Instamatic Theology

What does it mean to be not just culturally aware but culturally responsible? Not just culture consumers or even just culture critics, but culture makers? Our newly regained cultural awareness means that we are not satisfied, as earlier generations might have been, with separating our faith from our “worldly” activities. We want our lives—our whole lives—to matter for the gospel. But what exactly does that mean?

Absolutely. If there has been one theme in my thinking in, well, living memory, it is: how do we integrate what we believe into our whole lives? Really. Not just by being nice people, but in our day-to-day and its products.

What we most have to learn about being creators of culture is the very thing we human beings find hardest to learn: everything about our calling, from start to finish, is a gift. What is most needed in our time are Christians who are deeply serious about cultivating and creating but who wear that seriousness lightly—who are not desperately trying to change the world but who also wake up every morning eager to create.

I like this being serious and wearing it lightly. How to get the balance?! Or, for me, how to stop being desperately serious and actually act I’m keen to see what he does with this. My current hunch is to focus on the theme that God calls into being the new creation and we work to anticipate this. Consequently, we are not under pressure to change things ourselves, but we have the freedom to act appropriately. 

How to move this from theory to practice is, of course, the challenge… 

I hope churches will read this book and take the risky path of celebrating their members who do not go into “full-time Christian service” but who serve Christ full time in their own arena of culture.

I hope that those with evident cultural power will read this book and discover God’s purpose for their power; I hope that those who feel small and neglected in the world will discover that God has something great for them to do, that they are not forgotten but are at the very center of his plan, the heroes of his surprise ending.

The first bit here picks up on something that has been running around my mind a lot lately. We believe that God works in all jobs and callings, but we have a tendency in church to focus on the ones we class as ‘spiritual’. I want to understand how we can adjust our imaginations in this. To help us truly believe what we say we believe.

The second paragraph is I think a key point. It’s OK for us to talk culture, even culture-making, but few of us are in ‘cultural power’. Unless we can connect with everyone, it feels that we are somehow missing the point. I don’t think the body of Christ is intended to imply a mass supporting a specialised active elite — whether that is a spiritual elite or a cultural one. We need a perspective of New Creation/God’s Kingdom that engages truly everyone.

Very interested to see where this heads…

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