Is culture good or bad?

What should the Christian do when thinking about culture?

There have been some thoughts that have had good intentions, but not really Christ-honoring.  Here’s what I mean.

First, (in the more liberal strains of theologians) there is the thought of Christ of Culture.  What this means is that Christ is to conform to culture.  Whatever the culture says is the way to go, this is the way the Church or Christ should go as well.  They view culture to be very valuable.

Another group (the fundamentalist groups of the Church) believes the idea of Christ against Culture.  This view holds that culture, and everything in it, is evil.  Therefore the Church (or Christ) must completely stay away from everything about culture.

However, the more balanced view is Christ transforming Culture.  This view, like Christ against Culture, does believe that there is evil in the world, but also believes that there are parts of the culture that can be redeemed.  It also does hold, like Christ of Culture, that there are good things about culture because every man has been made in the image of God and because of the common grace of God, He has given to all men the ability to be able to speak truth, though it may only be partially true.

So how much, as Christians, should we be a part of culture?

In Acts 17, Paul is in Athens.  The people in Athens were lovers of philosophy.  Paul knew this.  He could also see that they were serious about “religion”.  However, they did not know Christ as Savior.  They had made an altar to “an unknown god”.  When Paul saw this he began telling them that this unknown god to them, was the True God, Christ, that he knew.  Then Paul did something very interesting.  He quoted, twice, their poets that were very familiar to them in their culture.  These quotes had partial truth to them and Paul used them and showed them how they actually related to God.

Here’s my point.  In order for Paul to do this, he had to be familiar with culture.  He did not submit Christ to the Culture for Culture to form Christ.  And he did not stay away from culture and flee from the “evil world”.  He was familiar with the culture, but for a reason – for the purpose of evangelism and the gospel.

This is what we can learn here.  We are products of our culture.  I believe, it is inevitable.  The key here is to believe that we are part of culture to transform it.  Being a part of the culture, for Christians, should be for the purpose of evangelism.  There is a danger here!  Weak Christians must be careful.  They can easily find themselves deeply part of the culture and find themselves in sin.  So we must be careful and wise and pray for Christ to be CLOSE to us as we live.  But, may we know whom we want to win for Christ and always remember that it is for evangelism.