Urban outfitters, street parties and 'Generation X'

When I can't sleep or I'm thinking too much about things, I have certain "comfort" books I pull out- they're typically short (I can read them in a few hours), easy to read (sometimes trashy), I've probably read them upwards of five times (so sometimes it's more like a mix of reciting and skim-reading really) and for various reasons they comfort me (I would be baring my soul a little too much if I told you what they were and why they comforted me. Ask me in real life or something.)

So, last night, I pulled out 'Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture'- Douglas Coupland's 1990's novel about a group of disaffected twenty-somethings that kind of drop out of society and form their own community. They are fed up of consumerism and the rat-race and their dysfunctional families and the media and expectations and dating and being in their twenties and being a target market and sitting at a computer all day and trying to conform and being the same but trying to look different-but-not-too-different. So, Andy, Dag and Clare move in to these faceless bungalows and sort of drop out of life. They get "McJobs", with low-pay and no commitment and they share their lives with each other and they tell each other stories- funny stories and sad stories and stories about themselves and stories about made up people and made up towns and stories about nuclear war and stories about their fears and stories about falling in love. And they try to make sense of their anxieties and their frailties and their hearts.

Why is it one of my comfort books? I don't know. I like the stories, I like the way it's written, I like the characters and I guess that what it was criticising chimed with me. As a Christian, I don't want to buy in to the greed and the lust (for money and for bodies and for things) that characterises my generation (which is admittedly a little younger than the Gen X gang). I like the idea of dropping out of that kind of society. I like the idea of telling stories to make sense of things. I like the idea of your friends and those around you becoming like your family and inviting people in to that to combat the loneliness and the feeling of being disconnected.

But last night, it didn't comfort me. It made me worried and a bit lost. And then it made me annoyed at things and at myself. It made me think about twenty-something Christians, like me, who see something wrong with the way our world is. And like Clare and Dag and Andy, we sort of drop out of the world and create these hip little communities that are comforting but a little bit cliquey and we listen to good music and dress cool and read Rob Bell and are sarcastic and ironic and cool and we shop at Urban Outfitters. And I got scared because I think I might have been making the Bible in to the stories they tell to each other, recognising the counter-culturalness and the upsidedown-ness of Jesus' stories, seeing how post-modern and beautiful and eclectic they are but just telling them to each other, over and over, saying "yes, we got it right. yes, the rat race isn't for us. yes, capitalism sucks. yes, we aren't the rich", not declaring them to the people the stories could transform, just telling them, over and over, to each other. And please hear me, the stories of the Bible ARE beautiful and good news and we should keep telling them to each other to encourage and change each other but maybe we should tell them to other people too. Maybe we should invite other people in to our communities- even if they aren't indie or they aren't funny and if they don't like foreign films or read the Guardian.

Maybe I haven't explained this well. Maybe it's offensive (mostly to myself, I think). I just realised for a long time that I LIKE a lot of the disadvantaged areas, but only when they're cool and they have good street art and cool art spaces and street parties in summer and only when skinny jeans outweigh drug users and sex workers and the homeless. And because it's actually cool to be anti-consumerism and anti-war and politically aware. I think I've forgotten the transformative power of Jesus and just kept talking about how cool and counter-cultural He is. And even then, only to my friends and to people like me.