Dearest Family,
Despite so many folk being away, we did an introduction to our new summer series: “Christ, Christians and Culture.” If you were away you may want to catch up. When it comes to defining culture, we discovered that there were two possible extreme outcomes: a definition that is so simple and general that it ceases to define much at all, or a definition that attempts to include any number of constituent elements but inevitably still ends up as incomplete. Even the anthropologists agree that it is “notoriously difficult” to define. To put it as simply as we can, culture has different levels, but three main ones are: observable artifacts, values, and underlying assumptions (a world view). Culture is about things, ideas and behaviors. The Bible has a word to describe it: “the world” and to be wrongly influenced by it is “worldliness.” But as we saw on Sunday, the Bible understands the world as not just acting on its own but in relationship with the flesh and the devil.
Particular to a Christian understanding of culture is our belief about human nature (it is fallen) and our belief about the devil (demons and principalities and powers). Christians have always believed what some anthropologists are just beginning to admit. It is not just about what is out there but what is in here, meaning within us. Cultural analysts have been adamant that culture has no agency like a person or individual – no personality. That it could “act almost independently of human actions.” But we believe there is a prince of the power of the air who operates through the agency of culture in a personal way. It’s interesting that in the Old Testament the idea of a city with its culture is described by two words: one that refers to its physical existence and the other that attributes to it a spirit, like attached angels. We forget that the Bible’s explanation of the building of cities as cultural centers was rooted in Cain’s disobedient rebellion against God. Post-Eden culture was spiritually antipathetic and opposed to God’s creational intention – and this climaxed in the Tower of Babel and the spirit of Nimrod. There is a spirituality to culture.
A short summary of Sunday is not possible but let’s make this point. There is a big difference between being culturalized and enculturated. By culturalized, I mean an informed understanding of prevailing culture that comes from a commitment to discern truth, and to be alert to that which is counter to the gospel and to Christian lifestyle. By enculturated, I mean the state whereby a Christian, a church or a spiritual movement has taken on board culturally determined assumptions, behaviors and practices, usually defending themselves by saying that this is the way to reach people. In the last 48 hours, with two pastor friends on two different continents, I have had to relate to the sad and disastrous enculturation of a church and her pastors in one case, and an entire denomination in the other. They got to where they ended up, because they chose to make culture their non-negotiable basis for determining what was right: culture was their starting point, not Christ and the Scriptures.
Many years ago now, in a project entitled Breaking with the idols of our age, Os Guinness and John Seel outlined four steps to destructive enculturation:
Something modern is assumed: Some aspect of modern life or thought is entertained not only as significant and therefore worth acknowledging, but as superior to what Christians now know and do and therefore worth assuming as true.
Something traditional is abandoned: Everything that does not fit with the new assumption is either discounted or cut out. (Not just altering tactics but truth itself.) Something modern is assumed to be both true and proper. Everything no longer assertable in the face of it must go.
Everything else is adapted: What remains of traditional belief and practices is then altered to fit the new assumption. It is translated into the language and expectation of the new assumption which becomes the controlling assumption.
The original is assimilated: At the end of the line, Christian assumptions are absorbed by modern ones. The Gospel has been assimilated to the shape of the culture, often without a remainder.
The above is illustrated by a quote from a non-Christian magazine, The New Yorker: “The preacher instead of looking out upon the world, looks out upon public opinion trying to find out what the public would like to hear. Then he tries his best to duplicate that and bring his finished product into a market place in which others are trying to do the same. The public, turning to our culture to find out about the world, discovers there nothing but its own reflection. The unexamined world meanwhile drifts blindly into the future.”
We are all deeply affected by this. As a pastor, I know the deep pains of being told by someone who decides to leave our community, that our standards are too high and untenable or that we are not relating to where people are at, or that our view on biblical sexuality is unrealistic and outdated. In most cases, sadly, people have made a decision in favor of cultural assumptions, not biblical convictions, and will choose a lifestyle that they continue to defend as spiritual, whether they left for social or sexual reasons. It may be religious but it is not Christian. Holy culturalization has succumbed to unholy enculturation. “Do not love the world or the things that are of the world … We have not received the spirit of the world … We were in slavery under the elemental forces of the world … Our struggle is against the powers of this dark world … Because he loved this world he has deserted me … Keep oneself from being polluted by the world … If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.” (1 John 2:15; 1 Corinthians 2:12; 2 Corinthians 10:3; Galatians 4:3; Ephesians 6:12; 2 Timothy 4:10; James 1:7; 2 Peter 2:20)
I spent most of Sunday’s presentation focusing on the need to take seriously “the mind of Christ” and to think Christianly, and not allow the tidal currents of cultural experience to erode or wash away the foundations of biblical explanation. Let Paul, the great theologian who dealt with the relationship between the gospel and Gentile culture have the last word: “Do not conform to the pattern of the world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2). Think man, think!
Yours for heavenly citizenship,
Stuart