Alan Dunn
Let’s consider the components of culture. Culture consists of a shared communal pattern of meaning and values and practices, which can be expressed in symbols and ceremonies which communicate a shared history, a common knowledge, an approach to life. Culture is communal, it’s a society, it’s communal, and it’s a pattern of shared meaning and values and practices that can be symbolically represented and, often, celebrated through ceremonies and rituals, holidays, things like that. It speaks of a common history, it speaks of a common way of knowing, of viewing the world, and it speaks of a shared approach to living.
You’ve heard of the concept of a world-life view, the German word again: weltanschauung. It asks and answers four basic questions. Christians, Muslims, Secularists, Pagans, everybody has a worldview that endeavors to answer four basic questions, and the first is: where did we come from? How do we get here? What is the origin of who we are? What is our common ancestry? What is our common history? And how does that history shape our identity today? Now, this is not only a question that goes back to the issues of Creation and Evolution, but it culturally goes back to a point of saying “What are our cultural roots?” If you’re going to understand American culture, you need to understand the American revolution. Pastor Vater referenced it earlier when he said, “No wonder the British—I didn’t know they came here and tried to fight Americans with pillows. No wonder they lost that war, if they were just beating each other with pillows!” But, you see, our culture is rooted in the Boston Tea Party mentality, in a rebellious mentality, and it answers some questions about the American mindset. It’s far different than the Chinese mindset, which has always been a very deferential context, a very deferential mindset.
You ask the question then, secondly: Why are we here? What’s our purpose? What do we agree is worth doing? Why do we do what we do? What’s our value? Third question is: what’s wrong with us? You don’t have to be here very long, and you don’t have to interact with others very long before you find out things are not what they should be. Something’s wrong with us. Why? How do we fix what’s wrong? How do we address what we know to be our problems? Then, fourthly: what is our future? Where are we going? Do we have a destiny? Do we have a purpose, a goal to which we are moving? What is our future?
So, those four questions, when they are answered in a shared way, form a worldview and gives some meaning and some sense of identity that is shared amongst a society of people. Let me suggest to you that when these questions are answered, the culture that is shaped has three basic components to it, and these components give social cohesion and hold a people, commonly, together.
The first is: a presumed ultimacy. Something that is bigger than us, something that is transcendent; something that is higher than we are; something that stands outside of and over and above just what we are in our common humanity, in our common culture; something transcendent and ultimate. Now, when you identify that, you are identifying that culture’s deity, that culture’s god, and if it is not the God of the Scripture, then it is an idol, it is a false god. You see, man, as image of God, is inherently oriented to worship something, to serve something that he sees to be bigger than him, something higher than him. A native Indian used to talk about the Great Spirit. There’s a recognition of something transcendent, something beyond us, something that exists beyond the limits of life and death as we know it. Now, some cultures have that ultimacy named, and that ultimacy named is their god. And along with that god comes an entirely religious system with its doctrines and with its institutionalized rituals and forms of worship. Islam, for example, is a subtle theocracy, it is a false theocracy. It identifies its god, and it has an entire system of religious, ritual forms of worship that permeate the entire culture. In the West, the god of the West is a little bit more nebulous, not as distinctly named. In the West there’s a pantheon of gods that Westerners serve. Jesus points to one of the more popular gods of the West when He says, “You cannot worship God and mammon.” Service of wealth, devotion to wealth. I believe, increasingly so, that if you want to show someone the god of the West you just give them a mirror and let them look at the mirror, because, what they see in the mirror is the god that they ultimately serve: themselves. Self-idolatry, and self-service and self-satisfaction and self-esteem and self-gratification—all of these things are all part and parcel of the Western concept of what is ultimate, what is transcendent, what is the thing that is worth living for, and what would we live for. Remember that the name of the True God is Yahweh, I Am that I Am, I Am the God who exists, I Am the God who is Living, the God who is present with My people, I Am the God who is the explanation of everything that is. When you find out what a culture defines as the nature of what is—what is life? What is the nature of our being? When you’re talking about verbs like “is,” “being,” those sort of terms that the philosophers call “anthology,” “study of being,” you’re trafficking in theology, you’re trafficking in understanding the ultimacy that a culture is committed to, and that ultimacy functions as the deity and the god of that culture.
Secondly: there is the code of morality. With any god comes a good. With any god there is a set of rules that come along with worshiping and serving this god. There is a prescribed, right way of living, and a wrong way of living. Depending upon the nature of that transcendent point of reference, that ultimacy to which all things are related. So, a culture is going to convey some standards, it’s going to let you know what is acceptable and what is unacceptable; what is approved and what is disapproved. Because man is Creation, created in the image of God, he not only is oriented to worship something, he’s also given a conscience whereby he judges; and he approves or disapproves; and accepts or rejects; and likes or dislikes, anything and everything. I’m not on Facebook, but I understand that the whole thing operates on the basis of likes or dislikes. You can’t go on the webpage without exercising your judgement faculty, without making a moral assessment of something. And culture informs our judgment faculties and tells us what will be commonly accepted and what is commonly rejected. There is a code of conduct and ethic that is accompanying whatever transcendent deity there is.
Now, again, in some cultures, especially those that mix religion with state and civil authority such as in Islam—and, I would submit to you, Communism, as well, is a form of that sort of theocratic mix in that system—the idea of what is to be believed and what rights are to be performed and what duties and structural behavior is to be given is very rigid and very well known and highly cultivated and prescribed and practiced. Again, in the West, in our secular culture, because the deity is so individualized, because (of) the value system, because there is a plural, a plurality, pluralism of religion, there is relativism when it comes to ethics. And so, ethics, in the West, is whatever is good for you, whatever works for you, whatever you think is right. It’s at the end of 2 Kings, “Every man was doing that which was right in his own eyes.” Whatever works for you, and see, that’s a value that people will tolerate. It’s a commonly accepted value that you need to tolerate, whatever my opinion on the matter is, except, if I have an opinion that begins to approximate an absolute. If I begin to talk in terms of ultimate right or wrong, then I am violating an ethical standard of our culture.
So, if your culture worships wealth, as Western culture does, and you’re at the office, and you’ve been working now non stop, everybody at the office knows that your family is falling apart, they know that you’re having an affair on the side and you’re probably stealing, but you’re bringing in profits for the business, aren’t you? You’re doing what you need to do to advance the company, and, basically, in our culture, you’ll be accepted, because, after all, you’re doing what you need to do in order to get your money. You’ve lost the respect of your children, but that’s ok, because you’re wealthy. You see, our values will conform to the god that we’re worshiping.
The third aspect that brings cultural cohesion is Eschatology. Eschatology. Paul Johnson’s book on a modern world—it’s a history book of Western culture over the 20th century—it’s astonishing how, virtually, every political and social system of the 20th century was driven by Eschatology. It was driven by putting in front of the people some Utopian hope, and that’s what justified Hitler, justified Stalin, justified Mao TseTung, justified Pol Pot—they were able to engage in fullfledged slaughter of people, justifying it because the ends justified the means. “This is where we’re taking you. Now, it may be a bit messy to get to where we need to be, but (it’s) because we have this hope, this Eschatology, this Communist/Marxist Utopia, (it’s) because we’re going to finally arrive at a place where social justice and equity is everywhere. We may have to do some nasty things along the way, but here’s where we’re going. So, trust me, let’s go.” So many movements of the 20th century were moved by Eschatology. That is, the culture has some hope, some aspiration, some assurance by a way of a promise, by some authority, that: “If you live in the service of the god of our culture and you obey the morality and standards of our culture, then you’ll obtain what’s being promised. You’ll obtain your Eschatological hope.”
Man is driven by Eschatology. You cannot live without being oriented toward tomorrow, without being oriented toward what’s ahead. You’re driven toward the future, we were made that way as image of God. For Adam, his Eschatology was God, Sabbath, rest. When God completed His work He entered into His Sabbath rest. Adam, as image of God, was designed to be like God and to be with God and would’ve known that, upon completion of His dominion mandate, he, likewise, would enter into God’s Sabbath rest. So, Sabbath always has had in it this element of promise, this future orientation to it, that it speaks of the rest and the hope. So that when the people of God are coming through the wilderness, they’re coming to the Promised Land, which is the place of God’s Sabbath blessings, where God will dwell with His people in His temple, in His land, and give to them the benefit of rest. We have the same thing in our Western culture, don’t we? What’s everybody working for?
What’s man’s Eschatological hope in the United States? A good retirement. “I want to get my work done behind me. I want to retire as early as I can, and I want to go live in Florida.” You see, retirement has replaced the Sabbath in our culture, but it is an aspiration that is commonly held. You’ve seen the commercials: the old, grayhaired guys out there in the beach playing frisbee and going sailing and skiing, and I’m waking up in the morning thinking, “My back is killing me. How am I going to want to go skiing when I’m 75?” Last time I went water skiing was when I was 56. I got a saying for my boys, “One sticks on 56.” Now, you try to beat that! I was up on a slalom ski when I was 56, I think I pulled a rib muscle, I paid for it for about a week. I don’t think I’m going to be doing much slalom skiing when I’m in my retirement. It’s a dream, it’s a fantasy that is often held before people, but it moves them, you see, and it gives them some sense of common value.
So, when you’re looking at culture, when you’re asking, “Why is it so enticing?” Because it presents competition to your theology, it presents a rival God, it presents competition to your ethics, it presents a differents standard of behavior, and it presents a competition to your Eschatology. It offers, to your people, a different hope, a different aspiration, and, more often than not, it all has to do with the things of this age. It all has to do with this passing world. You see, that’s the threat: it’s that it disconnects the people of God from their union with Christ in His resurrection glory, and their inheritance of the new heavens and the new earth.
© 2014 IBRNJ
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