The term "counter-culture" has great meaning in Christian circles. But outside of it, it is almost meaningless.
The world has come to a realisation that cultures move in multiple directions. Many people try to force fit these cultural movements into false dichotomies, creating paradoxes that seem to make sense of opposing principles and directions over many issues.
One that has risen to the fore in my job is the paradox of purpose vs profit. Very interestingly, this is something I grappled with the church where the church blurred the lines of the paradox and agreeing on principles such as business can replace ministry as long as there is impact. Volunteering and working has no difference because both are paid in different ways.
These are the dangerous ways of the world. Does counter culture still make sense today? When I was young, I always resonated with the ideology that as Christians, there was a need to swim against the current. And the currents in the metaphor represented the world's culture.
There are groups of people thay continue to cling on to these dichotomies. Fundamentally, the world has moved on and the new generation has come to a realisation that it is too simplistic to view these ideologies in just two dimensions. It is necessary to take a multi-dimensional view.
Yet there comes another problem. Man's limitations and inability to see beyond two dimensions, sometimes three (in a purely fictitious sense), and nothing beyond that.
So, many issues perhaps are then pushed into 3D, just like our movies, and we tend to visualise a compass paradox. And we debate it to no end because just two paradoxes never tell the full picture and people get caught up in the complexity, which they say is sometimes unnecessary complexity.
And then we point to what we call the true north. The true north of our ideologies. And we say that's the truth. It seldom is. Whey we see a polarisation is simply because everyone's calibration and true north is slightly different. There are magnetic pulls that differ so slightly and as we know, even fluctuations in magnetic fields that shiver and waver us. It's also like a star with almost infinite facets.
So where should the true Christian face? And then one realises that the Christian truth is an extremely complex, multi-dimensional one. Imagine a compass in an absolutely dimensionless (or dimensionally full) universe. And then you realise how aimless and directionless we always are....
And why we always need to strive for direction.
Why we always need to ask God..
Because as intangible as God and Jesus is, they are also infinite.
So what does counter culture mean in today's context?
It means following a intangible God - and finding tangible truths so that one day we might join Him where He is. At that true-eat north in a dimensionless world.
God bless you. God bless our children. God save us.
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