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Jonathan Storment

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Baptizing Justin Bieber #2: Code and Pitch

Baptizing Justin Bieber #2: Code and Pitch

Last updated on: May 24, 2016 at 5:02 am by Jonathan Storment

Baptizing Justin Bieber #2: Code and Pitch 2016-05-23T20:26:18-05:00 Jonathan Storment

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Baptizing-Bieber So some context first. A few months ago, I wrote a blog that got way more traction than I thought it would. The traffic from it literally shut down my old blog, which was unfortunate because I had written a couple of more posts about it. (If you missed the first part of this, you can find it here.)

It’s a story of Justin Bieber being baptized and the church that baptized him. Hillsong New York, a really “cool” church, who is reaching people no one else is reaching…the celebrities and cool secular people of New York.

And since this church is being so effective, GQ magazine did an entire featured article asking the question “What Would Cool Jesus Do?”

When I first published that blog a few months ago, (and republished it last week) I got some pushback from people asking good questions like “Shouldn’t we want Bieber to be baptized?”

Of course the answer to that is yes! But since I think it’s important that everyone knows what it means when they get baptized, I wanted to write a follow up post answering that question with another story.

About Osama Bin Laden and Isis.

You know obviously.

Dragging Terrorists Back From Wal-Mart

A few months ago, I read an interesting book called “Disappearing Church” by an Australian Pastor and cultural critic Mark Sayers, and he tells a fascinating story about the problem Christianity is facing in Western culture, by telling a story about an entirely different organization and movement.

Specifically about the rise of Isis and the decline of Al-Queda.

Immediately after 9-11, Osama Bin Laden was riding high in many places in the Middle East. He was leading Al Queda, the premier terrorist organization in the world.

Al-Queda was fluid and networked, they used their smallness against the Western armies to their advantage and were making life very difficult for those who were at war with them.

But only a few years later, everything changed. Al-Queda began to falter, and lose ground, not just because of adapting Western strategies but because of who Al-Queda had started to recruit.

One of the biggest problems Al-Qaeda had after 9/11 was the lack of discipline and commitment from their new recruits, the people who had joined from wealthier, more developed countries.

They had been raised up in Western Culture, where the personal self was the center of all things, and this mindset was having a terrible effect on the terrorist organization.

Here’s how Sayers says it:

The battle-hardened leadership of Al-Qaeda was tearing out their hair, trying to manage recruits who would turn up to training one day and not the next. Instead of planning attacks upon the West, Al-Qaeda members were having to waste time dragging recruits back from their shopping sprees at local markets, repeatedly telling them to stay off their phones. Recruits exhaustively trained and groomed for missions but would simply one day disappear like ghosts, having lost interest. Al-Qaeda’s much-lauded, networked, decentralized organizational structure was useless in dealing with this ghostlike commitment…One of Al Queda’s leaders wrote to his superior “We have some other problems … like dissent and lack of discipline…[these new recruits] do as they wish and roam in the markets. They are not associated with any group and they have no obedience. Sometimes, some of them participate in jihad, while others make no contribution to jihad. A solution to the problem they represent has escaped us, but we are still trying.”

Code and Pitch

I think this story is fascinating because it shows the difference between people who have been raised up in the West and people who haven’t.

If you grew up in the Western world, you have been shaped by everything from the music to the movies, commercials and classrooms, novels and nightclubs have been telling you you’re entire life that the most important thing in the world is personal freedom and the pursuit of your own individual happiness.

In other parts of the world, they still live by something called a Code, something that is more important than any one person involved in it. You may not like the code (like in the case of terrorism) or you may think it is noble and inspiring (like the Jesuits starting hospitals and universities al over the world) but it requires great sacrifice to belong to it, it requires you to bind yourselves and your individual pursuits in order for you to be a part of it.

But none of us in the West grew up with a Code, we grew up with Pitch.

Growing up, I would watch recruiting commercials for the Air Force that said things like “Join us and see the world.” Or the Marines “Be All that you can be.”

The greatest Generation didn’t join the army because they wanted to achieve the greatest self-actualization they could, they did it because Hitler was killing millions of Jews and Pearl Harbor had been bombed, and if they died fighting against evil than so be it.

They still lived by a Code.

Today we all live by pitch.

This Sayers says, explains the rise of Isis,

After all, Isis says that you can be a part of jihad while having your personal dreams come true too. They’ll provide healthcare and personal glory (via social media) Why wait for virgins and glory in the afterlife when you can have them now?.

These days if you want to get people to be a part of a cause, you don’t just talk about why the world needs it, you must convince them that it will make them realize their potential, you must promise benefits to the individual.

Al-Qaeda demanded discipline and obedience, and recruited through Code. The Islamic State used pitch. They made promises to potential soldiers of tangible, attractive benefits, and then once they arrive on the battle field they told them they will kill them if they try leaving to go home to mommy, or Wal-Mart.

So what does this have to do with baptizing Justin Bieber?

Christians in the West are immersed in the pitch. Think about the reasons you go to the church you go to, are you affiliated with a group of people around a cause, or a loose collection of people who all like the same things (worship style/preaching/needs met)? Do we go to church because we want to become the best version of ourselves or because we want to bring God joy and glory, and join in what God is doing in the world? When was the last time that you didn’t get your way in something that really, really mattered to you and you didn’t pack up your bags and go somewhere else?

We all want to belong to something bigger than ourselves, but in order for that to happen it has to be something that doesn’t revolve around us.

This may sound harsh, and cultish, but only because we have spent a lifetime of being trained to think that Code is repressive and pitch is freedom.

But are you free to choose against yourself? Are you free to bind yourself for the greater good and the flourishing of those around you?

It’s easy to talk about baptizing Justin Bieber and the radical call of the Gospel for a celebrity, but what does your baptism mean to you?

I don’t think it means you become your best life now, or learn to achieve your maximum potential and find your inner center and learn peace. All those things will happen, but to make them the point is to make them an idol.

I think what happens when you are baptized is that you die.

Pitch that.

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