Relevance and authenticity

I think relevance isn't about being "cool." It's probably not even so much about culture. I think it's about pointing out God's work. I was thinking about how I love hand-made stuff, how I love beautiful things like waterfalls and paintings and music and trees and fire and clouds and people--people who live for important things and hold their ground respectfully, people who are humble and want to teach others, people who are quick to encourage and full of joy--and how confessing these things as being from God makes Him relevant.

A lot of people seem to experience His relevance in the opposite way--He allows/causes disasters and trauma, He fuels the radical conservative politicians and TV preachers, or He is absent and harsh (based on loneliness and guilt).

One of the things that has stood out to me from Donald Miller (I'm reading Blue Like Jazz now) is how people do things because of what affects their hearts:

I don't believe I will ever walk away from God for intellectual reasons... If I walk away from Him, and please pray that I never do, I will walk away for social reasons, identity reasons, deep emotional reasons, the same reasons that any of us do anything." (p. 103).

It's a scary thing to consider, because most Christians see such things as too fluid, too subjective. You can't give too much weight to what you feel internally, because the heart is deceitful (Jer. 17:9). But it's all so reactionary. Right now, tons of people are liking Jesus and rejecting religion, because they felt the coldness of a Jesus reduced by religion to academics and tradition.

I've heard enough generational explanations to know my love of authenticity is considered "postmodern." But I think/feels it's also Christian... there is a place for pure obedience and self-control and self-discipline, acting rightly when we don't feel like it. But Jesus cut through fronts all the time, addressing people's hearts. He didn't care about a fancy, lengthy prayer if it wasn't genuine, if it was for a show.

Authenticity and humility go together somehow... I think arrogance is usually a repression/denial of personal flaws and weaknesses. Humility is being honest about those flaws and weaknesses, which makes it easier to be gracious toward others. There's something refreshing about hearing an apology or a request for help. It's more human, it helps us connect. It's a relief to know others have similar struggles. It makes the rest of us feel more free to admit our mistakes and needs... and isn't such awareness and acknowledgement how change begins? We might not need to confess to a priest, but confessing to one another does something to our hearts. I wonder if more non-Christians would be more interested in God if we talked more about our hearts instead of trying so hard to impress them with good music and how trendy we are, or instead of trying to prove that we're right and they're immoral. It's part of why I hate the Democrats vs. Republicans thing... it turns too many people into enemies. But that's a topic for another time...