Twinkie,Twinkie little Star

I took a class a few years ago about Christ in Culture. I don't actually remember most of it, but I know that the class's text came from Richard Niebuhr's work of the same name.

From the Amazon synopsis of the book, we read, "Being fully God and fully human, Jesus raised an enduring question for his followers: what exactly was His place in this world? In the classic Christ and Culture, H. Richard Niebuhr crafted a magisterial survey of the many ways of answering that question--and the related question of how Christ's followers understand their own place in the world. Niebuhr called the subject of this book "the double wrestle of the church with its Lord and with the cultural society with which it lives in symbiosis." And he described various understandings of Christ "against," "of," and "above" culture, as well as Christ "transforming" culture, and Christ in "paradoxical" relation to it. This 50th anniversary edition of Christ and Culture, with a foreword by theologian Martin E. Marty, is not easy reading. But it remains among the most gripping articulations of what is arguably the most basic ethical question of the Christian faith: how is Christ relevant to the world in which we live now?"

So, let's ask the question for ourselves with a little help from reality.

We live in a different world than we did 20 years ago. Anyone who thinks differently has his or her head in the sand, and one can get rid of the blog immediately. Of course, reading a blog in the first place makes my point.

We live in a world where Twinkies are going away. How can that be.
We live in a world that largely doesn't believe the Bible is the inerent word of God any longer.
We live in a world that goes out of its way to meet the desires of all people: smart phones, I-pads and their clones, etc.
We live in a world that is beset with civil rights for persons because of whom they have desires to be sexual with.

That being the case, where does Jesus fit into this culture?

Let me point out that when Jesus came, he automatically began to change the culture of his time. That is still the case.

Culture will always change. Jesus, being the same yesterday, today and forever, does not. Seems a contradiction that can't be overcome, but that's not true.

There will always be those in pain.
There will always be the poor.
There will always be those outside the norm, the lease and the lost.
There will always be those who are in need.

Jesus will always, always fill those gaps.

We might do it with powerpoint, we might do it with new music, we might do it with new teaching and new values, but Jesus will always, always fill those gaps.

Now, if he would just do something about those Twinkies.