Passions, delights and hopes

It's been way too long since I last blogged. Here, hopefully, is a more regular return to the web.

I've just had a very stimulating discussion with some friends on how Christians should engage with culture. We talked about government, law, democracy, the arts and all kinds of things. The main study book we were using tended to equate "Christians" with "the Church". I was left slightly feeling that the author thinks that the major way we relate to culture is en masse, church-as-organisation or structure which relates to culture/government-as-organisation or structure.

At the the end of the discussion I am left wondering if it is right to make such a one-one identification between what Christians do and what churches do. Should everything a church does be actively done by every Christian within it? Should everything that every individual Christian does in service of the Lord should be something that the whole local church completely owns and has a stake in? Doesn't that make light of us being a body with different gifts, different opportunities and different contexts for service? If every Christian feels obliged to participate in the soup run, or every leader to lead the soup run, doesn't that mean that many will give less time and effort to their particular gifts or calling because they have to participate in something that isn't? Or, to flip it over, doesn't it mean that the whole body will have to participate in the particular and unique ministries of every individual believer rather than have clear focus on a few things that the body corporate achieves. I can think of instances of believers who assume that because they have a particular ministry passion the whole church must share it. For them to be faithful in their calling means persuading the whole fellowship that their focus must be everyone's. Possibly even to the extent of implying that if it isn't then others are less committed to the Lord than they are.

But if we don't approach "culture" (however we want to define that) corporately (or not exclusively corporately, anyway) but to some extent as individuals, how do we do it? Titus 3 speaks about how we used to be involved in pagan culture, but now have new passions, new delights and a new hope. I suggest that those three categories are a way - far from the only one - of approaching culture.

The Bible says there are two kingdoms - the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God. The difficulty with the "how do we approach culture" question is the tension between the two. For some the answer is complete withdrawal from the first for the sake of the second. At the other extreme is some form of cultural assimilation. Most of us are somewhere in between. Occupying the extremes makes it easy to figure out how to relate to culture. For those of us in between it can be a good deal more tricky and subjective. I think it's a little but like being a third culture kid. We don't belong to this world, but we have to live in it. We have to "seek the good of the city" and "give to Caesar what is Caesar's". Its like we were born into this world, have been adopted by the next, but have to live out our adoption in the culture of this world.

Paul tells Titus that we live in this world but with different passions, delights and hopes to this world. This gives us some obvious questions to ask. When faced, for example, with a voting decision we can say "how does my new hope relate to this?" When watching TV we ask "what does my new delight say about this?" When being offered a career option we can ask "what does my new passion for God have to say to my life ambitions?" In each case the underlying question is: what does redemption look like in this situation? What does it look like to belong to Jesus in this instance?

This is much less simple than merely saying "this is the position of my church." That looks like the easy and uncomplicated option, but it's also unthinking. You can follow the party line without a great deal of personal commitment to Jesus, without figuring out what he thinks about culture, and why. Taking culture piecemeal, decision by decision, may be much more intensive and demand much more thought, but it will mean that individually we approach matters more prayerfully. We will approach out of a Christian worldview. We will develop a Christian mind. We will start from first Christian principles and ask how they relate to any given decision or situation. Thoughtful believers praying and developing a Christian mind together sounds like a recipe for a dynamic, culture-aware, culture-engaged, culture-transforming church to me.

Darwins Rottweiller preaches again!

When I was a boy I looked to God. And then I was introduced to Charles Darwin. I realised that if such a simple theory could explain so much. I reasoned it could explain everything! I became an atheist.

In the third episode of The Genius of Darwin Richard Dawkins turns once more on the ranks of religious fundamentalists who disagree with him despite having made at least two big steps of faith in his extrapolation that evolution could explain everything and secondly to become an atheist. Dawkins is reasonable, we are unreasonable. End of story.Dawkins meets John Mackay who challenges him for having faith since evolution in unobservable in a human lifetime, or even the time since Darwin.

"The refusal to believe in anything you can't see is absurd" says Dawkins.

In America Dawkins enjoys being a rockstar and when asked if he's religious quips 'do I look religious?' before he descends to high-brow argument by reading his hate mail. His crusade against the condemnation of children to ignorance continues. He's accused of being a closed minded censor of arguments and differing views... to which he says they're blind to the beauty of the evolution of the reptile jaw! And then on to the evidence in DNA and scare tactics 'would you let this man teach your children science...' he says of Nick Cowan.

It's not that I mind Dawkins getting a hearing -  I find him quite entertaining really as he takes moral highground over everyone who differs from him repeating again and again 'Evolution is a fact.' and like a modernist Dinosaur in a supposed postmodern age...

'Somethings are just true. They're not a matter of opinion'

The leaps of Darwin and Dawkins from evolutionary thinking to anti-God determination reveal their presuppositions. He berates multicultural Britain for defending faith views and avoiding offence in the classroom by not forcing children to believe Darwinism. He says people should see evidence and evaluate it. I'd agree.  The teacher says we believe it because we're scientists and so evidentialists. But, Dawkins says - no it's not because you're a scientist it's because of the evidence. The prof is seriously blind to his presuppositions. A brief anti-Relativism rant helpful 'it's a pretentious cop-out'. before he cites his creed again: Evolution is the plain truth, you don't decide to accept it or not, it just is.

Dawkins is a preacher who sermonises his audiences with statement after statement, rather than putting together persuasives arguments. He does the same things that most of those he picks to argue with do, and shuts down debate.

In considering Darwin he reveals the original evolutionist's hatred of Christian doctrines, particularly of hell. A doctrine that one who isn't a Chritian has a vested interest in trying to demolish. It's hear that the underlying issues become clear (if they weren't already) - he can't settle for a God & Science combination because God must be eliminated and excluded not just science advanced. Moderation wont do for the professor.

Dawkins says the central doctrines of Darwinism declare of relatedness to everything and proudly boast that our ancestors were winners. This consoled Charles Darwin in suffering - though what comfort is it to know your children are being culled by evolution, dying young as failures...

The alternative is the Christian view that there is a God to whom we can relate who will accept the humble. Darwinism is the religion of the proud, Christianity of the humbled.

Make me a Christian (2)

So George Hargreaves continues to patronise non-Christians for not behaving. Atheist Martin is more drawn to the Islam of one of the participants than to the Christianity he's signed up to investigate. And then there's the praise party on a hill...

Sexuality is tackled. The lesbian is told to change before becoming a Christian, and told that change happens after becoming a Christian. No one seems to see the contradiction in the order of things here. I always thought we came to Jesus and then he changed us, but this version asks people to change themselves first. The testimony of a pentecostal pastor from Scotland is a bit more helpful. Couples sleeping together are told not to and given games to play instead. Let's flee sin by pursuing triviality rather than Jesus. Yeh, that'll work!

In the Daily Telegraph, Revd Joanne Jepson: "Christian behaviour is only possible after a spiritual transformation. We were encouraged to take part on the understanding that we were dealing with a group of people who genuinely wanted to embrace Christianity. But that was clearly not the case." She may be right but they still seemed to be leading with behaviour. I want to say Hargreaves, Jepson & co. mean well, and I accept they're not necessarily being well served by the producers... but nonetheless they still seem to be imposing morality rather than introducing people to Jesus.

Some will take offence, and some will pity us. Like Charlie Brooker in the Guardian who calls it: "The single most infuriating broadcast of the week. And it actually makes me pity the Christians because they're so badly misrepresented."

A fair representation probably wouldn't make such 'good' TV... unlike the rest of this evening on Channel 4 is Wife Swap, Big Brother, and The Perfect Vagina. Where's the OFF button....

Is Cultural Relevance a Fallacy?

Consider the following statement:

"Jesus calls Christians to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him. Our culture, however, believes this to be an outdated statement that will hinder our personal development. To be relevant to our culture we have to realise that Jesus was speaking for his time and our culture teaches that it is not relevant in our time. To be relevant in our time we must allow the values of our culture to decide whether Jesus statement applies today."

Any Christian will see the flaws in the argument. It is a short step away from saying that the Bible is written to a completely different culture and therefore none of it should be taken at face value in application today. We all realise that the argument is false.

Here is a more provocative statement:

"Surely what the Bible teaches about men and women having different respective roles is conditioned by the society and culture of its time. To be culturally relevant today we have to downplay those texts that merely affirm a 1st century cultural view of the respective roles of the genders and decide for ourselves, with our more egalitarian worldview, whether there should be any distinctions."

I don't intend to say what I think on this matter, but I use this as an example because a thoughtful Christian said it to me recently. Is cultural relevance a helpful interpretive principle? It sounds like a sophisticated argument on a first hearing, an attempt to see how the Church can adapt to new challenges and different cultures. But the argument is exactly the same as the first one.

The obvious question to ask is "how do you know?" Deciding what is relevant for today using contemporary culture alone as our guide is clearly non-sensical. It just doesn't give us that kind of information. It only tells us what people today do, or do not, like. Using contemporary culture alone many churches of the 19th century decided that God cannot do miracles, because it seemed culturally incredible. Using cultural relevance as a hermenutical principle for deciding meaning or application of biblical texts can be profoundly flawed. Here are some reasons why:

1. It makes our culture absolute and supreme, and the Bible's culture relative and secondary. If we adopt the principle then we will decide to change what the Bible says whenever culture changes

2. It makes our culture absolute and supreme and every other culture relative and secondary. It means that if another  culture disagrees with us on the roles of the genders, we may well be forced to conclude that the Bible text means one thing in one culture and another thing in another culture

3. What we will try to adjust will be all the texts that our culture finds offensive at a particular moment in time. There is a great danger, therefore, in only letting the Bible say what our culture will allow it to say. If we write off anything we disagree with as merely cultural in its time, then the Bible will never challenge our own cultural assumptions. We will capture the Bible within the gravitational field of what we already think or are prepared to hear. If Jesus had decided he could only say what was culturally acceptable then he wouldn't have been crucified. He wouldn't have been offensive enough.

In short, if we start with a principle of cultural relevance, it is all too easy to justify not obeying the parts of the Bible I find uncomfortable. I merely have to say "that was for then, but its not the same now" to remove its challenge and only read selectively.

Culture Helps with Application, not with Meaning

None of which is to say that we don't have to work very hard at applying the Bible to our day. Nor is it to say that applications may differ according to circumstance. But while culture may - and must - determine differences in application - to bring the text relevantly to the hearers for their obedience, the culture doesn't - and must never - determine either the meaning of the text or whether it is relevant to us. Everything God has put in the Bible is relevant to us, it is idolatry to claim otherwise.

Why should we think our culture is absolute and the Bible's relative? Unless there is very strong reason, our normal instinct should be that the Bible's worldview is normal and ours is relative to it. Otherwise our culture will adjudicate on whether scripture is good or bad, valuable or useless, when in fact scripture has to be authoritative over the values of our culture. If our culture disagrees with what God says, its our culture that needs to change, not God's word.