Considering Culture (2)
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
Following the last post, the question is, if we have these prompts to include culture in our thinking as Christians, why don’t we do it? There are, of course, multiple reasons. But, a classic and key one is ‘dualism’ — the tendency we have to slice ‘n’ dice life into so-called spiritual and so-called secular boxes; things that God is interested in/have eternal significance and things that are relatively unimportant.
It is possible to give historical reasons for this ‘duality’, but it seems that we always have a tendency towards some kind of split. Where we draw the line depends on the culture. Today, it seems like (thinking mainly of the evangelical culture I’m a part of) the ‘spiritual’ side includes church, family, some politics (where it touches personal holiness) and some education. Most of the rest of life falls into the ‘secular’. (I know, a caricature, but you get the gist.)
Of course, my comment in the last post about interpreting 1 Cor 15 in a personal way is also an impact of dualism — because I have the underlying tendency to discount big ideas as being important from a Christian perspective, I find it easy to read the Bible in a way that fits my preconceptions.
So, given our tendency to dualism, we can’t go anywhere without first asking if culture is an important subject for our thinking. Of course, in some ways we just go back to the Bible verses above above and work from the point that Jesus is Lord of all. Jeremy Begbie again:
Theologically, the most general and basic reason is simply the lordship of Jesus Christ. For the follower of Christ, there is no “exclusion zone,” no “secular” territory outside the scope of his saving work, no value-free or neutral area of human life.
But, perhaps we need to unpack this a bit further; to look at our starting point(s) in detail. In the process we will hopefully get clues on how to think about cultural issues from a Christian perspective.
Tags: culture, Culture Seminar, theology, worldview
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...