Considering Culture (8)

Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised

The second stage in the biblical story that we omitted on the first run through is the bit that is happening now — our place in the story. Surprisingly, we are invited to join God’s Mission. We regularly emphasise this at a personal level — we take part in evangelism; we work to extend God’s new creation to other individuals. Or we look towards a personal spiritual formation — letting God’s work filter into our lives. But it important to recognise that there is a cultural component too — God’s re-creation is intended to impact all of creation and all aspects of life. So, the outworking of our following Jesus should impact all aspects of life, including our cultural life.

It’s worth having a brief aside at this point: It is easy to restrict our approach to a halfway point here, where we let our faith impact culture but only in a personal-piety sort of way. So, for instance, we focus a few key markers — perhaps the presence of sex and violence — in cultural products (possibly missing the larger issues that are going on). While this is not an irrelevant component, I don’t think it is getting away from the dualism we talked about earlier. It is really restricting God’s interest in culture to a simple morality issue. But I’m trying to get at something more here. A more holistic view of the redemption of culture that isn’t just about the moral values that are depicted on the surface.

But if we want to let God’s mission impact our cultural life then what do we do? So far, our approach has been to work from the perspective of the biblical narrative, so what are the consequences of the story and our place in it?

Tags: , ,

Read more | Comments (0) | February 1st, 2008

Newer Entries »