A Place for Faith: Culture

See Culture as God’s Gift of Grace:

"All things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." - Colossians 1:16-17

Christ is Supreme. He reigns over all.

All things were created by him and for him. We can receive the natural world as God’s gift to us, and we should. We should give thanks to the One true God when we see a beautiful sunset or a startling eclipse of the moon or sun. We should give thanks for the birds and flowers, blue sky and green pastures, and the amazing creatures that flourish in our world and make it possible for us to thrive.

God created humans. He created marriage. The Bible says that government itself is a gift from God. God created humans with the ability to communicate. Language is a gift.

“In him all things hold together.” Human communities hold together. They struggle to do so, of course, just like marriages and families struggle. But the “holding together” part is God’s gift of integrity, his gift of one another.

• The richness of human community—intelligence, language, talents, teamwork—are gifts of grace. These are beautiful. There is no reason to think of the good things in a culture as the results of sin.

• Use human personality as a metaphor of culture. Just as every human personality has good things in it—emotion, perception, curiosity, creativity—so every human culture has good things in it.

See All Cultures as Broken By Sin:

Just as human personality is universally perverted by sin, so all human cultures are perverted, twisted, by sin.

• You must start with your own culture if you are going to go down this path. You should honestly identify things in your own culture that are sinful and repent of these yourself.

• You need to be careful that you do not confess the sins of another culture while you are pretending to confess the sins of your own. That would be like confessing the sins of your spouse instead of repenting of your own. Just as it is often difficult to identify and acknowledge our own personal sin—even if it is a log in our eye—so it is often difficult to confess the sins of our own culture even though they are logs.

• Think now about your own culture—your family and tribe. What about your own culture is truly broken? Do you participate in this brokenness? Are you complicit in it?

Cultural barriers exist in all communities: "Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all." - Colossians 3:11

• They are a universal phenomenon in all human communities. Every community divides itself up into patchwork and layers.

• Since Christ eliminates these barriers in his church and in heaven, we can assume that they are part of our fallen nature, not part of our heavenly nature.

These barriers may be broken down into different categories.

• Ethnic barriers: Gentile or Jew. Here we have a default in our sinfulness that manifests itself in every enclave of humans in every generation. People are suspicious of others. They fear them because they are different. We naturally suppose that our own ethnicity and nationality is superior to all others. This would be true whether we are Japanese or German, Swiss or Nigerian, Peruvian or Egyptian.

• Religious barriers: circumcised or uncircumcised. Our ceremonies and rituals and systems of belief and worship divide us around the world and within our communities. Buddha is superior to Shinto, Confucius to Moses, Mohammad to Jesus. We teach and believe that our system of faith is superior to all others.

• Language barriers: barbarian. Barbarian was any person who could not speak Greek.

• Scythian—Geographical barriers that are also ethnic, religious, and linguistic. Scythians were people from what is now Russia—ancient Russians. If people are from another place, we are suspicious of them. Scythians were barbarians who were especially despised.

• Economic barriers—slave or free. This was a great division in the Roman Empire and illustrates for us the divisions of economic standing that continue to be present around the world. Every culture ranks people according to their earnings and net worth. You fall in the lower, middle, or upper classes. These classes have reality in society. It is hard for us to love people and make friends across these economic barriers. They may be the most difficult barriers to cross in the world.

I want you to take a leap. You may see the world now as a patchwork of nations, color-coded to more easily identify them. Our world map in the lobby follows this a little bit. But it also communicates how Jesus and his disciples see the world and the view I hope you will adopt:

Adopt the Harvest View of the World:

 "All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing." -  Colossians 1:6

The world is a Harvest Field: This is very important.

• You will never see the world like Jesus saw the world until you adopt this Harvest View of the world. Jesus told his disciples: "I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest." - John 4:35

• Paul saw the world this way.

• God wants you to see the world this way.

The gospel is a compelling message and truly Good News all over the world.

• The world is a big place with a great diversity of human communities, beliefs, and practices.

• Yet the story of Jesus and his love for us, his death upon the cross for our sins, and his resurrection from the dead is received by humans everywhere and in every generation is compelling truth that changes their lives.

You are part of the world harvest: "Just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth." - Colossians 3:6

• See yourself as part of the harvest. You have been chosen by God and captured by his Spirit.

• What happened to you needs to happen to many others in all cultures around the world.

The harvest is a matter of hearing and understanding.

• How can they hear without a preacher?: "How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?" - Romans 10:14

• See that the world is full of ears and eyes.

• The ears are there for hearing the Good News.
• The eyes are there for understanding—“know thoroughly, perceive, recognize”—the gospel.

Get Involved in the harvest: Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders: "Make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone." - Colossians 4:5-6