I saw it too – or at least many of the clips. The most-listened-to entertainment property in the English-speaking world, The Joe Rogan Experience, just featured – for more than three hours – one of the most articulate and doctrinally sound Christian apologists of his generation.
I can’t believe I’m about to write these words, but here it goes. Because of Rogan’s enormous reach, it’s quite possible that the broadest Gospel-declaration in the history of the world just happened on . . . Joe Rogan’s show. The FearFactor guy? The MMA fighter guy? The lifelong skeptic of religion who called Christianity a “crutch”” for weak people just a couple years ago? What is happening?
Plucked from relative YouTube obscurity, Wesley Huff, a Christian, a Canadian, and a brilliant academic presented the Christian faith with clarity, joy, and winsomeness to an audience much broader than any Billy Graham ever enjoyed – even on TV.
This event, The Rogan/Huff Episode, struck the loudest note in a cultural song I’ve been hearing lately. It’s a song I have found encouraging and refreshing. At the same time, it has created a consternation in me.
Christianity and its compatriot ideas and ideologies are certainly having a moment. You can see it just about everywhere.
ASLAN IS ON THE MOVE?
Celebrities like Russell Brand seem to be growing in genuine faith. Famed atheists like Ayan Hirsi Ali are making statements in favor of cultural Christianity. The most prominent atheist of my lifetime, Richard Dawkins, recently said he highly prefers a Christianized culture.
Arguably the most influential business in the world, Meta, is returning to its pre-2020 standards for the dissemination and discussion of ideas.
More broadly, many businesses are diminishing their DEI programs while even institutions of higher education are reducing their DEI staffs. In advertising and even in the pageant world, we seem to be witnessing a reembrace of traditional beauty norms and a rejection of the body-positivity-at-any-cost regime.
I say all of that before recognizing in the last couple of years, governments in Italy, Germany, Argentina, and the United States have swung in a traditionalist direction. Canada is soon to follow in their election this year.
ALL GOOD NEWS, RIGHT?
In this cultural song, yes, I am encouraged by these notes. Still, something haunts me. Too many times and in too many cultures, some cultural or civic version of Christianity takes hold in a place while, tragically, hearts remain unchanged.
Of course, when even unbelievers see how the Kingdom of God looks compared to the vapidity and depravity of their own cultures, they desire the Kingdom.
But one cannot have the Kingdom and reject its King. That brings me back to Rogan.
Rogan admitted something profound in his conversation with Wesley Huff. In summary, Rogan said that living the Christian life is “true” – that it works to make humans happy even if we don’t know why. Then, let me quote the key part next. To get this better life, though, “you have to submit to this concept that this guy [Jesus] was the child of God, came down to earth, let himself be crucified, came back from the dead, explained a bunch stuff for people, and then said, ‘all right, see you when I come back.’”
Yes, Mr. Rogan. Yes indeed.
CONCLUSION
Of course I’m encouraged to see the decade-plus-long fog of wokeness and secular humanism clearing in the minds of unregenerate men and women. We’re living in a unique moment where people seem genuinely open to something other than this secular progressive ideology that has driven the Western world for my entire adult lifetime.
I am now prayerful that we, Jesus followers, are all as clear as Wesley Huff was – and as effective as communicators with our extended families, co-workers, and neighbors. A cultural Christianity will indeed make your life better for a time, but those effects will fade without real conversions. Intergenerational flourishing is going to require prayerful, Scripture-saturated, and Spirit-empowered Gospel proclamation.
It will require a Gospel proclamation of King Jesus – not just his Kingdom.
