Considering Culture (1)
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
My goal for the Christmas break was to post a series based on my recent seminar on culture. (If only to convince readers that I can do more that random speculation 
I’m a bit late starting, but let’s see how we go. It will be sketchy and probably revisionist — I can’t include everything from the talk and I will probably incorporate some extra thoughts that came up in hindsight.
Context-wise, it was aimed at a group of students from our church. There was probably more than could comfortably be covered in one session, but there is a lot of ground to cover if you assume your talking to people who haven’t thought much about this sort of thing before. (This may not have been the case, but I had to start with that assumption.)
At some point in the posting process, I will try to put together a list of source material and associated books, etc. So, if you’re looking for references, hang on for that post.
The starting point for session was really just a set of questions to emphasise that we don’t tend to think about culture from a Christian perspective. This is in contrast with the massive influence that culture has on us — it shapes our imagination, which in turn shapes goals, priorities and actions, and what we consider to be possible. The question I always come back to is ‘If my faith can’t talk about all of life [including culture] then how real is what I believe?’
Jeremy Begbie has a similar sentiment is Resounding Truth:
Music may not be necessary for biological survival—on a desert island we could subsist without it—but it does seem vital to human flourishing. Would it not be strange, to say the least, if there were no distinctively Christian comment to make on so prevalent a feature of the human race?
As well as the surely-we-must-have-something-to-say approach, we can also start from the biblical themes of ‘taking every thought captive’:
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.1 Cor 10:5
and having renewed minds:
Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.Rom 12:2
I don’t know about you, but I have always had a pretty restrictive idea of ‘taking every thought captive’; reducing it to problematic thoughts — fears, temptations, etc. But, Paul contrasts it with ‘arguments … against the knowledge of God’. Clearly he is thinking about something bigger than personal piety (though it must include that).
We also have the idea that ‘In [Jesus] everything holds together.’ (Col 1) With this in mind, thinking about culture interacts with the question: Do we really think that Jesus is Lord of all, that
Tags: culture, Culture Seminar, theology
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...