Disenchantment and Forming Christians

It’s to hilarious to me to think how much we talked about the dangers of modernity twenty years ago and how had malformed Christians and we just created super high expectations, doctrine heavy, dogma heavy community, that was not really great at forming people and didn’t value how important it is in those critical moments of people’s lives – suffering, loss, marriage, celebration – to show up and celebrate and be grateful for the presence and grace of God in those pivotal moments because that’s how people change.

This is from Mike Cosper from the latest bonus episode of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. A few thoughts:

We don’t escape the dangers of modernity by being, well, modern. In other words, if the issue with modernity is disenchantment and ignoring the transcendent, ‘reason-above-all-else’, then ‘right-thinking-leads-to-right-action-leads-to-good-Christians’ doesn’t present a solution. Like Russell Moore mentions in the podcast, we want a curriculum that will give us reliable results (children who keep the faith as adults). But children don’t work like that and education doesn’t work like that.

While we need good doctrine and we do have a high calling of virtue, these things don’t reenchant us until they (along with the body of believers around us) help us see past our mortal lives to the immortal – to ‘see the presence and grace of God in those pivotal moments’. And even the daily moments.