On Posturing

It would take a peculiarly unobservant person, or someone living in a dangerously insular society, not to notice the posturing that goes on all around us. Skinny kids in coffee shops carry huge books and name-drop obscure bands; dudes with shaved heads drive gigantic pickups and spit tobacco; the Amish wear clothes without zippers and look askance at "the English"; middle and upper middle class Americans buy boats and big houses and trips to Europe and SUVs.

Behind all this posturing are much less impressive realities: the obscure hipster bands are obscure because they're so bad no one wants to listen to them, and the books go unread because Dave Eggers and David Mitchell are boring; the pickup-driving rednecks are henpecked at home and hate their jobs; the Amish teach false doctrine and their communities often foster abuse; and the spendthrift American families are all deeply in debt.

So why posture? Do people really think no one can see past the facade? Are the posturers themselves unable to see past their own facade? or the facades of others? And yet one thing that typically characterizes those who posture is their finely cultivated ability to look past the surface of other peoples' lives to the more shallow interior: punks ridicule rednecks, rednecks ridicule yuppies, yuppies ridicule hipsters, hipsters ridicule normal people, and normal people ridicule punks.

Part of the problem is our innate willingness to stereotype. We see it as inevitable, so we give in on a regular basis and sort every person we see into a prepared category. This propensity is so deep seated we even stereotype ourselves, wearing the appropriate clothes, watching the appropriate TV shows, doing the appropriate things to fit into our chosen subculture or group. The act of stereotyping is precisely the act that allows us to see through facades even while maintaining our own.

What's really important isn't the stereotyping, however; it's the corresponding idea that the stereotype to which we belong is the only legitimate one. This is why we posture: to make sure everyone else sees to which group we belong, and that they understand our group is more important, more real, more authentic than theirs. And everyone does posture to one degree or another; some are less obvious, but we all seek identity in a group of some kind.

For Christians, this is sin. Not that we can't be scholars or mountain bikers or blues musicians: but we must not seek identity anywhere but in Christ and as members of His Church. Posturing is ultimately an act of idolatry, assuming that your chosen group is somehow superior to all the others, and that collectively you share an edge on reality. We must abandon posturing, and to the extent that it facilitates posturing we must abandon stereotyping.

Probably the worst form of posturing is that which goes on among Christians as Christians. We carry our Bible ostentatiously wherever we go, we drop catchphrases, we look askance at bums and the morally suspect, we put bumper stickers all over our cars, we wear fish and crosses on our T-shirts and jewelry. Where does this get us? If it's an attempt at evangelism, it fails because it's non-direct and amounts to no more than a show of piety; if it's anything else, it makes no sense.

Our only identity as Christians is as fallen humans saved by the grace of God and the Blood of Jesus and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We aren't cool, we aren't macho, we aren't sexy; we're nothing but broken and yet redeemed. The whole human race is broken—attempts to find wholeness as part of a group shouldn't surprise us, but neither should they seduce us. Only one group offers the wholeness we seek, and that is Christ's Body, and we should offer it to everyone humbly and without a hint of posturing or merely human identity-mongering.