So the first wall is the wall of withdrawal. Many of my Christian friends perceive a growing difference between the secular world and the Christian world, the difference between Jay-Z and Hillsong and the Jesus culture. The difference between Quentin Tarantino and Eugene Peterson, Richard Dawkins and Henri Nouwen, Columbia College and Calvin College. Many of my friends fear they are being written out of polite society because they believe in the Gospel. With that comes a psychology of an embattled minority. With that comes a defensiveness and a withdrawal, a fear, and a withdrawal into sub-culture. I certainly have friends how live in a sub-culture, work in a sub-culture, Christian in the sub-culture, socialize in the sub-culture, and if you live in a broader society, that is governed by the spiritual longing that doesn\u2019t know how to express itself, is withdrawing into your own separate sub-culture really the right thing to do.<\/p>\n
I think that\u2019s being governed by fear and not love.<\/p>\n
The second wall is the wall of condescension. In a lot of the walls come from a unique psychology which I have observed. Which is a weird mixture of \u201d\u201c this is going to sound a little rude \u201d\u201c in the Christian culture a mixture of wanton intellectual inferiority complex combined with a spiritual superiority complex.<\/p>\n
And the second wall is the wall of condescension. There is sometimes a belief among some people that those who have been with Christ a long time can adopt a paternal attitude toward those who have not been with Christ, or who have come to Christ recently. And this is a caring condescension. It\u2019s people wanting to help. But it\u2019s also a form of pride to know the route God has chosen for each of us. It\u2019s a form of closed-mindedness. It\u2019s off-putting. People who have come to Christ recently may not at all, may not have lived in the church for very long. But they have lived, and read and thought and they haven\u2019t come back from these experiences with empty hands and they have as much to teach as to learn.<\/p>\n
The third wall is the wall of bad listening.<\/p>\n