together can we embody Christ’s mission to confront and heal the world.”
“We live together as outsiders in Babylon.”
In my experience, much conflict is caused within the body when we assume that other people must engage with the world in the same way we do. Our issues must be everyone else’s issues. Our posture must be everyone else’s posture. Occasionally we even go so far as to question the discipleship of those who have a different approach. Instead of appreciating differences, we use those differences as a basis for condemnation. To borrow Paul’s metaphor, the foot isn’t jealous of the hand—the foot condemns the hand for not being a foot.
Overview of the Book
The authors suggest six biblical ways of living in tension with Babylon as joyful outsiders.
- The Trainer: Changing Babylon by changing habits
- The Adviser: Changing Babylon by influencing leaders
- The Artist: Changing Babylon by making beauty
- The Ambassador: Changing Babylon by winning hearts
- The Protester: Changing Babylon by challenging injustice
- The Builder: Changing Babylon by building institutions
Each chapter gives both biblical and contemporary examples. For example, the authors use Daniel and Billy Graham to describe the adviser, and Mahalia Jackson, Zechariah, and Haggai to describe the artist. In each chapter, the authors offer guiding principles along with a “shadow side.” This shadow side consists of the dangers or temptations associated with each one of these approaches. The book ends with tools to help the reader, including key practices and suggested reading for each approach and a personal inventory meant to identify which “joyful way” best describes each reader.
This was a very helpful book for anyone looking to understand how to live more faithfully for Jesus in this world. It is also a helpful book for anyone who is in a position to help others see how God might be positioning them to live as joyful outsiders. It is exceptionally clear in both structure and style. It avoids overly technical language while still offering substantive insights.
“This was a very helpful book for anyone looking to understand how to live more faithfully for Jesus in this world.”
One concern with a book like this is that creating neat categories oversimplifies complexity especially regarding how we understand biblical texts. The stories of the Bible do not always fit so conveniently with our categories. Is it an accurate summary of Ezra’s ministry to call him a trainer? What do we miss from the stories of Daniel or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego when we call them an advisor or protestors? Despite these concerns, I believe the placement of biblical narratives into these six categories was accurate and helpful.
A Couple of Light Criticisms 
I have just a couple of light criticisms. First, each of the six ways assumes that “changing Babylon” is the end goal of living as a joyful outsider. I don’t necessarily disagree with this assessment. In fact, I would argue that Christians continue the work started in the beginning pages of Genesis. God created us with a mandate to “rule over” the things he has made. In other words, human beings were given the sacred duty of making something of the world. This sacred duty is still operative for Christians today. We do indeed “seek first the kingdom,” but this doesn’t mean that we abandon the world. How could we possibly abandon the world that God has made and that Jesus has died for? Part of what seeking the kingdom entails is that we work to bring this world into alignment with God’s reign. Obviously, we do this not by our own strength but in the power of God and in the name of Jesus, but it is still our sacred work, nevertheless.
I mention this as a criticism only because not everyone agrees that the Church exists to “change Babylon.” Some argue for an approach that resists Babylon but doesn’t seek to change Babylon. The authors do address this in an early chapter, but I think they could have made their case more strongly.
“Not everyone agrees that the Church exists to ‘change Babylon.'”
Another light criticism is related to a chapter titled “The Wrong Kind of Outsiders.” This chapter outlines five ways to not live as a joyful outsider. These are all problematic attempts to resolve the tension we experience as Christians in the world. “Conformist outsiders” are compared to the Herodians of Jesus’ day who experienced little tension with the powers at large. “Combative outsiders” are compared to the Zealots fighting against the Romans using the same antagonistic and violent methods. “Cloistered outsiders” are compared to the Essenes who attempted to resolve tension by withdrawing from society. The Pharisees were “nostalgic outsiders” who attempted to resolve the tension by turning the clock backward. Finally, arguably the largest group are those who simply try to avoid all conflict with the world.
In reading this chapter, I thought about Andy Crouch’s fantastic book, Culture Making, where he distinguishes between gestures and postures. A gesture is appropriate or inappropriate depending on context. A posture, on the other hand, is sort of a default way of being regardless of context. Crouch argues that Christians should seek the wisdom to know when certain gestures toward the world are necessary without allowing those gestures to become postures.
So, there are times when hostility is an appropriate gesture toward Babylon. There are other times where conformity or isolation or even minding our own business might be appropriate gestures. Yet in its defense, I believe this chapter is not warning us about gestures; it is warning us about adopting the wrong kind of postures toward Babylon.
[1] This includes a book that I wrote with Daniel McCoy called The Disciple’s Mind: Thinking Like a Disciple of Jesus.
For more from Chad Ragsdale, check out chadragsdale.wordpress.com.
