CHRIST AND CULTURE. Week 1: Introduction Living in Two Kingdoms

Transcription

1 CHRIST AND CULTURE Week 1: Introduction Living in Two Kingdoms (Special thanks to Capitol Hill Baptist for summarizing the introduction noted below as well as a portion of the material below. Also, thank you to Flynn Cratty for putting together the majority of this material.) Welcome to Christ and Culture. Lord willing, this will be a seven-week discussion of how Christians should interact with culture. After seven weeks, we ll have exhausted the topic and you ll all be free to move on. No, we won t begin to exhaust the subject. We can, however, make a start. The world is a place of great good and beauty. Music of Handel and Beethoven Discoveries of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein Taj Mahal, The Pyramids Notre Dame Men and women working in this world, many of them Christians, have inspired, explored, discovered, invented, healed, and created. But this world is also a place of deep and enduring evil. Auschwitz Global War Poverty Starvation Environmental destruction Materialism Irresponsible luxury Men and women working in this world have killed, wasted, ruined, exploited, enslaved, and destroyed.

2 So is the world basically good or basically bad? Should we as Christians rejoice in, engage with, and work to improve a world that has the potential for great good, or should we abandon, condemn, and separate ourselves from a world permeated with sin and corruption? Should we curse the darkness or praise the few candles around us? I want to encourage you to participate in the discussion. I m going to ask a lot of questions myself, so please feel free to chime in then as well. THE DILEMMA WE ALL FACE This class is designed to help Christians wrestle with a dilemma. I want to present that dilemma by looking at several texts of Scripture. Turn to Philippians 3. Would someone read Philippians 3:20-21? Philippians 3: But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. What does Philippians 3 teach us? As God s people, we are citizens of another kingdom. We have another home; we re resident aliens in this world. Our primary allegiance and comfort is with God, not with this world. Our primary hope is Christ, not with this world. Now turn to 1 Peter 2. In 1 Peter, Peter is writing to people who are physically exiles; that is, they ve been driven from their homes by persecution. Look at 1 Peter 2:11ff. 1 Peter 2: Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. So Peter writes that these Christians are exiles I think physically but also in the spiritual sense we ve already talked about. Now look at what he goes on to say.

3 1 Peter 2: Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, 14 or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. So these exiles who are God s people, who have their true citizenship in heaven, are still to be subject to a human emperor. And it s not just political. It s economic and legal obligations too Peter goes on to say that slaves or servants ought to fulfill their responsibilities to their masters. Add to that family and relational obligations wives and husbands ought to fulfill their responsibilities to one another. I hope this is giving you a sense of the dilemma that faces us while we know that our citizenship is in heaven, we live right here. Until we die or Jesus returns, we re going to have to figure out how to live as God s people in a strange land. How does our citizenship in heaven affect our life on earth? Peter sums this up in 1 Peter 2:17 17 Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. Love the brotherhood that is God s people, the church but also honor everyone else. Fear God above all, but also honor the emperor. We have two simultaneous callings to God and to this world and it isn t always easy to put them together. These seven weeks on Christ and Culture are designed to help equip us to be faithful to both of those callings. Before we go any further, we need to define a key concept culture. What does the word culture mean? We use this word in different ways. Sometimes we mean everything that isn t Christian when we talk about the culture. Sometimes we mean something like high culture fine art, literature, music. Sometimes we use the word to talk about exotic cultures. There are many ways we can define the word. But we need to have an idea about what we mean by it. Here s a simple definition: Culture is the sum total of human creative activity. It includes ideas and values, social structures, and physical objects. In other words, it is everything human beings have created or thought that is still with us.

4 That definition is pretty broad. It includes language, art and literature, moral beliefs, political structures, the Duke Chapel, UNC football one of those is evil my wife s white chili chicken recipe, factories, schools, patterns of life in families, and on and on. Let s try a simpler definition: Culture is ideas and the stuff those ideas inspire. Or Culture is the sum total of all the stuff that human beings created that reflects something about what we believe. We live in a world saturated with the stuff of contemporary cultures. We encounter culture creations everywhere and constantly. According to that definition, is culture good or bad? It s difficult to say either way, because culture is very much a mixed bag. That s part of the trouble. Moreover, Christians contribute to culture just like everyone else. Some things that people make are very bad say, pornography or the Tower of Babel, for instance. Other things are very good indoor plumbing, rules safeguarding freedom of speech, Michelangelo s David. Some things people think are good belief in the resurrection or love of a spouse. Others are bad materialism or hatred of other races. People make culture and people are complicated. THREE APPROACHES TO CULTURE Given the fact that culture is so mixed up and complicated, it s no surprise that Christians have come up with different ways of interacting with their culture. I want to look at three general approaches to culture. These are overgeneralizations probably no Christian embodies any of these directly but they ll help us get started in thinking. First, some Christians have decided they must withdraw from culture (Christians should condemn culture). We could call this Christ-against-culture. Of course, no human being can live entirely without culture, but some Christians have tried

5 to wall themselves off from the outside world as much as possible. What are some examples of this type of Christian? 1) The Amish come to mind. These are people who have tried to create a culture that is separate from the modern world. 2) Fundamentalism that refuses to have anything to do with secular politics, art, music, etc. 3) Monks fled the corruption and worldliness into monasteries in the Dark Ages and Middle Ages; To the extent that there is sin and evil in the world around us, we as Christians must condemn it and separate ourselves from it without hesitation or qualification. There are times that the Bible makes clear that there is hostility between followers of Christ and the world that rejected him. John 12:25 1 John 2:15-17 Revelation 18:4-5 However this is not the only way Christians should view or interact with the world. It is appropriate when faced with clear evil and wickedness; but we do not always face that. God made the world, and he saw that it was very good. Second, some Christians embrace the culture without reservation. We can call this Christ-of-culture. (Copy and Consume). These Christians don t critique their culture at all. They are indistinguishable from everyone else because they adopt all the same values and patterns of life. They have argued that human culture is the primary means through which God reveals Himself and the primary means through which we serve Him. They would argue that we cannot learn about God except through human cultural artifacts, like books, talking, and reading: and that we cannot serve God except through human cultural artifacts, like Godly families, societies, and nations. These Christians see no tension between Christ and the world; rather, they believe the Christian message is that God becomes wholly immanent in the world through our culture. What are some examples of this? 1) Liberal theology that works to shape theology to fit prevailing values of culture.

6 Example: The Green Bible. 2) Conservatism that seeks to fit Bible to traditional conservative values. Ex: The Patriot s Bible. It is true that God s creation was originally good, and indeed He does reveal Himself through all of creation; but the Christ of culture view overlooks the Fall. This present creation is twisted and ruined, marred by sin. Third, some Christians try to find a way of allowing God to reign supreme over their life while interacting with, and even contributing to, culture. We can call this Christ over culture. So we won t try to withdraw from culture and create our own sub-culture that s entirely walled-off from the rest of culture. At the same time, we certainly can t adopt all of the values of culture. So we ll have to find a middle way. It is true that this creation was originally good; that culture is inescapable; that we can use cultural creations as tools for learning about God and teaching one another. The Bible recognizes that our citizenship in heaven does not wholly preclude our earthly or worldly commitments. Heaven takes priority, but that does not mean the world always deserves condemnation. Look at Matthew 22:15-22 We re going to try to take this third approach. But how do we do it? How do we remain a part of culture while not being co-opted by culture? Mission is necessarily accomplished at the intersection of gospel, church, and culture. One s theology of culture is the difference between a gospel missionary and a cultural imperialist or cultural separatist. (*Ashford, Bruce Riley. The Gospel and Cultural. Page 1 notes.). God does give us real beauty from non-christians: beautiful art, music, movies, etc. These secular things are neutral things that may teach us things that are true and good. Remembering this helps us not to be legalistic, but anything that we listen to, watch, etc., needs to be evaluated according to a biblical worldview.

7 Should we, or can we, accept it, reject it, or redeem it? It is not that we must indulge ourselves in culture, but when we do interact with it (and that will be everyday b/c we are a part of culture) we must not do it mindlessly, but constantly ask ourselves what we are taking in and whether it gives God any glory that we do so. Here are some final thoughts that may be used at some point when dealing with this topic: 1. Know and understand the categories for interacting with culture. Think of biblical texts/passages that give freedom to interact or warn us to withdrawal. Think faithfully, critically, and redemptively in the midst of the cultural contexts we find ourselves. 2. Do an analysis of what is good, better, and the best when it comes to interacting with cultural. 3. Honey is sweet, but if you eat too much of it you will get sick and vomit (Proverbs 24:13; 25:16). 4. Guard your heart so that it doesn t become polluted by worldliness. (Proverbs 4:23) 5. Don t judge someone else s heart. But do take time to help other s ask discerning and intelligent questions about what we spend our time doing. We are called to help each other in our walk with Christ. This is not binding another s conscience. It is helping another to analyze their own heart.