What's the Current Doing? (Part I)

What you can do in a river depends significantly on what the current is doing. In a slow-moving river, the danger is limited and one can focus on playing, swimming, fishing, or relaxing. Even novice canoeists, kayakers, and rafters can learn to control and direct their boats around obstacles.

Oh, every once in a while, it is important to check where one is relative to the shoreline, because even the calmest of rivers slowly, but surely, carry their cargo to the sea. Still, returning to where one began is possible if a person has a little persistence and makes small adjustments at regular intervals to move back upstream.

A river with just a slightly stronger current changes the game, though. Only the strongest of swimmers has any hope of even matching the speed of the current, much less moving upstream against it. If the current is flowing a bit faster, only kayaks can be paddled upstream against it. With the kind of whitewater we saw on a recent vacation in Yellowstone National Park, there is ultimately no means of moving upstream against the current in many places. The only option left then, is to navigate with the current.

I love rivers and enjoy the opportunity to raft, canoe, or kayak on them. I also have tremendous respect for their strength and for the danger that strength brings. If you stay within a river under conditions that are at or below your skill level, there can be great fun ahead. Maneuvering around boulders and “strainers” (fallen trees or low-hanging branches) is half the fun. The joy of meeting a challenge is found as you seek out the best parts of the rapids and the places where the current is swiftest.

We often talk about “cultural currents,” drawing from the imagery of rivers. How often, though, do we explore what that metaphor really means? For example, our culture has a broad and gentle current to it, just like the Illinois River near Tahlequah. There are many ways in which the culture sends us in a certain direction, but gently enough that we have the freedom to choose to go against it when that is important to us. The culture is not like a lake, though. It is a body of water with a purpose, a direction, a flow, and when we fail to recognize that, we can also fail to recognize how far it is taking us from where we really wanted to be.

The influence of television is a good example of this. What once reflected values that were often consistent with those of the gospel—though support of racism, chauvinism, and domestic abuse (think of the Honeymooners on the last one)—were certainly exceptions, has changed dramatically over the last several decades. However, because we had already concluded that the “river” of television is not dangerous, we’ve found ourselves lulled into its influence. That influence certainly includes moral decay that is alarming. More subtly, though, is its persistent effort to make us into consumers. From the programming that presents people with better stuff than we have to the advertising that tells us what we “deserve” and “need,” much of what is on television seeks to quietly transform its viewers into people focused on themselves—their wants, their needs, their preferences.

Another example is in sports leagues for kids. These organized activities began as fun opportunities for kids to learn and grow through the teamwork, self-discipline and perseverance that sports teach so well. They reinforced what parents were doing in the home and what was being taught at church and in school. Driven by competition (of the parents, mostly), they have now become a huge industry that threatens to consume the time, energy, and financial resources of any families who dare to register their child in a “competitive” league. We have found that even having three kids in “recreation” leagues for soccer and basketball is quite a challenge. The current of our culture urges us to teach our kids about commitment through sports, ignoring the reality that other—and more important—commitments are often neglected along the way. Going against that current, in the least, challenges us to help our kids learn to choose between competing commitments and determine which ones are the most important.

Our desire to be “successful” in our work can become another current that can have perilous ends. When we put our advancement at work as the main priority, it can lead us to attend too little to our families, to ignore our health, or to agree to do things on the job that are opposed to what Christ would have us to do. Likewise, when we focus on trying to be “successful” in our work of parenting or “grandparenting” the children in our families, we can overindulge our kids or pressure them to become what we wish we had been.

With these examples and many others, what begins as a gentle current can grow in strength, becoming difficult to resist or even navigate in.

Perhaps it’s time to ask probing questions about the cultural currents of our day. What are their sources (and yes, there are many more: political, economic, pop culture, etc.)? Where do they seek to lead us? What are their dangers? What are their benefits?

Also, who can advise or guide me in navigating the stretch of “river” that’s before me? Am I humble enough to recognize that I need guidance at times? These will be the subject of the entry in two weeks.

Grace & Peace,

Dan