(HP 2001) Impacting Culture
Impacting Culture
June 30, 2001
I actually had to write out in my notes where to pause. Anyone who has done public speaking knows that being on a platform puts you in a weird time-space warp. What seems like half a second to you is experienced as three minutes up here. Three count: one-two-three.
How do you relate to the world around you? How do you, as a Christian, divide your loyalties between the kingdom of God and culture that you live in?
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A while back I listened to a “radio theater” story about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian during WW II. Growing up, he had been taught that on one hand was God and you were loyal to Him, and on the other was your country and the government, and you were loyal to them. Now, shortly before Hitler rose to power, a French Christian confronted him on the belief and asked him what he would do if the government ever told him to do something that was contrary to God’s commands. Bonhoeffer was unable to answer; he only said that that would not happen. The conversation stuck with him and he eventually realized that his first loyalty had to be to God, regardless of the cost. As we all know, the Nazi’s came into power and the German government did begin to contradict his Christian beliefs. The majority of the German church gradually followed Hitler, since they had also been taught to be loyal to their country. But Bonhoeffer and minority of German Christians formed another church that stood against Hitler and they were greatly persecuted for their opposition. Bonhoeffer kept waiting for his fellow Germans to realize what madman Hitler really was and depose him, but that never happened. Finally, Bonhoeffer realized that Hitler could only be stopped by death, so even though he was a pacifist, Bonhoeffer took part in a plot to assassinate Hitler. The plot was, of course, unsuccessful and he was executed for his role. He died just twenty-eight days before Germany surrendered and the war ended in Europe.
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The question that Bonhoeffer had to face was basically, “How should a Christian relate to his culture?” By culture I do not mean listening the opera and eating caviar, not that kind culture, nor do I mean yogurt. By culture I mean the world around us, the whole of the society that we are part of. When the New Testament talks about the world, it usually means culture. When we Jesus said that we are in the world but not of it, that is what He meant: We are in our culture but no longer a part of it.
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Our culture is all around us; it permeates us. Like it or not, most of what we are has been programmed into by our world. And let’s be honest, a lot of our culture stinks. Watch a TV show that is consistently derogatory towards Christians, listen to your co-workers brag about their one-night stands, read a textbook that treats you as an idiot if you don’t believe that the universe came into existence by pure chance, and you will be reminded that this world, this culture is full of things that are in direct contradiction to your beliefs as a Christian. {PAUSE} I was at the theater Wednesday, when I had planned on working on this sermon, and during the previews I went back and forth between disgust and amazement and how dysfunctional the world’s view love is. Anyone of you could tell your own stories of things that remind you that you as a Christian are out of place in this world and that it is a far cry from God’s ideal. I could go on and on about how evil the world is, but that is not the purpose of this sermon. The purpose this sermon is to help us think about how we respond to our culture. {PAUSE} How do you respond? Do you run away from your culture? Do you embrace it? This is the same question that Dietrich Bonhoeffer had to answer: How does a Christian relate to a culture that is so far removed from his or her beliefs? Where does the Christian’s loyalties lie?
{PAUSE}
This sermon is not about evangelism; I am assuming that Christians should be trying to evangelize their world. The series that Pastor Bruce is presently preaching is doing a great job of addressing that. This sermon is about how our Christianity should affect the world, the culture around us. Put another way, how does our Christianity help make this world a better place to live?
This sermon is something of a sequel to last sermon I preached. In my last sermon, I talked about how the Kingdom of God exists today, here on earth, in our hearts as Christian. I said that we, as Christians, are little pieces of heaven here on earth. As Paul says, we are ambassadors on Christ’s behalf. So that raise the good question: how do we be ambassadors? Or put another way, how do we, as Christians, relate to the sinful world around us? Today we are going to look at five different ways that Christians have related to the world around it. Each of them have their strengths and weaknesses, and some are certainly worse than others, but I feel that one of them does a better job of explaining our role as Christians in this culture. I am going to first show you these five different ways, then go back and explain them.
{PAUSE} First is:
1. Christ Against Culture (the escapists)
2. The Christ of Culture (the adaptationist)
3. Christ Above Culture (the synthesists)
4. Christ and Culture in Paradox (the dualists)
5. Christ Transforming Culture (the conversionist) THREE-COUNT
The first view is “Christ Against Culture.” These are the escapists. In response to the question, “How should Christians relate to the world around them?” they answer, “As little as possible!” They see the sinfulness, the depravity of the world around them and decided that Christians have no business being involved with it, so they retreat from the world. The most basic example would be monks who live in seclusion in a monastery, far away from this godless world so that they can draw closer to God. This group has no desire to change the world. Any impact that they have is strictly incidental.
There is something to admire about this group: they live a hard life in the name of holiness and make sacrifices that there is no way I would want to make. Listen: hard beds, cold dungeon-like rooms, plain food, and celibacy hold little attraction for me, I like being married, I like my queen-sized mattress. I can also appreciate their passion for holiness and desire to know God better. And getting away for a period of time can be very healthy. The problem with this view is that it makes no attempt to change the world around it. In doing so it completely disregards our call to be the salt of the earth.
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I very much doubt that anyone in the room is going to be a monk, but the way this happens today is that many Christians retreat away from the world into Christian subcultures where they only have Christian friends, only listen to Christian radio, only watch Christian TV and only do business with Christians – they have thrown out their GTE phonebook and replaced it with a Christian Yellow Pages. All of this for fear of being contaminated.
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The next view is “Christ of Culture.” These are the adaptationists. They are thoroughly a part of this culture and want to stay that way, but at the same they want to make this culture better, so they take Christ and adapt Him to the culture. In this view Jesus is not so much Lord and Savior as a good teacher who can help us improve our culture and ourselves. Christ becomes a reformer and his teachings are a way to help this world get better.
This view has some value in that it takes Jesus’ teachings and ethics seriously. This group has a serious desire to see the world, their culture improved. However, in doing so they completely ignore that Jesus is God, that He came to save the souls of men and women, to make them His children, not just better people. In a word, it sells Jesus short of who He really is.
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So one hand we have the escapists, who take Christ and salvation seriously but make no attempt to change their culture. On the other hand are the adaptationists who are serious about reforming their culture but forget that Jesus is far more than a reformer. The next three groups try to find some medium, not ignoring their culture or reality of who Jesus is.
{PAUSE}
The third view is “Christ Above Culture.” These are the synthesist. They see the culture as being corrupt, but still having some redeeming value. They then try to relate Jesus to the world around them. For instance, if a synthesist were in a culture where courage was the highest virtue, he would talk about how Christ was a courageous man as evidenced by His death on the cross. The synthesist attempts to contextualize, to make Christ relevant to his culture. He is looking for a common ground between the culture and Christ.
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This approach has definite merit and is very useful for missionaries. For instance, when missionaries attempted to evangelize the Vikings, they found they were best received when they emphasized the more war-like attributes of Christ. They would talk about Christ as the conqueror of demons, victor over death, and the king who would come back and set up His kingdom.
The first weaknesses of this approach is that by emphasizing just one attribute, it tends to distort who Jesus is; yes He is victor over death, but He is also the one who said, “Turn the other check.” The second weakness is that this approach fails to recognize just how sinful this culture really is. True, there may be points of contact between Christ and our culture, but the sinfulness of the culture needs more than a little touch-up, it needs a complete overhaul.
The next view is “Christ and Culture in Paradox.” This group is the dualists, meaning that they view themselves as living two different worlds, in dual worlds. They consider themselves to be citizens of two kingdoms. On one hand they are Christians and citizens of heaven and on the other, they are citizens of their own country, be it America, Canada, Mexico, etc. They have loyalties and obligations to both. This view believes that they should “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” Accordingly, a Christian may be against killing, but would go to war and kill for his country, if need be. To this group, the kingdom of God and the kingdoms on earth play by different rules and the Christian must be able to live within both kingdoms.
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At many points this is true: If someone were to murder my wife, I believe that I as a Christian should forgive him. That would be the godly thing to do and I hope that I would be able to do so. However, if the courts of law were to let that same man go, that would not be a godly thing for them to do, but an act of injustice, which the Bible would condemn. So then, what for me as a Christian and individual would be mercy and forgiveness, would be an intolerable act of injustice for the government. Each group plays by different rules.
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This view can spring from the mentality that “It’s all going to burn anyway.” Meaning, since the souls of people is all that is eternal, we shouldn’t waste our time trying to change our culture since it will all be destroyed at the end of time. This type of mentality can be especially prevalent in groups that have a strong emphasis on the end times.
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The strength of this view is that it recognizes the paradox that we as Christians live in: were are part of two world and that is a very challenging place to be. It has two main weaknesses: 1) Like the Christ Against Culture group, it does not try to be salt to the world around it. And 2) If someone is living in two kingdoms, God’s and this worlds, there is a very real danger that they will do things in this world that are contrary to the ways of God’s kingdom. {PAUSE} At the time that Hitler came to power in Germany, there were many, many Christian in Germany. How could they allow the Holocaust? It is a very complex issue and I won’t presume to that it is simple, but part of the answer is the Christians had been taught that they were to be loyal to both God and country and so they obeyed their government and were party to one of the most tragic events in modern history. I am not saying that being a dualist will make one become a Nazi, but the danger of moral compromise in the name of loyalty to one’s country is a very real danger.
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The final view is “Christ Transforming Culture.” These are the conversionist. They believe that the Christian is not only called to bring salvation to their fellowman, but also to bring it to their culture. Their desire is to make this world as good of a place as possible, doing so as committed Christians who take Christ seriously. They seek to avoid the mistake of the escapist by impacting their culture for God and the mistake of the adaptationists by remembering that Christ is Lord and Savior, not just a moral teacher.
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A good example of this view is Chuck Colson’s book, “How Now Shall We Live.” In it he talks about how we as humans have all been created by God, and are therefore immensely valuable, but are in a fallen state, i.e. we are full of sin and separated from God, but now, as Christians, He has redeemed us and restored us to what we should be. {PAUSE}
Likewise, Colson says, our culture was created by God, but is now in a fallen, sinful state, and it is our responsibility as Christians to help redeem it, to help restore our culture to what it should be.
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The strength of this view is that is takes seriously the call to be salt and light, not just to individual people, but the culture itself. They feel that this world should be a better place because Christians have been here. The challenge of this view is that it is a definite balancing act. It is very difficult to maintain a concern for the culture without forgetting about the souls. I can think of more than one ministry that has lost its effectiveness in wining souls because of its attempts to transform culture.
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So which one are you? {PAUSE} Do you retreat from the world for fear of being contaminated by it? Do you use Jesus as a way to bring change to the world, but without making Him Lord? {PAUSE} Or are you seeking to transform the world, seeking to be salt and light to a world that needs God?
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Evangelism is certainly a large part of this; salvation and a renewed heart is the most effective and lasting change that we can bring, but it’s not all of it. Your Christianity should be something that carries through every part of your life. A while back, Bruce and I were talking about how different Christian morality is from the world’s, specifically in how our culture views sex and how frustrated we are by disdain the world has for our beliefs in things such as saving sex for marriage. We talked about how discouraging it can be to be a Christian in such a godless culture. At one point, Bruce picked up a copy of his script and said “This is what I am doing about it.” Bruce and Ken’s script is hardly a sermon, but it is certainly a Christian influence in a very secular field.
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Now obviously not all of us are going to write a screenplay that will be read by Matt Damion and Ben Affleck. But all of us have areas of influence, at home, at work, at play. {PAUSE} So here is your challenge:
1) Write out what areas you have influence in.
2) Ask God to help you see how you can transform the culture in your areas of influence.
Again, there is a balance to be maintained, and that is a very difficult thing to do, but who said being a Christian was easy?