Saturday, 30 August 2008

• Loving the Culture, Loving the World

  I thought I'd post this email discussion I had with our church plant pastor, Adam Brice. It concerns our attitude towards the world, a subject I tend to struggle with.

  *****

  Hi Adam,

  I wanted to sort of ask you a question in the midst of all the discussion on culture that I can’t quite get past, and it’s starting to really bother me.

  Essentially, I’m finding that I really don’t have a sense of “loving my culture”. I really don’t. Some  have expressed that they feel that the US is the best place in the world to live, and because of that and in spite of its many shortcomings, the US is a place that they love. They could lay down their lives for the US , as in the Scriptural definition of love.

  I don’t think I could go to war (even if I believed that women should be combatants in the military, which I don’t) for this country. It isn’t that I hate this country, I don’t. But if I have to give the most valuable thing I have for it, my life, I would not willingly do so. There is only one country that I could give my life wholeheartedly for, and that is the Kingdom of Heaven . If I lived in Morocco or Singapore , I’d work for the betterment of that country, just as I try to be obedient to the rules of the USA and work for it betterment.

  I keep asking myself if I love my culture, and the answer keeps coming back to me as NO. Given a choice between, say, an experimental play that Purdue puts on (these are usually foul in one way or another, but not always) and a group of Javanese dancers, I’d rather see the Javanese dancers.

  I don’t hate everything about my culture, I just don’t like it very much and prefer other cultures to it much of the time. I’m wondering if the definition of the word love is the problem here. When we lived in Austria , we certainly missed the US , since its way was our way of life, but everyone feels that way about their own country.

  I hate to take up group time to figure this one out, but as it is such a part of what we are doing directionally right now, I feel like I have to address it somehow.

  *****

  Thank you for taking the time to bring me into your struggle.  Why don't I try a brief reply here and then we can talk further about this in person sometime soon if you'd like.
  
  Regarding the "culture" question.  By "culture" I simply mean people and the sum total of the ways they interact with each other, or live together in a community of some sort.  It's always hard to define something so all-encompassing but we know of course that Americans interact differently than Japanese, and white-collar people interact in different ways that blue-collar, and so on.  One thing I'm trying to say is that we need to understand a little bit about the people we're trying to reach if we want to reach them with the gospel.
  
  I think the main problem you're having is that you see very clearly that all cultures are fallen, because all the people that make them up are fallen.  That means in every culture there are many things that are evil, opposed to God, and downright unpleasant. But cultures are fallen.  That is every created thing was originally good not evil.  That means in the first place the creation belongs to God and he is concerned about it as the work of his hand.  It also means I believe that there are remnants of the goodness of creation that we can enjoy or appreciate everywhere.  The absence of any such goodness would be hell, and of course we are certainly not in hell, however much we may dislike aspects of American culture.  Things are no where near as bad as they could be if God removed all restraint against evil and allowed human rebellion to run its course.  For this reason true Christianity has always been against the world-despising and world-hating religions and philosophies, especially that of the Greeks which asserts the material world is inherently evil.  How can that be when the material world is inherently the work of God?  It cannot be.
  
  So there is always this tension.  The creation is good, lovely, and for us to enjoy.  But it is also corrupted and tainted by evil.  In the Bible the word that is closest to "culture" is surely "world" and we find this same tension.  John 3:16 says explicitly that God loves the "world."  I presume by "love" it means he values it and cares for it, and seeks to redeem it, because it is his work which has been spoiled by sin.  In particular people, who are the source of evil, are also the center of his redemptive plan because they are made in his image.  Elsewhere John says explicitly "do not love the world" but here "world" has the sense of that which is explicitly opposed to God.  I would suggest we must strike this same balance.  We must seek to appreciate what is still good, beautiful, and pleasing in the world (or we become very dull, boring Christians), but at the same time we must not delight at all in the fallenness of the world or it's opposition to God.  A certain amount of anger at the way sin spoils God's good creation is healthy I think, IF it drives us to want to see the world renewed again, and not to give it up to the devil for destruction.
  
  The real point for our discussions at the moment (and this is absolutely huge) is what will be the posture of our church toward the world?  Do we or do we not exist for the world in some sense?  Is it or is it not true that a fundamental purpose of the church is to be the instrument by which God redeems the world which rightfully belongs to him?  When we focus exclusively on the evil that is in the world we tend toward fundamentalism and separatism.  We cannot see any reason why God would have any concern for this messed up place and so we withdraw from it.  The mindset implicitly becomes "this world is going to hell in a handbasket" and the church becomes a way to escape from the flames, not a way to redeem and renew what was originally good (which is what God is doing of course).  The result is churches that exist merely for the comfort and needs of those who are already saved, namely Christians, while we wait for the fire to fall (kind of like Jonah sulking outside Ninevah because he wants it to be judged rather than going into Ninevah with the Word as God commanded).  Occasionally evangelistic raids are made into the world of course, but they lack credibility because the world picks up on our disdain for them and we don't have any experience with the people we're trying to reach that would help us to know how to communicate the gospel meaningfully to them.  That is the church abandons it's fundamental calling to be salt and light, to make disciples of the nations.  When we remember that the world is God's work, that people are made in his image and are of infinite value, that there are reminders of the goodness of the world about us and in them (often in unexpected places) then like Christ (and that's key of course) we enter into the world in order to try to redeem it for God by his grace.
  
  In the end I would say as long as we don't lose sight of the fact that as a church we by definition exist to be used by God to redeem the Lafayette area for Christ, then we're doing okay.  Jesus loved prostitutes.  That's a remarkable thing when you think about it.  Of course he hated what sin was doing to them and how they were rejecting the good God intended for them.  But he loved them, spent time with them, and died for them.  That's the bottom line of what I mean by loving the culture.  If we don't care for the people in this area, white collar, blue collar, whatever, in the way Jesus does (at least to some degree) then we can't be the church, his body.  As he says, such unsalty salt is. . . well useless.
  
  Adam
  

  • 9:00 AM
  • 98 Views
  • 2 eProps
  • 3 Comments