What Steve is naming is something many of us have sensed for a long time, even if we have not always said it clearly. A great many Christians in America are not being formed primarily by Jesus. They are being formed by culture. More specifically, by media, ideology, political tribalism, social resentment, and the constant pressure to interpret everything through the categories of power, fear, and outrage.
That is the problem.
And if that is the problem, then the answer is not better marketing, cooler music, stronger branding, or a more updated performance of relevance.
The answer is that the church must learn to be different again.
That was, in effect, the heart of my conversation with Steve.
He spoke very plainly about what led him to write the book. He looked at churches, including churches he knew well, and asked a very important question: what is actually discipling these people? What is really shaping how they think, react, judge, fear, and treat one another? His answer, stated simply, was that for many of them it was not the teachings of Jesus. It was social media and cable news. That may be a slight oversimplification, but only a slight one.
And if that is true, then we should not be surprised by the results.
People who are constantly discipled by outrage will become outraged people.
People who are constantly discipled by fear will become fearful people.
People who are constantly discipled by grievance will begin to interpret the world through grievance.
And people who are constantly discipled by power will begin to assume that power is the highest good.
At that point, “Jesus” remains in the vocabulary, but he no longer governs the imagination.
He becomes a mascot for instincts formed somewhere else.
That is what it means, in practice, for Jesus to become too American. Not that America has no good in it. Not that there is no place for gratitude for one’s country. Not that political life is irrelevant. But when the surrounding culture begins to exert more authority over the Christian imagination than the Gospels do, then we have not simply contextualized the faith. We have distorted it.
This is not a new danger.
Every age remakes Jesus in its own image if left unchecked. In the first century, many expected a Messiah in a Maccabean mold: a figure of force, national restoration, visible triumph, and political reversal. And Jesus was a disappointment to those expectations. He did speak truth to power, but not in the way people wanted. He did confront the order of the world, but not by becoming what they expected. He laid down power. He refused the script. He conquered by sacrifice. He redefined kingship through service.
That is still offensive.
It is especially offensive in a culture obsessed with victory, image, control, and force.
And this is where Steve’s second point becomes so important. If the problem is that the church is being overformed by American culture, then the answer is not for the church to become even more culturally fluent in a shallow sense. It is for the church to become more visibly and concretely Christian.
In other words, different.
Steve made the point well. The early church did not change the world because it was stylish, entertaining, or cleverly branded. It changed the world because it was distinct. It cared for the poor. It cared for abandoned children. It cared for the sick, the elderly, and the vulnerable. It developed social instincts that did not simply mirror the empire around it. It did not become persuasive because it was impressive on the empire’s terms. It became persuasive because it embodied a different kingdom.
That should not be controversial. It should be common sense.
Yet we continue to act as though the church will become effective by appearing less strange to the culture, when in fact one of the great historical strengths of Christianity was that it taught people how to live in ways the surrounding culture did not naturally produce.
I do not mean eccentricity for its own sake.
I do not mean cultivating weirdness.
I mean actual difference where it counts.
If wealth is idolized, Christians should be conspicuously generous.
If power is worshiped, Christians should be conspicuously servant-hearted.
If public life is fueled by contempt, Christians should be conspicuously capable of enemy-love.
If loneliness is rampant, Christians should be conspicuously hospitable.
If everything is turned into branding and performance, Christians should be conspicuously sincere.
This is not a strategy. It is discipleship.
One of the things I appreciated in Steve’s account was his refusal to confuse cultural relevance with cosmetic adaptation. A fog machine is not a theology. Better coffee is not a witness. Dressing down is not a kingdom ethic. None of those things is necessarily bad, but none of them addresses the actual crisis.
The crisis is moral and spiritual formation.
What are Christians being taught to admire?
What are they being trained to fear?
What are they learning to love?
What are they learning to despise?
And whose voice is carrying the most weight in that process?
These are not peripheral questions. They are central.
Steve’s answer, and I think it is a good one, is that the New Testament must have more sway than America does. Not because America is uniquely evil, but because no nation can occupy the place of the kingdom of God without corrupting the church that permits it. The church does not exist to ratify the emotional life of a civilization. It exists to testify to another king.
That does not mean withdrawal from society. Quite the opposite. It means engaging society from a different center.
This is why I think Steve’s emphasis on the poor was so important. Jesus’ statement that “the poor you always have with you” has often been used as though it were a permission slip for resignation. Steve did not read it that way, and neither do I. The point is not that poverty can be solved once and for all through policy or goodwill. The point is that the existence of the poor does not relieve us of responsibility. It establishes the field in which responsibility must be exercised.
The early church understood this. It did not eradicate suffering. It did not eliminate social need. But it did create communities in which people were less abandoned. It made visible the rule of God by how it treated those who would otherwise be forgotten.
Again, this is what difference looks like.
Not superiority. Not self-congratulation. Not culture war theater.
Difference.
A church that cares for people in ways the surrounding culture finds inconvenient or irrational is a church that becomes legible as church again.
And that legibility matters.
Because right now many people who are outside the church, and not a few inside it, do not know what the church is for. They see noise, positioning, and reaction. They see Christians mirroring the same tribal instincts as everyone else, only with more Bible verses attached. And then Christians wonder why their witness has weakened.
It has weakened because it has become less distinct.
The answer is not to shout louder.
The answer is to become harder to confuse with the surrounding world.
That is what I found most useful in Steve’s framework. He is not merely criticizing America. He is calling the church back to its own center. If Jesus is too American in our imaginations, then we need to return to the Jesus who cannot be comfortably contained by American categories at all. The Jesus who lays down power. The Jesus who blesses enemies. The Jesus who notices the poor. The Jesus who builds communities of reconciliation rather than communities of resentment. The Jesus whose kingdom does not arrive by domination, yet eventually judges all domination.
And if we return to that Jesus, the church may once again learn how to be different in the only ways that really matter.
Not cooler.
Not trendier.
Not more aggressive.
More Christian.
That would be a start.
Sneak Peek
Next week on Created in the Image of God, I’ll be speaking with Sarah E. Frazer about trusting God’s goodness when life does not unfold the way we expected. That should open into a needed conversation about fear, uncertainty, hope, peace, and rest in the middle of life’s unwanted turns.
Then I’ll be speaking with Paul Dafydd Jones about the theology of patience and why waiting can become one of the deepest expressions of Christian faith. That conversation will move into Christology, public theology, and the wisdom and freedom that can emerge from patient faith.
As always, thank you for reading. And remember: you are created in the image of God, and God loves his creation.
