“WEIRD people [Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic] in our Western culture have become the new normal. Our weirdness is seen in how we perceive the world, process information, make moral judgments, and understand ourselves in relation to God and others. . . . And you’re wondering . . . What does this have to do with Jesus? Everything.”- Kyle Idleman and Mark E. Moore
In Chapter 5 (“When Jesus Got WEIRD”) of The Missing Messiah, Kyle Idleman and Mark E. Moore note that the word weird might be hard to define. Above all, Tik Tok provides all the evidence we need to prove that people can be weird. For example, consider Lego pain tolerance tests or human hamster challenges.
However, Kyle and Mark observe, social scientists have identified a different type of weird. In fact, this weirdness is so pervasive in our culture that we fail to recognize it as unusual. Hence, like fish unaware of the water we swim in, we find ourselves immersed in a particular kind of cultural weirdness. In addition, it shapes everything from how we think about ourselves to how we understand God.
Most significantly, the authors stress, each component of WEIRD shapes our faith in different ways:
- Western philosophical assumptions put a priority on individual reasoning over communal discernment.
- Education leads us to approach faith on an intellectual basis rather than as an embodied practice.
- Industrialization fragments our lives into specialized compartments; that includes a separate category for spiritual matters.
- Riches cause us to depend on ourselves; and
- Democracy conditions us to “vote” or spiritual practices we prefer rather than submitting to spiritual authority.
In conclusion, Kyle and Mark counsel:
“The Jesus we’ve been taught about — the Jesus we pray to, worship, and invite into our lives — has been profoundly shaped by WEIRD cultural assumptions. . . . While we may believe we’re encountering the Jesus of history, we’re often meeting a Jesus who has been filtered through centuries of Western philosophical thought.”
Today’s question: How do you respond to the WEIRD people in our Western culture? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: ” A profound, if imperceptible shift”