CS 2 - Culture Shapes Us
I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. I was about an hour outside of Atlanta, know for its role in the Civil Right’s Movement, looking and reading a plaque honoring a confederate soldier. Post Civil War confederate monuments were erected all over the south to intimidate and subjugate black people and there I was in 2023 reading a plaque glorifying the heroism of a Confederate soldier.
What kind of culture did this and thinks that this is ok? And here we are in the present dealing with the ramifications of what a blind, ignorant and sinful culture did a hundred years ago. I couldn’t help but think, how can the church not see this? They couldn’t see it because culture is blinding. It’s the same culture of white supremacy that though it was a good idea to carve out a monument honoring three confederate Generals at Stone Mountain; Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson.
Peter was shaped by culture, which led him to sin in Antioch when he got up from the table as he was eating with the Gentile Believers. Peter was shaped by his Jewish culture, and it led him to sin.
We’ve all been shaped by culture, in both redemptive and sinful ways. Culture is what it is. It’s neither good nor bad. No culture is chosen by God over another and no culture is to be worshiped, particularly by those who follow a different kind of a King and Kingdom.
Much has been written on culture, what I want to focus on is the fact that culture shapes us and leads us to act sinfully. What kind of a culture led Peter to do such a non-loving act? What kind of a culture has shaped all of us in the west? What kind of a culture thought it would be okay to erect Confederate statues in the town square?
Dr. Soong Chan Rah defines culture as this; “it is a human attempt to understand the world around us. It is the programming that shapes who we are and who we are becoming. It is a social system that is shaped by the individual and that also has the capacity to shape the individual. But it is also the presence of God, the image of God, the mission of God found in the human spirit, soul, and social system. “To put it simply: ‘culture is the software of the mind.’” (Rah, Many Colors)
Culture is blinding. Culture is like fish in water, it’s what we swim in and it’s all around us and the majority of the time we’re blind to it. Culture is both redemptive and sinful. A culture of witness has done extremely sinful things. It was the culture of the Confederacy that erected Confederate monuments all around the south during the reconstruction period post civil war.
The reality is that no culture adequately reflects the heart of God because it is created by sinful human beings. So, culture shapes us in ways that are sinful, and whether we know it or not, we act sinfully because we have been shaped by a sinful culture.
Here in the West, a culture of whiteness blinds us to the truth. Whiteness is extremely seductive as it’s the normal operating system in our country and we’re not aware of it. White culture has many hidden values that are not rooted in the scriptures.
Here in the West, culture has been shaped by racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, etc. And just like Paul calling himself the “chief of sinners”, I have sinned and done all of these “isms”. There are times I have acted racially towards others. I have been sexist towards my wife. I have believed in my own cultural superiority. And when I go home to upstate PA, classism kicks in as I look down on those in a different income bracket than me.
But the good news is that Christ births us out of our culture into the culture of the kingdom. We have been justified by faith, sanctified by the Spirit, and also brought out of our culture to embrace the beautiful vision of Revelation 7, in which every people group is around the throne worshiping Jesus. We have to ask ourselves, if it’s God's intent that the life of Christ is our very peace, then why are we still divided along color, class, and culture? Is it because we are still clamoring after the world's power of cultural superiority and not the power of Christ? For he himself is our peace, not our culture.