Cars, Church and More School

(Posted by John)

The other night I had a kind of epiphany. For the past decade (give or take a few years...), I've been wrestling with two seemingly irreconcilable passions of mine. On one hand, ever since I turned my life over to Christ at Wheaton, I've desired to employ whatever talents God has given me to further His Kingdom here in this broken and fallen world. On the other hand, unlike most people who on the spectrum between heaven and hell, place school much closer to hell, I happen to really enjoy it. In fact, you could pick just about any subject and I would enjoy spending time studying it.

Not surprisingly, when I was graduating from Wheaton, a considerable number of my professors strongly encouraged me to go on to graduate school. However, at the time I felt like going on in school would be more of a selfish decision than anything else simply because it was something I really wanted to do and not really connected with my other passion -- striving to bridge divisions between Christians and to help those who are broken and searching for something more in life to encounter the love and saving grace of God.

It's not that these two ideas are in themselves mutually exclusive -- my professors at Wheaton as well as many of the books on my shelves prove just the opposite -- higher learning can serve the Kingdom of God in powerful and tangible ways. For me, however, I felt like my motives for continuing on in school had little to do with serving God and much more to do with personal enjoyment, comfortableness, and perhaps even pride. So I turned my back to pursue a different course and now, almost ten years later, I find myself in a coffee-shop in Budapest, Hungary, serving as a missionary in Central Europe and realizing that I really need to go back to school. Why? Well that's a longer story, but I'll begin with a metaphor.

Ford Motor Company and the Church

For those of you who haven't heard yet, Ford Motor Company isn't doing so well in the U.S. , nor is Christianity doing so well in Europe. Toyota and Honda are accomplishing in the U.S. what Islam is accomplishing in Europe -- gaining serious market-share. In short, if market trends continue as they presently are, very soon the majority of Americans will be driving Toyotas and Europe will be a predominantly Islamic society.

Why are Americans turning away from American cars? Well, the answer is pretty straight-forward: Japanese cars a built better, last longer, and are more fuel efficient. (If you don't believe me, compare the ratio of American cars in Consumer Reports' list of the best and worst used cars.) But why is this true? Surely American car manufacturers could produce some of the best cars in the world, or at least be highly competitive with the best. But they aren't. In fact, they're not even close (see link above).

To oversimplify a much more complex situation, one of the leading causes for this disparity is the doctrine of "planned obsolescence," whereby American car manufacturers started designing cars to actually break-down after a certain period of time, thereby necessitating repairs and spare parts, and eventually a replacement of the vehicle. And if people need to replace their cars every 10 years instead of every 20 years, the car manufacturers essentially double their profits. Fifty years ago, this strategy made of lot of sense and proved very profitable for many years. However, in the 70s, the tide started changing. Once known for producing cheap, low-quality products, Japan decided to forge a new path and set about transforming their economy from making cheap, low-quality products to producing very competitive, high-quality products. And as the rift in quality between American and Japanese cars widened, people began buying more and more Japanese cars -- so much so, that last year Ford posted a net loss of a cool $12.7 billion.

Adding GPS Navigation or is a Deeper Change Needed?

Here's where the metaphor converges: What should Ford do in the face of such losses, and likewise, what should Christian leaders do in the face of such losses in Europe? One solution might be for Ford to give the Focus a facelift, add GPS navigation and an iPod interface for the radio. Although the new bells & whistles might attract a few new customers, my guess is that since this solution doesn't address the underlying issue of why so many Americans are looking across the ocean for their next car purchase, it's not going to make a significant dent in Ford's $12.7 billion losses. It would take a lot more than simply tweaking the forms to redress the disillusionment with American cars. And my guess is that it's a battle that's going to take a lot longer than simply a few years.

So too with Christianity in Europe. However, the current situation and reasons for Europe's disillusionment with Christianity are a lot more complex than the troubles Ford is facing, and I have a lot more questions than answers. But I'm pretty sure the solution is going to require something deeper than simply changing to more contemporary worship styles; hence the desire to do some more studying. Because in order to understand how to address the problems, we first need to understand how we got to this situation in the first place.

I'm currently interested in two major topics: historical theology/Church history, with a desire to look at the modern Church through the lens of the ancient Church, and secondly, the intersection between Christianity and European culture (in particular the last two hundred years). I'm still praying about how and when to study, but I think in a year or two I'm going to start taking night classes or do some correspondence work toward a Master's degree. We'll see, and I'll be sure to let you know how things develop.