What Else, But An Anachronism?

It has been commonplace in much of our society, even fashionable in certain circles, to derisively dismiss Christian faith as an anachronism, ill suited, and out of place and out of touch with the times. I admit that for years I took offense at the suggestion that Christianity just didn’t “fit” the modern world. But this morning I had what I believe a revelation.

In truth, I now believe Christianity is, and in fact has always been, an anachronism. How can something that is timeless ever really “fit” any particular time? Indeed, since the Christian faith is redemptive, is not one of its purposes to redeem the times, to expose and transform what is broken and corrupt and false in any given age, and bring it into conformity with that which alone is whole and pure and true yesterday, today, and tomorrow? If the Christian faith does not transcend the times, refusing to be made to “fit” or suit an era, a culture, a people, a government, I do not believe it can truly be the faith that is revealed in Scripture. So, as of this morning, I have determined that the more anachronistic and quixotic I can be, the more faithful I shall be.

What was perhaps most compelling about Jesus was that he refused to “fit” any of the conceptions or expectations of anybody, to the point of making it impossible for the world of his day to tolerate, much less embrace him. A Christ who suited the world would never have been sent to the cross. How then can one faithfully follow the Lord while being concerned with being “relevant,” “current,” “accommodating,” or “hip?” The last thing many churches today want to be perceived as is “Old School,” yet, in their desire to be a church for “today” they often disconnect themselves from the essential timelessness and potency of what, after all, is and forever will be, the “Old, old story.”

Much of my time is taken up as a volunteer with the Boy Scouts. Among some in the Scouting community I am lampooned as too “Old School” for today’s youth. But the thing is, what is truly worthwhile and essential about Scouting is its timeless ideals, the values expressed in the Scout Oath, Law, Motto, and Slogan. True, these values somehow seemed to better fit the late-Victorian era when Scouting was born, but that too is illusory. Part of what made Scouting so dynamic and compelling in its earliest days was how radically different the life it challenged its members to live was from the commonplace of the early Twentieth Century. William D. Boyce, the American businessman who brought Scouting to the United States, was not impressed by a boy who stepped out of the London fog to help him who was like all the other boys he had known, but one unlike any other youth Boyce had ever encountered, whose behavior was startlingly different, even out of place for that day and age.

Not unlike Christianity, Boy Scouts and Boy Scouting is often derisively dismissed as old fashioned and out of place in the Twenty-first Century. But to the extent that I am perceived as “Old School” and out of place, I believe, as with my faith, that I am being true to Scouting. In fact, I cringe whenever I hear about “Scouting for the 21st Century” because, like the church, it seems that the desire to be relevant and up to date often supersedes what should be a fundamental commitment to the timeless ideals of Scouting.

When I think of the Eagle Scout, the boy who has for the last one hundred years supposed to represent the epitome of Scouting, I don’t picture a youth who is just like all his peers, but rather one who is so radically committed to living out the ideals of Boy Scouting that he truly stands out, and who actually transcends the immense pressures to conform to and fit in with the times, but is instead a personality who compels others to look to him for leadership not because he fits in and does what is expected, but separates from and rises above the “norm” to always seek to do what is morally and ethically right. The timelessness of true morality forever guarantees that those who pursue it will always be anachronisms who don’t “fit” their times.

Faced with a choice as to what kind of Christian, and what kind Scout, I am to be, the choice seems quite clear—What else, but an anachronism?

S.D.G.

Jim Wilken
Swamp Fox District Commissioner
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4