How Not to Change the World
What if we stopped trying to mold the world into our preferred view of things? The first of a series on culture and a Christian stance within it.
Take
Sometimes an idea for one of these dispatches from The Embassy comes while recording the companion podcast On Culture. Something related comes up in those unscripted conversations and the best way to follow up is through another dispatch. Last week - actually it is almost three weeks ago now, while recording with Chad Myers the podcast for the dispatch titled Gnats and Camels, I mentioned I was thinking of a series on a Christian stance in and toward culture - something I have taught on a number of times previously as a pastor and more recently through Embassy Equipping, my church and leadership consulting company. Chad endorsed the idea, so if this turns out to have been a bad idea, let’s all blame Chad.
But before we get to that, I want to posit at the outset that very many if not most American Christians and much of the church writ large have been enculturated to the unspoken assumptions and understandings that our present culture has of what culture is and what it is for - all while many battle against discrete elements within this culture. That is a mouthful, and it may not make sense completely - but it is my hope that over the next number of weeks (I’m not sure how many) some in our community of faith will begin to understand and grapple with this reality.
I want to start with this concept: expressions of culture that run counter to my own, or even that oppose my own, must be engaged in battle and defeated. This unreflecting acceptance of the proposition that there is a culture war and that we must win it to advance the mission of the church is, I submit, not in the biblical narrative of the church and runs counter to its teachings. It is increasingly, however, an assumption the wider culture makes - and we have, perhaps without being aware of it (that is how culture works), accepted it reluctantly or embraced it enthusiastically - we have become enculturated to it. We have conformed to the pattern of this world instead of being transformed by the renewing of our minds, as Paul writes. So, let’s start here.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Romans 12:2
View
Starting with the acknowledgement that there is a culture war, and that, to some extent at least, we find ourselves in it - what do we do? For some, it seems that the point of the culture war is to keep fighting the culture war. Fighting this (good?) fight has become an identity and a mark of virtue. If that is you, I will say that it isn’t your identity and it isn’t a virtue. But even assuming that you want resolution to the culture war … resolutions to wars usually come from someone winning and someone losing. What would it mean to “win” the culture war?
I can't stand this indecision
Married with a lack of vision …
Everybody wants to rule the world
All for freedom and for pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever
Everybody wants to rule the world
Everybody Wants to Rule the World - Tears for Fears - Songs from the Big Chair - 1985
Are we trying to change the world - to make the world better? What do we mean by that - some expression of culture that we think is better, even best? Are we seeking to move toward this goal by reducing, defeating, and eradicating the elements of culture that we don’t think are best - those elements we hate or believe to be evil? We may argue that Christianity had something of this effect, especially from the third or fourth centuries into the modern era. Even so, to the extent that this is true, it isn’t the biblical goal - it may be a transformative effect. Having this as a large-scale cultural goal isn’t how you change the world. Changing the world isn’t a good goal. If this sounds off to you, especially if you have been in the church for very long, I understand. We all want to change the world … except you won’t find that teaching in the bible. You will find the promise, but not the command. I want to show you a simple example from the biblical narrative - but first, a parable of culture change from a family which may not be unlike your own.
I am indebted to Andy Crouch and his 2008 book Culture Making for clarifying my thoughts on culture and our calling within it. In that book, Crouch uses the culture of his own family, and the possible changing of it, to illustrate a foundational principle of culture change. He speaks of his love for chili and how he and his wife, in their busy lives with careers and children at home, would prepare chili on fall or winter evenings and how they would prepare the table and lead the family in their distinctive prayer of thanks for their meal. His description is a window into the culture of their family. Except, and this is (was? - they are older now) another aspect of that family culture - the kids didn’t like chili. They don’t like the green peppers (although they eat them in other dishes), they don’t like the chunky tomatoes (although they love spaghetti sauce with pureed tomatoes) … most who have raised children can relate. So what do his children do? How do they change the culture of their own family? They can complain and protest. But they already do that, and this culture is not moved by such complaints and protests. They can increase their critique of the chili, question the motives of the chili makers … etc. But that does not change the culture. Obviously, and this is the hope of most parents, they will just give up and eat the chili - it isn’t going to kill them, after all. But that still leaves the family culture (absent the complaining and critique) unchanged. Crouch writes,
There is one thing our children could do, though, that could have a decisive effect on our family’s culture of the table. If I come home on a Tuesday night a few years from now (when they are old enough that I can trust them with the knives) and find dinner already simmering on the stove, even if it’s not chili, I will likely be delighted. Especially if the food being prepared is a substantial improvement on our usual fare, just as tasty and even more creative than I would have prepared myself.
Consider this a parable of cultural change, illustrating this fundamental rule: The only way to change culture is to create more of it.
Andy Crouch - Culture Change - IVP - 2008
And so the question for the church is, “what are we making for dinner?” We can complain about the chili on offer from our culture more and more loudly, angrily, sarcastically … but those making the chili are unmoved, if not further motivated. Those consuming the chili don’t care. The chili cannot be “defeated”. It can be replaced. What are we seeking to replace it with? We can complain about the chili and throw rocks at the chili-makers, we can lobby against it, we can seek to pass laws or lead boycotts against the chili … we live in America, so we have all those freedoms. But the call of the church in a culture of chili is to make spaghetti. Nobody outside the church cares that we don’t like chili (and many of us seem to like it just fine). They are offended and emboldened by efforts to restrict their chili, to limit it, to shame it, to sanction it. None of that makes anyone turn away from chili. But they might like some spaghetti. Who will make it for them?
To repeat, nowhere in the bible are we instructed to win the culture war - you will search in vain for a description of our mission to change “the culture.” We are told to die, to be reborn, to be transformed - all within a community of those who have been reborn and are in the individual and communal process of transformation. We are called to be peacemakers, full of mercy, justice, humility, truth, grace, and sacrificial love for each other and for all the chili-makers and chili-eaters around us. This is the spaghetti we are called to make and to offer to the world. It is this culture, by being more attractive, more meaningful, more transcendent, more beautiful - that can be chosen by those outside of it - because they like what they see and experience and they want more of it. Chili cannot be outlawed, spaghetti cannot be forced on people (and ceases to be spaghetti in the effort) - but chili can become less attractive when spaghetti is on offer.
An example from the bible of the culture of an entire city changing is found in Acts 19:23-41. In the interest of time and space, I’ll summarize. Ephesus was the capital city of Asia within the Roman Empire and the home of the temple of the goddess Artemis (or Diana, to use the Roman name). The culture (and much of the economy) of the city revolved around the temple and the worship of the goddess - which included magical scrolls of sorcery, temple prostitution and, more to the point of our story, silver statues of Artemis that were found in every home. This worship, like so much worship in the ancient world, was centered on fear - appeasing the goddess to avoid poverty, disease, and death of loved ones. That is a very short description of the chili. As the Christian church grew from very small beginnings in Ephesus, only a decade or two after Jesus’ death, more and more people stopped eating the chili and began to learn how to make spaghetti. They faced and turned away from their fear of the displeasure of the goddess. They brought their (very valuable) scrolls in and burned them, they stopped buying the statues of Artemis - they stopped relying on the favor of the goddess and trusted God for their new lives, identity, community, and mission. As they were transformed in their new faith, they changed how they lived, and they added to their community - until fewer statues were sold, fewer visits to the temple were made. And, in the process, the culture of the city changed. The silversmith were in an uproar, their livelihoods were impacted - an actual riot followed. But notice, there was no boycott, no legislative effort, no cultural campaign that changed Ephesus. No culture war was waged, much less won. Ephesus changed when people there became transformed and lived together in a transformed community of increasing numbers. More and more, the people of Ephesus preferred the spaghetti. And some version of that process made itself manifest over the rest of the Roman Empire over the next two or three centuries - and the world changed.
But the world changed not because the church sought to change it. They died and were reborn (spiritually), and were transformed and lived in a transformed community of peacemakers, full of mercy, justice, humility, truth, grace, and sacrificial love for each other and for all the chili-makers and chili-eaters around them. And, during much of that time, they impacted the world by dying well - by singing hymns as the fires started at their feet and by women hurrying to straighten their hair as the lions charged because one’s hair being in disarray was a sign of mourning. They sought to die with joy. I think I am not yet on that level of spaghetti making - though all of us will have the opportunity, at some level, of dying with joy, I suppose. They didn’t seek to change the world, but God changed their world through the power and grace of the gospel and called them to live in it, empowered by His Spirit. They were people who were changed and who were used by God to catalyze change in others. All the other world changing was a side-effect.
Links
Culture Making - Andy Crouch - IVP - 2008
