"Old Fashioned"

   Today in church we had a wonderful musical group perform. They certainly have a powerful ministry, but two of the songs gave me pause.
  The first sang about being saved at an "old fashioned" prayer meeting. I almost actually laughed out loud, but contained myself. Oh how quickly that which we now uphold as being right and true because it is "old fashioned" was actual considered incredible radical at the time. I think about the same thing whenever I hear about "old fashioned" family values. Those family values, which we now uphold as timeless, actually didn't emerge until after World War 2, as a response to creating a new normal. I'm not actually so certain that anything is truly "old fashioned"is timeless, for such movements are responses to what is happening in society at a given time, and thus are usually considered quite radical.
   The second song told the story of being in Heaven and having mom and dad round the bend and welcome you to Heaven. That idea made me extremely uncomfortable. Not for myself, I have two wonderful, loving, Christian parents, but I just kept thinking about everyone in my life who doesn't experience that as their norm. I am well aware that I am in the minority having two parents, who still live together. What about the families I love where there are two dads or two moms? Or those where one or another of the parents left, never to be seen again? Or those who are in messy divorces, even years later? Or those, who one or both parents were abusive?
   Sometimes I struggle with songs like this , because they try to take the song writer's experience and extrapolate it into a normative experience, where that just isn't true for so many in this world. And how many times when we use our experiences as normative, do we actually end up hurting other people or turning them off to the faith.
   My denomination  for a period of time had the tag line: "Open hearts, open minds, open doors" - but I wonder if that's really true. Do we open up  our hearts in order to be radical in today's society instead of looking at days gone by? And  do we open up our minds to realize that our experiences, when made to seem normative , actually can hurt other people? And is our door truly open, or only if you are like us in experience, thought, and dress?