Wow! I don’t even really know where to begin with this entry. I’m currently sitting in my hotel room in Louisville, Kentucky; we have a 3-hour break before the next teaching session at the New Attitude 2007 conference. We have heard three amazing talks already, and I’m definitely getting overwhelmed with all the stuff I’m learning. My prayer is that God will help me take the time to process all this stuff and really apply it to my life. I probably be doing some of that processing here on this blog, so you’ll get some insight into what was taught and how it’s changing my life.
What I want to talk about right now is the last talk which was given by Al Mohler. The over-arching theme for the conference is “Discernment”, and Mohler’s talk was specifically dealing with discerning culture. He defined culture for us as a system of symbols, language, presuppositions (and other things I didn’t have time to write down) created from human experience. He also emphasized the fact that we are constantly embedded in and receiving messages from culture.
Mohler then went on to explain that there are 5
wrong ways to try and understand culture. One of those 5 (and I’ll probably talk about the others at a later time) specifically applied to this trip I’m about to take to England. Mohler said that we often try to “take a sip” of cultures other than our own. This consists of immersing ourselves into that other culture for only a short period of time (say… oh… seven months). We have convinced ourselves that this “sip” provides us with enough information about the other culture to be able to interact with it. Mohler would say this is only beginning to scratch the surface.
Then we took a moment to look at one of Jesus’ interactions with culture. In Matthew 22:23-46, the Saducees ask Jesus a question about marriage and the day of resurrection (the thing about the woman marrying 7 brothers in turn as each one dies without having children); then the Pharisees ask about the greatest commandment. Jesus helps us to center our discernment of culture by telling us that it’s first about God and then about loving others. The loving others things informs us that every culture is our concern, because the word “neighbor” in that passage is defined as every human being on earth. This idea ties the great commandment and the great commission together (because truly loving your neighbor means being concerned with his or her eternal destination). In order to demonstrate love to people in other cultures, we have to immerse ourselves in their culture at least enough to be learn the language so we can communicate that love. We have to be in the culture to learn how to talk, dress, eat, etc., in a way that will not detract from the gospel message we are bringing.
HOWEVER… even while we are in the culture, we have to be counter-cultural. If our primary concern is love of God, we will be vastly different from every culture because every culture has fallen into proud and arrogant love of man. Discernment in this situation means realizing we’re fish swimming in a giant, toxic sea… but we’re supposed to swim as Christians, and have to take time to “detox” through church services, Bible studies, conferences, etc.
So I guess what I got out of this talk is that I need to spend the majority of my time in England seeking to be in the culture, learning how to communicate God’s love in a way that will be understood and appreciated. I’m not sure how much of that I will be able to do in seven months, but I pray that God will make my time there fruitful as I seek to be a messenger of His love and gospel to the people of Salford.
