Someone is thinking that I’ve lost my mind. The south is the land of sweet tea, but of course, if you live in the south (and are from the south) you know that in any decent restaurant, you do not have to order sweet tea, you just order tea. Tea in the south is sweet. If you want your tea without sugar, you order unsweetened tea. It just makes sense (at least it does in South Carolina).
Of course, if you move into those yankee enclaves of Florida and New York one will quickly discover that the people there do not know how to drink tea. Order tea and it comes out bitter and often charged by the glass. Ask for sweet tea and they will bring you a sugar packet. That sugar packet tells the whole story. The sugar packet reveals that your server has no idea what sweet tea actually is.
The point? Our culture conditions us. Northerners expect tea to be unsweet and southerners will just order a Coke (and yes, it is always a Coke even if it is a Pepsi) rather than suffer through the tragedy of an incomplete glass of tea.
Our culture also conditions our understanding of religion and faith. As a Christian, if I am not careful, I will look to culture to define what a Christian is or should be. Recently Jerry Falwell Jr. came under heat for suggesting that Donald Trump reminded him of Jesus. For Falwell, it appears that he is interpreting Donald Trump through a culture of political maneuvering rather than through the lens of Scripture.
The danger we find ourselves in when we allow anything other than the Bible to define Christian discipleship is that literally anything can be used to qualify someone as a disciple. Falwell and many other evangelicals seem to be arguing that Trump is somehow the lesser of two evils and is therefore more Christian than Hillary Clinton (who, ironically, was actually a member of an evangelical church at one time). Though I do not believe that is necessarily true, I also do not believe it wise, biblical, or OK to proclaim someone a follower of Jesus just to accomplish the purpose of putting him into political office.
Everett Piper of Oklahoma Wesleyan University points out the dangers of “Trumping the Morality” of a man who brags about having been on the cover of Playboy and owns casinos and strip clubs. But, as crazy as it sounds, when our faith becomes overly politicized or too deeply enculturated it can become difficult to tell where culture ends and faith begins.
It is difficult at times for me to believe that unsweetened tea is enjoyed by anyone, but the reality is that sweet tea is only sweet because sugar has been added. Whether I like to admit it or not, real tea (at least in its original form) is plain and bitter. I like my version better, but my version has been changed to fit my tastes.
We need to be careful that our Christian faith is the original as set forth in God’s word, not a form that has been added to or taken from to fit my preferences and the preferences of those around me.
