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Christianity Today, September, 2008 |

Creating Culture

Our best response to the world is to make something of it.

Andy Crouch | posted 9/08/2008 09:23AM

Our posture is our learned but unconscious default position, our natural stance. It is the position our body assumes when we aren't paying attention, the basic attitude we carry through life. Often it's ...

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sinapup

Posted: September 18, 2008 3:59 PM

It seems to me that we can move from the didactic to the imperative or we can move from the imperative to the didactic in our interpretation of virtually anything. This is sometimes called, "Leading from the didactic" or the reverse: "Leading from the imperative." Good interpretation requires a solid conceptual basis. Application has as its precusor understanding. This means that I have to "know" before I "do". It is my conviction that while both of these are two sides of the same thing, it is important to lead from the didactic. A good understanding and interpretation will lead to solid, life changing applications. The opposite is less likely. Keep in mind that you need both or you have neither.

Ruth Worman

Posted: September 15, 2008 1:10 PM


An extremely helpful outline of Christian responses to culture.

Rob Baggett

Posted: September 10, 2008 10:07 AM

This is one of the most well-thought-out essays on our response to culture I've seen. Too often, we are either passive, unquestioning consumers of culture or insular critics and condemners of culture who are closed off from the rest of the world. Either way, we fail to bear witness to Christ's transforming love. And I heartily agree with Mr. Crouch's comments about consumerism. In my own book, Character Connections, I quote James Fowler of Harvard. He states that the values of consumerism tell us "you should experience everything you desire, own everything that you want and relate intimately with whomever you wish." This last point is the saddest of all to me. We have devalued sexual relations to the point that we treat one another as consumer goods rather than people created in the image of God.

Dr. Ray Tallman

Posted: September 09, 2008 9:34 PM

Lets get back to the basics as we consider culture. The Bible does in fact have the answers. 1. Where did culture originate? I suggest at the Throne of the Triune God. 2. What is the earthly history of culture? I suggest confusion (chaos) rather than harmony (cosmos). Why? ... something called sin fits the facts. 3. Where is culture headed? Climax! Finding it's way back to the Throne of God! Maybe past, present and future are better pardigms for understanding than Pre-modern - Modern and Post Modern. And besides ... that addresses ideas of Kingdom Culture "on earth as it is in heaven pretty well.

Bob Westergard

Posted: September 09, 2008 6:21 PM

We Christians in America don't have much to do these days when we can sit around and pseudo-philosophically analyze our place in and response to culture. Yours truly fits in that category also since the time was taken to scan the article and then complain about it. Jesus didn't sit Nicodemus down, offer him coffee and bagels, then chat about the state of religion in Israel before gently leading him toward the OT prophecies about Himself. He cut across Nicodemus' opening greeting of "We know You are a teacher sent from God..." with: "Unless a man is born again He cannot enter the kingdom of God." He controlled the discussion, pointed out the brass serpent in the wilderness so Nicodemus would recognize and believe in the Christ when this prophecy was fulfilled, and then moved into His beautiful description of God's love in John 3:16 and following. An earnest seeker was treated in a way that would be considered rude in America. Why do we have to be so wordy and intellectual?

Norm MacDonald

Posted: September 09, 2008 9:08 AM

Perhaps Mr. Tor's response may be indicative of why the contemporary church is often impotent when it comes to influencing contemporary culture. What Mr. Crouch presents did not seem to be anti-church or even display the church as fully adopting culture's characteristics. It appears that Mr. Crouch is proposing a missional approach to church and culture, that says, "We are different, but not totally unique." Christ seemed to always approach people based on what they knew, where they were, and how their life influenced their behavior. He then offered an alternative. Not a come-out-of-the-world alternative, but a way of living at peace in the world.

Paul	Posted: September 09, 2008 1:17 AM

Interesting review, but dancing around the fact that 'culture condemning' is being used as a tool of divisiveness. These post-modernism times show the faith has become cynical leverage for hate as the 'cultural wars' are being pulled out of the partisan quiver. Even more cynical is the religious leadership that manipulates fermentation of cultural hate, not just for rallying their narrow issues but more and more for sheer greed. While you point out, "Our economy has become dangerously dependent on factories in far-off countries where workers are exploited and all but enslaved," it is not so far-off as you may think. We have US conservative Christian leaders using the lobbying leverage to set up slave labor on US territories, as Ralph Reed with Jack Abramoff collected millions using their Republican clout to legalize slave labor in the Mariannas, a US territory in the Pacific. Culture must be engaged honestly in our postmodern times as faith and basic truths remain.

Frank Schober

Posted: September 08, 2008 10:54 PM

What I may have missed in the article are two things that Christians ignore at their peril; the triumph of the philosophy of Postmodernism in the wrorld the idea that there is no truth--- that truth is simply an individual preference. Postmodernism states it view of the world very clearly and it is reflected in all that the modern, dominant culture practices; It states that Man, not God is the measure of all things. Its bad to be in a war in which one is attacked every day with one's attackers slowly but surely moving one out of the public square and stamping all that Christians say and do as "quaint but irrelevant". Let's face it, Christian churches that would be recognized by St. Paul as practicing their faith are becoming something of a rarity.

A Hermit

Posted: September 08, 2008 9:16 PM

A very good train of thought. One's religion must first be experiental- not just conceptual beliefs. Being 'new' in Christ, one should see things with different eyes. Man creates culture, and is influenced by it in return. Being one in Christ should be the focus of Christianity, surrendering to God's will in the present moment- doing that, living Christ, creates a different culture and affects those around us. Most of us (if I may say) are blinded to the materialism and wealth that dominate our lives here in the US; where we can argue about putting "In God We Trust" on our dollar bills, when we really trust primarily in those dollar bills, in worldly power and wealth to sustain us and to be the PRIMARY focus of most of our human effort.

Clarence Cossey

Posted: September 08, 2008 5:15 PM


Very good. One aspect reaches me well. Our whole culture, society, and economic system is built on consumption and credit. Crouch has more to say, but I fear it all starts and end with this.

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