Problems with culture

Recently I’ve been reading Andy Crouch’s “culture making”, and it makes me think about how we view cultures generally. When we say culture, we understand that culture is something specific to a group of people. There’s biker culture, gamer culture, Christian culture, and so many others. We understand that someone can be in multiple cultures. We praise the upsides of cultures, and yet when a culture perpetuates a particular evil we rarely see it as the culture’s fault. Let me explain.

Let’s take the wonderful culture of baby seal clubbing. Despite what you may think, there are definite upsides to this culture. The culture assumes that baby seals have delicious meet, waterproof pelts, and provide entertainment. But at the same time there are definite downsides. The question then becomes how we view this culture. Our cultures, particularly the American and Christian ones, view it as a horrible offense. Yet to the people who do it regularly, the idea of not clubbing baby seals is just as insane. So where do we draw the line between a good culture and a bad culture?

In its simplest form, this problem is that every culture of man has good and bad parts. But how do we define good and bad? Easy, we look to the word of God. The Bible is the ultimate cultural good because it expresses in the clearest way we can understand the culture of God. Therefore, any culture that isn’t in line with God’s culture is to some degree wrong.

What does that mean for us, the imperfect humans who live in a culture that can never perfectly mimic God’s? It means that we have a target to aim for. Even if we can never build a culture as perfect as God’s, we can still try. That is ultimately our goal as Christians, to convince people to chase God’s perfect culture by shedding the evil parts of their worldly cultures. It’s a long and hard battle, but one definitely worth fighting for.