Cultivation & Creation
Learning Goal: Determine the prerequisite to Culture creating.
So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male & female he created them.Genesis 1:27
The only way to change culture is to create more of it. We can never go back into time and start over. We have to work form what we have already developed.
What does it mean to create more culture? God is referenced biblically for his ability to create “bara”. The verb bara refers to God’s ability to create from nothing. This is not something humans are capable of. We cannot merely speak life into formation.
With that stated, God has given us the ability to create things from what he has already set in place. Our role in creation is to form life and people from God's good gifts on Earth.
This is the essence of what it means to be made in the image of the creator God.
The Christian Worldview requires that we view our role in the world through Christ's lens of renewal. How we live says a lot about who we are and whether we truly believe in the Lord's redemption. If secular thought is to see the negative or gray, God's redemptive lens is to see life in full color, with limitless room for opportunities to create.
Incomplete Cultural Lenses
1. Condemning Culture
Some culture should be condemned: Global Sex trade, poor pay to Farmers, Nazism & Pornography.
With that stated, no matter how much we protest it is rare that we will change someones position through argument. This is is what makes social media so pointless. Even on the horrific issues noted above, it is unlikely that reason and valid points will move people to change the established culture of pornography.
2. Critiquing Culture
Some culture should be critiqued: The fine arts exist to spark conversation about ideals & ideas. They are intentionally created to challenge culture into deeper understanding.
The best critics can change the framework in which Creators do their work - setting the standard against which future creations are measured. However, critique & analysis very rarely change culture at all. Few people go to a movie because it has been affirmed by a critic, most of us go based on great marketing.
Unfortunately, this is what many church’s have resorted to.
3. Copying Culture
Some culture should be copied: The majority of God's communication about his covenants with mankind follow the pattern of covenants established before the Bible. However, this can quickly go bad as JOY 99.1 points out on a daily basis. Lecrae remains so embarrassed by this he refers to himself as an artist who is Christian, as opposed to a Christian artist. Please don't get me started with LED light displays that have become prominent during Sunday morning worship.
When we copy culture in our small enclaves, the majority of culture will remain unchanged and unchallenged.
4. Consuming Culture
Some culture should be consumed: Starbucks coffee, Black Thorn Pizza and Joe’s BBQ (Brisket & Pork) & Smoke and Guns (Burnt Ends) are meant to be enjoyed. We would all be worse off without these things.
With that stated, it takes great discernment by Christians to determine what should be consumed (Royals Baseball), and to what levels of consumption, and what should be left alone (Sugarfire BBQ.)
A Biblical Cultural Lens: Knowing God
1. Cultivating: (or Knowing culture)
After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Luke 2:46
Christ spent the first 30 years of his life, not in ministry but in the process of cultivating and understanding culture. He studied in the temple, read books, listened to podcasts, and pursued understanding of all things.
Learning the truths of the world is essential. Determining how to analyze worldviews and process new information is essential. To know requires one to be able to critically think through the many questions of life and faith. This act of cultivation requires weeding, sorting out what belongs and what does not.
2. Creating: (or Doing/Making culture)
While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”Mark 2: 13-17
After 30 years of thinking, Jesus was ready to create a new culture. To do this He had to directly challenge the establishment. Amongst so many examples in Jesus life, he intentionally sat and ate with the religiously condemned. He created a new culture that expected his followers to care for and love those who were considered dirty and worthless by the religious people of his day.
The second phased of a Biblical Cultural lens to embodying knowledge. To embody knowledge, we much live it out by creating and doing. To act with creativity requires cultural maturity.
God is looking for his follower to create and do far more than we have been accomplishing over the past few decades in Western culture.
Lesson Information
Presentation
Creation.pdf