Why Culture Matters

November 19, 2008

This is the final installation in my “…matters” series.  As I said before, these are lecture notes I made for myself a few months ago.  This last lecture alludes to a couple of illustrations and may seem a bit “jumpy” to the reader.  I will seek to remedy that when I have a few minutes.  It has been late in coming because it was stored on my personal computer rather than the church’s network.

Introduction: A Personal Experience

I’ve always been a music person.  I see this quality being passed on to my daughter – who, like her father has definite and strong tastes in music.  At two and a half years old, she is a big fan of Lily Allen, Bloc Party, The Smiths and lately Amy Macdonald.  Oh, and BTW – I know most of you don’t know who the Smiths are.  If you think you are all indie and sceney because you are a guy and wear girl’s pants, but you don’t own multiple Smiths albums…you are just a poseur.  I will pray for you.  Anyway, back to my daughter.  Like all of us, she is a consumer of culture.  She has very definite tastes.  When I’ve tried to introduce her to old two-tone Ska like the Specials, she’s asked me to change the music.  Although she likes the Ramones and the Dead Kennedys, she rejects Operation Ivy.  She loves Rosie Thomas, but is bored by Damien Jurado.  With Christmas around the bend, I’m afraid she’ll still like her mother’s horrible 1970’s Christian “pop” Christmas music…at least we always have Sufjan’s Christmas box set to mediate our tastes.

As I sat writing the first words of this lecture the other day, I was listening (as I often do) to BBC Radio 2.  It’s a hodge-podge of music, sometimes glorious – sometimes crap.  As I went to type the first words – on came Katy Perry’s hit “I Kissed a Girl”.  What an apt song to come on for a discussion of the relationship between Christianity, Theology and Culture.  I hate this song.  It’s witty, a touch subversive, possibly homophobic, and ridiculously catchy.  I’ve been singing it to my wife the rest of this weekend.  It’s sad, really – how it can get into your brain.

Now, a lot of your discussions of culture may be relegated to the Youth Group “don’t listen to this, listen to that” so that you are perceived as a “good kid”.  I think we need to move beyond this as we mature in Christ.  I believe that we as Christians are particularly commanded by Scripture to:

1)      Be Aware of Culture

2)      Be Creators of Culture

3)      Be Critics of Culture

4)      Be Savvy Consumers of Culture

Raising our Cultural Awareness

Can someone in this room give me a working definition of “culture”?

My working definition: “a social environment in which we define the meaning of life (including the meaning of truth, goodness and beauty) through the means of worship, beliefs, values, traditions, language, social and political organization, art, technology and social customs.”

Culture is all around us.  It is what we consume, it is what we create, it is the center of most of our discussions, it provides our language, it provides our shared beliefs and experiences.  Most of you will exist in several cultures and sub-cultures:  You exist in a “Christian” culture in that you are part of the church – and this might be subsected by a particular church or tradition’s subculture, you may be a part of the Evangelical sub-culture complete with t-shirts and bracelets, or you may be a part of a progressive sub-culture which enjoys critiquing the Evangelical culture, you are also part of a family culture, you are part of – or will be becoming a part of a “house culture” in your UCU house, you are part of the UW culture, the Seattle Culture, the American culture, the internet culture, and finally and probably most deeply – you are part of our popular culture.

We are part of all of these worlds, and yet we are commanded to somehow transform the world.  Indeed, as we will see in a few minutes, one of the first commandments given to humanity is to be creators and influencers of culture.  How do we understand this command?  Well, there are several ways this has been done in the past.  In breaking down our Christian approaches to culture, Richard Niebuhr in a series of lectures in the 1950s gave us several categories – I will use these as I discuss some popular cultural movements within Christianity

I am first going to address the manner that Evangelicals have dealt with culture:

The first is by ghetto-izing the faith and becoming culturally isolationist.  Niebuhr calls this position “Christ Against Culture”.   An extreme example of this would be holiness and pietistic faiths such as the Amish who removed themselves completely from the “wicked world” in order to not be stained by it.  This is also the impetus of many monastic movements.   Evangelicals have often followed suit, but in a different way – by creating sub-par music, sub-par movies, sub-par books, and even sub-par t-shirts and such truck which are just rip-offs of what was cool and hip in the broader popular culture 10 years before.  Instead of engaging with the world, Evangelicals have often sought to create a parallel universe which is “positive” and “encouraging” and “safe for the whole family”.  Can I just take a quick aside here.  Where in Scripture are we called to be “positive” and “encouraging” and “safe for the whole family”?  Christianity isn’t supposed to be a “safe” religion – it’s one that in many times and many places would put your head on the chopping block.  But, I digress.

The second would be the attempt of the church to exert its power to bring all of culture under its authority and the law of God.  Niebuhr calls this the “Christ Above Culture” position.  This is seen in some Pentecostal movements, the Reformed Theonomist camp, and in the culture-warrior Religious Right.  It sees the church largely as a voting bloc which exerts its will in tandem with a political party/movement to bring everything under the subjection of Christ.  The church then places the boundaries and sets the agenda for human culture.  This position has also been held, historically, by Catholics with a vision for Christendom – this is probably not the position of English-speaking Catholicism today.  In almost every case, the reason for this position is the desire to bring the world to an end with the return of Christ being ushered in.

The third position is that which has historically been held by Lutherans, but I see being more and more descriptive of modern, especially young, Evangelicals.  This is Christ and Culture in Paradox.  I believe that Andy Crouch’s new book on Culture-Making expresses this view well.  This is that Christians are not critics of culture, but rather seek to overwhelm the popular culture with salt and light.  Andy Crouch, for instance, desires to see communities of Christian artists coming together with their broader communities to do art together and make culture.  However, he sees no place, and no right for us to critique each other’s art or the art of the world.  He then sees a paradox between Christianity and the Culture of today – with one having little bearing on the other.  Those of you who are consuming popular culture with little to no discernment probably fall into this camp.  I am not sitting up here being judgmental – but in my ministry experience, this or the next category is best going to describe most of you.

I am sure that you have all seen those above positions in action.  The next position is that which has historically been taken by Modern Liberalism (explain Modern Liberalism) and the “new” Evangelicalism.  And that is the position of the “Christ of Culture”.  In this, everything is about the story of the Spirit’s encounter with the world.  Everything is lawful and sanctified, and we find Christ in everything.  I believe that this position often begins, with Evangelicals today, as an attempt by Christians with little theological grounding to attempt the final category of Christian engagement with culture and this is…

Christ transforming Culture.  The belief of the transformationist is that God’s story is inter-woven with the story of Culture.  That Christ has a plan for culture, and that the Christian is to be a part of that – both as critic and creator.  The transformationist, in opposition to some of the previous viewpoints, has a vision for a renewed society which God is active in renewing right now.  However, the transformationist believes that God is renewing the world not primarily through political might, but through individuals being impacted by the story of His grace as it is interpreted by his agents of mercy – the church.

Creators of Culture

Our theology of culture is oftentimes determined by where we start, theologically, with our understanding of what man’s ultimate aim is.  For those of you who would say that man’s chief end is to get people saved, you would probably find your place is different than a person who believe’s that man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.  The first position places a great value on a single act and then looks to the end when God will redeem the world, whilst the second position encompasses all of human experience and sees God as redeeming the world now.

In Genesis 1:28, God commanded Adam and Eve to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”  This is what theologians call the “cultural mandate”.  As Nancy Pearcey, author of Total Truth states:  “In Genesis, God gives what we might call the first job description: ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.’  The first phrase, ‘be fruitful and multiply’ means to develop the social world: build families and the things which sustain human society – churches, schools, cities, governments, laws.  The second phrase, ‘subdue the earth.’ Means to harness the natural world: plant crops, build bridges, design computers, compose music.  This passage is sometimes called the Cultural Mandate because it tells us that our original purpose was to create cultures, build civilizations – nothing less.”

Christians are specifically called, both here and elsewhere (such as in Jeremiah 29), to build up the culture in the places where they are planted.  We are called to be creators and influencers.  Indeed, in doing so we mirror the work of God – for he is the ultimate creator and the ultimate influencer.  In doing art, in doing math, in writing code, in building bridges we actually share in the divine nature and call.  Isn’t that amazing?

Our work, and its impact on culture, is then of chief importance.  Think about this – as you study, write songs, blog – you are doing what God has called you to do.  And not only this, he has called you to glorify him in doing it.  That means that we are called to study hard, to the glory of God – that we might be participants in the culture and do our work to glorify him.

Cultural Criticism

“The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it” declares the Psalmist.  Dutch theologian and Prime Minister Abraham Kuyper stated that “No single piece of our mental world is to be sealed off from the rest and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘MINE!’”.  As this entire world is God’s, and he is the one who defines what is clean and what is unclean – we as Christians, in our art and in our consumption, must keep his Lordship in mind.

Getting back to Katy Perry, why do I hate this song?  Because, I understand that *everything* we consume has effects.  The constant repetition that bisexual exploration is funny and hip is dangerous.  I’m not going to advocate burning Katy’s CDs.  But I am going to advocate that Christian artists make better music and unseat her on the charts with music which causes us to reflect on whole, rather than broken, sexuality.

When I lived in Scotland, my buddy David was a minister in London.  David had done his first degree in Art before becoming a pastor, and he took me to the Tate Modern.  It’s an amazing facility filled with the cutting edge of contemporary art.
            - Disconcerting
            - A temple to sex and death
            - Unsettling video – leads to a change in attitudes and beliefs

Everything we consume will change what comes out of us.  What we are called to then, is to use our theology as the lens through which we view our culture.

As Christians, we must examine the message behind the message.  Every piece of art, every song, every movie and television show is written from a point of view – not usually one which is explicitly glorifying Christ.  Our job is to appropriately deconstruct our culture, and expose both those things which glorify Christ and those things which attack him.  We can no longer afford to be passive consumers, like pigs in a line, consuming whatever is slopped at us.  We must be discerning.

Savvy Cultural Consumers

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10, “23 “All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. 24 Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.”.  What is Paul saying here?  Is he saying that Christians can do anything they want – no problem?  No.  Paul has no problem saying that idolatry is sin, that sleeping with one’s stepmother is a sin, that XYZ are sins.  Paul is specifically addressing the popular culture of his day – and the issue of eating meat which is sacrificed to idols.  In his discussion on this topic in 1 Corinthians, Paul makes the argument that this issue was, in certain situations, a neutral act.  At certain times, such as in the home of a pagan friend, a Christian is commended in eating what is placed before him – for he is showing grace and freedom to his friend.  At other times, when with a Jew or a weaker Christian brother, a Christian is advised to not partake – as doing so would cause the name of Christ to be profaned by others.  Paul isn’t recommended moral dualism – but rather, a critical and informed approach to our culture.

We are called to evaluate our culture both situationally and theologically.  We are called not to just feast upon what we are given and allow it to change our attitudes to God, sex and life.

Rocky Horror Illustration.

We can not afford to be spiritually lazy in our consumption of culture.  Nor can we afford to withdraw from it.  We must, however, bring Christ to bear on everything we do.  The Lordship of Christ is no trivial matter that we can try and forget, especially during our university years.

-          Christ’s Lordship extends to your studies, as you evaluate the culture and seek to become a contributor to it.

-          Christ’s Lordship extends to your music, as you enjoy the gifts of folks both Christian and non-Christian, and as you critique in the light of Christ and the Gospel.

-          Christ’s Lordship extends to what you view on your computer, are you imbibing a culture of death from pornography, a culture of superficial relationships from facebook or myspace, a culture of waste by continually ignoring the real world for WOW, or a culture of life from appropriate use of that cultural tool?

-          Christ’s Lordship extends to your relationships, which are the very basis of human culture.  And it is in your houses that you are called to build healthy Christ-centered, Christ-honoring culture.  And it is from there that you will infect the culture of UW.

Closing remarks & q/a.

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