Culture Shock - Part 1

What is your posture toward culture?

Many in the church have the posture of condemnation that we talked about on Sunday. Culture is bad - culture is to be withdrawn from, criticized, and causes us to be fearful and uneasy. There is a legitimate desire by some with this posture to be not drawn into, not conformed to the culture of the day. But this desire overpowers and culture becomes a bad thing, and those who are conversant with the culture are often judged.

Also, many in the church have the posture of consumption - the opposite of condemnation. All of culture is experienced indiscriminately. Every movie, every song, every book is uncritically experienced - usually without a lot of reflection on the worldviews or messages contained. It is like eating fast food, we go to a movie and say afterward "I liked it" or not - and on to the next cultural experience. Culture is thought to be indiscrimately good - just a matter of taste - and we cannot intelligently interact with it while we are just consumers.

The third posture we talked about is related closely to the second - the posture of complacency. Those who don't have a strong direction aren't actively pursuing their calling, tend to be complacent about most things, culture included. It is only a movie, only a song ... not much matters - and the impact of culture (and other elements of life) are not closely examined.

All of the above are, in my opinion, misguided postures to take toward culture - next week we'll toss around a couple of more positive ones. In the meantime, we should think about what it means to be "transformed" and not "conformed". Whatever else it may mean, I believe it means that we have to think - to examine - to reflect on culture and our world. Without this, we are bound to be complacent consumers, without much to say to a culture that needs to hear a clear voice.