Citizen Christian-Culture

Citizen Christian - Culture Beta

You are familiar with the 5 second rule? You drop a piece of food, say a carrot, on the floor and invoke the 5 second rule, that because it was on the floor less than 5 seconds (or so you think) it is still okay to eat. Now, if you believe that to be true, try dropping that same carrot in ketchup and picking it up within 5 seconds and see if it doesn’t have ketchup stuck to it. Hopefully we would all know that the 5 second rule is really based in nonsense. The floor, even in the cleanest of homes, is going to be a cesspool of dirt, hair, bacteria, viruses, dead skin cells and the like. Even just short exposure to such an environment will have an effect on anything that comes into contact with it.

Now imagine yourself as this carrot, a Christian carrot of course, and you are dropped into this world of ours and its culture and invoking the 70 year rule, a life span. Even though that is a very brief time in terms of human history, would you come out unaffected? Surely you are thinking “no” at this point. But that is where we find ourselves, Christians living in a world of culture that sticks to us, shapes us and is inescapable. So how are we going to live the life that JC calls us to live, one of purity and righteousness, when all around us culture that doesn’t necessarily value purity and righteousness?

So we are going to answer that question as we explore a series I am calling Citizen Christian.

So when we talk about culture, what are we meaning? Culture in the broadest sense is everything that people do with creation. It refers to the little worlds we make (through our own creativity in work, play and daily relationships) out of God’s creation.

The Complete Book of Everyday Christianity: An A-To-Z Guide To Following Christ in Every Aspect of Life.

We’ll define culture as: The overlapping patterns of concepts, behaviors and emotions that characterize a community. This suggests cultures involve a spectrum of intersecting patterns such as language, the arts, worship, technology, interpersonal relations and social authority. And these intersecting patterns consist of shared concepts, behaviors and emotions — what we believe, do and feel. So, when we speak of cultures, we have in mind how these features characterize a community — whether it be a family, an ethnic group, a social organization, a religious association, a nation, or even the entirety of humanity.Christian University Certificates -Hermeneutics #10 2:25 Quite simple, to be cultural is to be human.

It seems there is a distinction of culture: high culture, pop culture and folk culture. High culture is when we view something as refined, or we might say “cultured,” something you might find in a museum, or an art practiced by a small number of unusually talented people. Opera might fit into that category. For those who know me, you would know that I am enthusiastic about Opera.

Then there is folk culture, referring to what everyone does simply by being human, unique patterns of behaviour of a particular people or society. I have a niece that has been living in China for more than a year now. As much as she might have prepared for that, learning to live in China, she must have experienced “culture shock” until she became adjusted or “enculturated.”

But the distinction between high culture and folk culture breaks down upon further reflection. It is the unique character of people that gives rise to High culture. And high culture can and should be for the masses. In the time of Mozart, Opera was not only performed in the court of Emperor Joseph of Austria, but also in the Vaudeville for the common folk.

In between them is pop culture, that overlaps both folk and high culture, is very pervasive and influential especially in terms of arts, entertainment and values.

For New Testament writers culture is 1) “the world” how man deals with creation. To further explain that:

2) Culture is human achievement, the work of human minds and hands. It wasn’t just nature, rather something with human purpose behind it. It included speech, education, tradition, myth, science, art, philosophy, government, law, rites, beliefs, inventions and technology.

3) Culture is a world of values, it is for a purpose, primarily for the good of humankind.

We look at our place in culture, our uncritical acceptance of culture, the Gospel as the completion of culture, and our tension of culture.

So what is our place in culture then? It is helpful to remember that the question of Christianity and the culture of civilization is not a new one. The history of human culture and Christian thinking is a complex affair. Scripture can tell us something about how we ought to be in the world. There is a scripture basis for culture called “the cultural mandate.” It is found in Genesis 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground and Genesis 2:15 15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. A great deal of Christian thinking about culture has been rooted in this ideal, as it appears in Genesis 1 & 2. In Genesis 1 the act of creation is described in its variety and goodness. Then humans, “male and female,” are created “in the image of God” and given a task. In Genesis 1 that task is described with the words rule and subdue. They are harsh words, and they leave no doubt about the high place humans have in creation: we have the job of making a world out of God’s earth, the basic agenda for human civilization. The place to start in thinking about the Bible and culture is our place in creation. As important here as the obvious Genesis passages are those places in Scripture where we see a community of people using all its human gifts to worship God.

The first cultural task which human beings were given was thus gardening. And gardening—nurturing other creatures with care and wisdom into their fullest blossom and fruit—is perhaps the best metaphor for culture. But we are called to garden not only plants and animals but all things. Yet the human story is of sin. All too often our culturing is dominion only—for our sake, not for the sake of the garden, whether that “garden” be spouse, friend or even nature.

As in the garden of Eden, we need to cultivate the garden in order to bring glory to God. Culture is the result of civilization. And Culture and civilization refer essentially to our human interactions with the world. Unfortunately as we have cultivated the garden of culture, the motives, the results, the desires have gotten out of hand. To understand and apply the significance of the cultural mandate, we need to remember God’s final goal for history has always been to fill the world with his visible glory so that every creature will worship him forever. Habakkuk 2:14 For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea also pictured in Revelation in heaven.

And after God established the initial order of creation, the cultural mandate indicated that humanity’s responsibility was to develop the creation further in preparation for the final display of God’s glory.

So, in effect, the opening chapters of Genesis establish the foundational biblical perspective that culture is not some minor dimension of our existence. Rather, it is our royal and priestly service to God. I Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. God has ordained for us to fill, develop, order, beautify, and sanctify the earth in preparation for the final display of his visible glory.

But the world is corrupted by sin and the result has been we have experienced an uncritical acceptance of culture and the abandonment of our work in the garden of God. For the majority of Western culture, humanity is regarded as a law unto itself, being apart from God or any “outside” influence. The Transforming Vision, Brian Walsh

Sometimes there is a close alliance between Christian faith and a particular culture, though it has taken different forms through the ages and has continued up to the present, often with tragic consequences. Sometimes it has been used to justify “holy” wars, in which both sides of a conflict assumed that in advancing a country’s cause they were advancing the cause of Christ. Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other...The prayers of both could not be answered-that of neither has been answered fully.” In a different way, this sort of cultural Christianity has sometimes hampered the spread of the gospel. Christians from one culture have been so at home in their own culture—and so repulsed by the strangeness of other cultures—that they have assumed a correlation between accepting the gospel and accepting the host culture. (Fortunately, all over the world the gospel has proven to be greater than those who brought it, so Christian faith has never been exclusively associated with one particular culture.)

Abuses in Christianity have happened as humans have undertaken to spread the gospel or their own convictions. And for us How often has the Christian community given in to non biblical cultural demands or stood by silently while values important to our culture erode away? But it is not easy to determine an obedient Christian response to culture. In many areas and in many ways we don't have a long Christian tradition of reflection or actions on which to draw. So culture can drive our actions, rather than our faith.

As a result of years of cultural conditioning, recent generations in North America have come to see themselves almost exclusively as consumers whose sole purpose in life is to satisfy their individual needs. Our lives are orchestrated around habits of consumption that no longer serve any higher purpose, but which have become ends in themselves, to be desired for their own sake. These habits in turn transform our relationships with other people, as friendships and even marriages are entertained around the question of meeting our personal needs.

Brownson, J. V., Dietterich, I. T., Harvey, B. A., West, C. C., & Hunsberger, G. R. (2020). The Gospel and Our Culture Series: StormFront: The Good News of God (p. 3). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

This picture of inescapable compromise does often seem to describe much of our situation.

Good news is that we can see the Gospel as the completion of culture. Even so, because we live in a fallen world, culture falls short of the biblical ideal. Forgiveness in Christ, not perfection on our own, is our hope. But that forgiveness, presented as the basis for a life of holiness, ought to reach out into the culture, transforming it, not simply accepting it. 2 Corinthians 5:18–19 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation

Immersed as we all are in fallen cultures, we nevertheless are to commit to the work of God to change that unrighteousness, not merely submit to it.

There is a gospel mandate that echoes the cultural mandate given to the human race in the beginning of Genesis. Remember the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:28, God told humanity to “be fruitful and increase in number.”

Similarly, the gospel mandate in Matthew 28:19, Christ called his followers to increase in number when he said, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Much like Adam and Eve were to fill the world with images of God (remember they were created in the image of God), Christians are also to multiply God’s redeemed images. And we do this in part by leading people to saving faith in Christ.

But Jesus’ gospel mandate didn’t stop with just increasing the number of God’s faithful servants. According to Matthew 28:20, our mission also entails “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Just as Adam and Eve were called to obey God by filling the earth and subduing it, Christians are to teach all nations to obey God by following his commands, and that includes instruction on nearly every facet of culture.

It should be evident from Matthew 28, the gospel mandate, that Jesus expected his followers to have an affect on every culture by baptizing believers and teaching his commandments to all nations. His teachings addressed very public cultural issues like poverty, finances, health, marriage, justice, ethnicity, politics and even paying taxes. This is why we find New Testament books touching a broad range of cultural issues. For instance 1John 2:16 NIV 16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.

The cultural opportunity for the gospel is greatest when people have no place to turn. It can be devastating to see someone, especially a family member, who is “hitting bottom.” There is nowhere else to go, they have gotten to the place when there is nowhere to go but up. It is also hard to see someone on the road to the bottom. We can pray and pray for them that things won't get worse, but sometimes we have to pray the incredibly bold prayer of “whatever it takes” for someone to come to the knowledge they need the savior.

That puts us in the position of the Gospel in tension with Culture. Christianity will have to move or straddle between Christ and culture, not an easy task. One of the ways that Christians have responded to the tension between Christianity and culture is to see it as an inescapable consequence of the betweenness of our condition. As Christians, we are citizens of God’s kingdom, yet in our humanity we necessarily participate with everyone else in the institutions required for a fallen culture. For example, As citizens of the kingdom of God we should not kill; however, as citizens of the state we might sometimes be required to take life—in defense of the life of others, for example, or in the carrying out of justice. Likewise, Christians in government (whether vocationally, or simply as voters) might often be called on to make compromises, for the good of civil society, which are a step below what they would expect in God’s perfect order. This approach has often been associated with Martin Luther, whose vision both of God’s grace and of our fallen condition led him to say “sin boldly” in such compromised situations and depend on God’s grace for forgiveness.

It seems as though the motto now is “In science we trust.” While there is nothing inherently wrong with science, I’m a pharmacist/scientist, if we make science our hope for redemption, blessedness, the solution to all the world’s ills, then we essentially are making science our religion. Anything that we use to replace God or try to eliminate a need for God becomes an idol. An important thing to understand is an idol is never satisfied and always enslaves its worshipper. Modern society cannot continue to withstand the sacrifices that the gods require, nor can the gods deliver on their promise of the good life. Jeremy Rifkin, an American economic and social theorist, writer, public speaker, political advisor, and activist. Rifkin is the author of 21 books about the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, writes in Emerging Order “The scientific truths and technological tools that were supposed to bring us an artificial world of increased security and comfort are now spawning a level of intense anxiety that is precariously close to getting into Mass Social hysteria.” Contrast that with John 14:27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Since human culture is either a way to further God’s purpose or a way to turn against it, the Bible has much to say about culture. When the cultural worlds we make become idolatrous or, on the other hand, when they further the glory of creation and Creator, the Bible is not silent. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:14 my dear friends, flee from idolatry. .

The culture of man and the culture of the kingdom of heaven are at war, that tension. They are essentially in spiritual battle with one another. It is a clash which permeates the entire range of human activities. Just as our cultural life is created and thus under God’s rule, and as we are called to serve him in all that we do, but all our life is now fallen. There is nothing in creation that sin has not touched. The Transforming Vision, Walsh p 71 John 5:19 (NIV2011) 19 We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. Philippians 2:14 (PassionNTPsa) 14Live a cheerful life, without complaining or division among yourselves. For then you will be seen as innocent, faultless, and pure children of God, even though you live in the midst of a brutal and perverse culture. For you will appear among them as shining lights in the universe. And part of the tension is that it is not just physical tension we feel but spiritual Ephesians 5:12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. As Christians, we need to remember that the entire world is locked in a tremendous spiritual battle. There are demonic forces, forces of Satan, that seek to oppose God's purposes and bring evil and destruction to every human being that God created in his own image, and also bringing destruction to every human society in every nation. Voting as a Christian, Grudem p35

We are called to serve the Lord and acknowledge his kingship in the whole range of our cultural activities. There are no sacred/secular compartments here. Our service to God is not something we do alongside our ordinary human life. The Bible does not describe such a division. In the biblical world view all of life, in all of its dimensions is constituted as religion.

So how do we live in Culture? The instruction from the Bible and a key verse for us is Romans 12:2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

One of the ways Christians have lived in the tension between faith and culture has been to acknowledge that human culture, good and necessary as it is, always falls short of God’s purposes for people. Culture must thus be completed and fulfilled by God’s special work.

When we look at the whole bible, it seems clear that a rich cultural life in a real world—of families, governments, farming, feasting, storytelling, music and dance—is never rejected. It is assumed to be the substance of holiness, not its opposite. In his letter to Titus (Titus 2:11-14), Paul writes that “the grace of God that brings salvation... teaches us to say no.” But the “no” is not to life in the world; it is rather to ungodliness and worldly passions. We are advised instead “to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age,” lives which must clearly be involved in culture.

As history has shown time and again, when followers of Jesus faithfully devote themselves to teaching all that Christ commanded to every nation, we have the potential of positively influencing every facet of every culture in the entire world. And for this reason, our modern application of the Bible must address the full range of human culture.

As followers of Christ, it’s our responsibility to follow cultural paths that are true to God’s will and to avoid those that are not. Sometimes the paths we pursue should be very different from the world. Biblical authors repeatedly warned their original audiences against falling into idolatry, sexual immorality, selfishness, pride, injustice and a host of other cultural evils. Wherever we see these kinds of evils in our own day, we are to turn away from them.

We need community, Christian community, not only because the problems are so big but because we are the body of Christ. We experience our individuality primarily in terms of our unique contribution to the body. As Christians acting in unity, we need to address the issues of our culture.

We need each other, we need to be in community. By yourself, you can struggle in the kingdom of God. Just as our renewal in the image of God is communal, so our task of implementing a Christian cultural vision is communal. What makes the Christian Community “Christian” is its worship. A radical Community, it subverts the dominant culture because it worships, serves and prays to a different God, the God of all creation. Its worship sets the pattern for its whole life. Rather than being conformed to the world, it is a community being transformed by the renewing of its communal mind- its worldview. Consequently its worship is not relegated to just church activities, but it gives its whole life to God as a sacrificial offering (the point of Romans 12 1 & 2). Herein is the essence of Christian cultural witness in a society in decline.

We may not simply write off an aspect of human culture as if it were beyond redemption, nor should we accept it uncritically at face value. Instead we need to struggle discerningly with our Brothers and Sisters in Christ (as well as with unbelievers who are sensitive to creational Norms). We need to listen to God's spirit as he points us back to the guidance of his word for all areas of our life.

How can we as Christians be instruments for the changes God wants to bring to the world if we conform ourselves to the expectations of our culture? Where we invest our time, assets, and attention reveals what we care about most. But our good and gracious God wants to redeem us, and we should commit ourselves to seeking His blessing instead of His judgment (John 3:16–17; Rom 8). If we follow Him with our entire being—setting aside all that stands between us and Him—the world will look different.

What does all this mean for our day-to-day life? Two principles stand out. The first is that our cultural worlds can indeed be “worldly” in the old ungodly sense, and we should not “let the world squeeze us into its mold.” But the second is that we are redeemed for work in the world—in the words of Isaiah, “to rebuild the ancient ruins” and “raise up the age-old foundations.” Our strength in this is God’s gift: Isaiah 58:11 NIV “The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land. . . . You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. This brings us back to the Christian fulfilling the cultural mandate given in the garden of Eden.