The following is a collection of three posts that I wrote over a period of four weeks.  These posts serve as a foundation in understanding the relatioship of Christianity with the world, particularly the role of Christianity with cultural activities. 

What is Culture?

If you were to scan the entirety of the Bible front-to-back you would not find a word or definition of culture.  With this being the case we need to begin with the English word “culture” and see if this concept matches anything the Bible teaches so that we can see what exactly the Bible says about culture. 

The English word culture is originally derived from the Latin word “colere.”  Colere is an agricultural word that means to “tend, guard, cultivate, and till.”  From this point culture evolved into different figurative meanings.  For instance, it is used in a figurative sense to refer to “cultivation through education,” the “collective customs and achievements of a people,” to the medical usage as “The act or process of growing living material.” 

Irrespective of its usage throughout time, the term culture carries within it a sense of growing and making – both tangible and intangible things.  From growing corn to building buildings, to growing living material in a Petri dish to developing complex mathematical equations, culture encompasses all of these facets.

Culture After the Fall

After understanding culture from a Biblical perspective, it is important to understand the implications of the Fall upon the originally good cultural activities commanded by God of mankind.  In his book – Creation Regained – Albert Wolters shares why it is vitally important for us to understand the relationship between sin and creation and culture:

The central point to make is that, biblically speaking, sin neither abolishes nor becomes identified with creation.  Creation and sin remain distinct, however closely they may be intertwined in our experience.  Prostitution does not eliminate the goodness of human sexuality; political tyranny cannot wipe out the divinely ordained character of the state…In short, evil does not have the power of bringing to naught God’s steadfast faithfulness to the works of his hands (pg. 57).

It is with this in mind that we now consider the Fall of mankind into sin, the scope of its effects upon humanity, creation, and culture, and how we – as Christians – are to distinguish between the “good” and “bad” of culture. 

The Reconciliation of Culture: Living as a Cultural Creator and Reconciler

With this post we observe that God not only reconciled His chosen back to Himself, but the redemptive work of Jesus Christ restores all of creation, including cultural activities.

From Colossians 1.20 we clearly see that Christ’ redemptive work on the cross is not only applicable to mankind, but to all of creation.  “The ‘all things’ of verse 20 occurs five other times in the context,” begins Douglas Moo, “and in each case the referent is the created universe.”

He goes on to say, “And, of course, in this context, Paul goes on to specify that the scope of ‘all things’ includes things on earth or things in heaven.  The neuter form (Greek ta…ta) and the parallelism with verse 16 make clear that all created things are included” (The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon, pgs. 134-135). 

The scope of redemption is as great as the scope of the Fall and the effects of sin: it embraces humanity, creation, and cultural activities (Albert Wolters, Creation Regained, pg. 72). 

This means that our involvement within cultural activities is not to be shunned, minimized as unimportant, or lived apart from Christ’ rule over them (Unless these activities are in direct violation to God’s Law).  Your role within cultural activities is as vital as a Pastors role in the local church. 

This is why Wolters went on to say that the distortion created by sin in creation and culture needs to be opposed everywhere:

In the kitchen and the bedroom, in city councils and corporate boardrooms, on the stage and on the air, in the classroom and in the workshop (ibid., 73).

As Christians we play a pivotal role – right here and right now – in directing every cultural activity in submission and obedience to God.     

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