When a friend of mine launched a church more than a decade ago, it took off fast. Visitors poured in. The place had energy, momentum and life. But a strange pattern emerged. A few months in—just when people seemed plugged in—they would quietly disappear.
Eventually, one man heading for the exit told him why: “You and this church do things the way you do because you want to be different from other churches. Everything is about what you’re not.”
It stung. But it was true. My friend’s vision was fueled not by what he believed in but by what he was against. His sermons, his leadership style, even the worship setlists—all of it came from reacting to the church culture he’d grown up in. Somewhere along the way, “We’re not like those churches” had become the mission statement.
He’s not alone. In a lot of Christian circles, being “countercultural” is treated like a spiritual badge of honor. We slap “anti-” in front of an idea and call it a conviction. Anti-consumerism. Anti-liberalism. Anti-tradition. Anti-progressivism. But the truth is, arranging our entire lives around what we stand against keeps the very thing we oppose at the center of our thinking. That’s not countercultural—it’s just reactionary.
It’s easy to define yourself by what you reject. The harder—and far more important—question is: What are you actually for?
My friend’s church had essentially been reverse-engineered from the list of what he disliked about the churches he’d known: too angry, too judgmental, too self-righteous. The irony was brutal—his reaction against judgmentalism had made him judgmental in a different way.
That’s the trap of reactionary living. You spend so much time dodging what you don’t want to be that you never actually build the thing you do want to be. You’re not charting a new course—you’re just sailing in the opposite direction of a ship you don’t like. And that’s not vision; it’s drift.
The alternative is harder but infinitely more rewarding: orienting your life around what you are for. This requires imagination. It requires vision. It requires the ability to paint a picture of something that doesn’t fully exist yet and then invite people into it.
That’s the way Jesus lived.
It’s tempting to think of Jesus as someone who was primarily “against” things—against religious hypocrisy, against oppressive empires, against injustice. But the cross reframes the picture entirely.
In the 24 hours leading up to his death, Jesus was betrayed by a friend, denied by another, abandoned by most. The religious elite plotted his execution. The Roman government carried it out. Crowds jeered as he hung there. In human terms, everyone was against him.
And yet, on the cross, Jesus showed what it means to be radically, defiantly for something. Paul described humanity as “enemies of God”—opposed to him, working against him. But Jesus refused to mirror our posture. He was for life, for hope, for grace, for our redemption. His death stood against evil and darkness precisely because it was so unshakably for the restoration of all things.
The distinction matters. Being against something doesn’t necessarily tell the world what you value. But when you’re wholeheartedly for something, it’s obvious what you oppose.
That’s why a “for” posture is so compelling in a world that’s exhausted by constant outrage. It doesn’t start with boycotts, bans or public takedowns. It starts with a picture of what the world could be. It starts with hope.
My friend Jess, an artist, embodies this. She doesn’t just respond to what’s wrong with the world—she creates images of the way it should be, the way it will one day be under God’s reign. Artists, poets and musicians—these are the people who quietly shape culture by imagining something better. And that’s why oppressive regimes have always feared them. Totalitarian powers crush imagination because imagination is dangerous. It offers people an alternative vision of reality. It makes them restless for more.
Christians should be the ultimate culture-makers. Our faith is built on the promise of a renewed heaven and earth. We should be the ones painting the most vivid, hope-filled pictures of what’s possible—not just pointing out what’s broken.
Yes, there are times to protest. There are moments when silence in the face of evil would be complicity. We are called to speak truth to power, to confront injustice, to call out sin. But that can’t be the sum total of our public witness. The loudest “no” in the world is hollow without a better “yes” behind it.
My friend eventually reoriented his church around this idea. Instead of defining themselves as “not like other churches,” they asked: What’s the picture of the kingdom of God we want to see here? What’s the kind of community we want to be for? That shift didn’t just change the tone of his sermons—it changed the culture of the church. People stopped leaving because they weren’t just running from something. They were moving toward something.
And that’s the invitation for all of us. To stop letting what we’re against do all the heavy lifting in shaping our identity. To put down the megaphone and pick up a paintbrush. To be known less for the protests we show up to and more for the world we’re helping to build.
Because when you’re truly for something—life, grace, beauty, justice—you won’t have to announce what you’re against. Everyone will already know.
