[An old email (5/10/2012) to a friend on how culture is a real part of the church's mission, but not in the way it is sometimes conceived:]
Perhaps evangelicals like myself traditionally think of culture as having one basic referent--there is a culture out there (ex. general American culture). Culture refers to public culture, culture of the world or nation state. Then, since God is interested in culture, Christians are to do their best trying to redeem that (public, national) culture. So, aren't we supposed to argue for family rights, religious liberties, ethical law; we've supposed to make our world more compassionate to the weak, more caring for the suffering. Better school education--better sex education--teach abstinence in the public school, crack down on drugs; and not just that: encourage kids to be all they can be, rather than our current culture of lazinees or mind-numbing video and TV overload; try to see our country have better marriages, rather than cohabitation and divorce, etc. In other words, we're trying to reform our nation to make it look more...just! moral! really, to make it look more christian.
But, I think (or wonder) if this neglects an important and radical biblical distinction between church and world, perhaps doing so because of following in (cultural!) modernistic univeralistic thinking. Our enlightenment worldview says that all people are basically one / the same. Fundamentally, we are human [this might not be a purely enlightenment commitment], and all humans are of one basic kind. In this common brotherhood, we share a common identity and we use reason as our common meeting ground. And in this common ground we form a shared life called the public arena, governed by reason, the fruits of which is culture. That is where culture occurs.
But that all seems questionable to me. Biblically, the church is a separate community. Fundamentally, we are something else, with our own story, our own calling, called to live a common life together as God's people. A people who are no longer Greek, no longer American. and what does that mean if not a new identity, socially, and consequently, culturally. This is the church-world distinction.
I believe this distinction between church and world has some import to our thinking about missions. Sometimes we think of God so loving the world. God displays his love of the world by using the church to be a vehicle to love the non-church.
But I think that God's love for the world is displayed in the church. God's goal of a redeemed world reconciled world is realized in the church, not outside it. So, we see, in my opinion, a mission of the church to the world which is primarily a call to join it, to be included in the community of Christ, the sphere of restoration, blessing, reconciliation.
But the distinction between the church and the world not only supports the idea that the church is the domain of the realization of God's mission to humanity. It also, I think, will capture the fact that God's mission to to the world is not just achieved when people are brought into the church. The church has not yet itself fully become that community of restoration, reconciled to God's lordship. The church needs to grow into the life which is the goal of redemption, and it is a life which comes progressively, through the continuation of God's mission. I guess what im saying is that justification is not the culmination of God's redemptive mission, but rather the sanctification of the community. God labors for a people who are both his own and who have receiving in them (communally) the new (and eschatological) life of Christ.
The church-world distinction helps us think about the church as a distinct community, as the domain of God's enacted redemption, and as the place where God's mission climaxes. I think those commitments end up supporting the idea that the church's cultural and social mission is not in transforming the culture and character of the world, but rather in itself being a new, redeemed culture / society. (And therein is its verbal and deedful testimony to the world that Jesus is its lord!). God is interested in a redeemed culture; but he is looking for that redeemed culture in his redeemed community, not in his unredeemed community.
Perhaps evangelicals like myself traditionally think of culture as having one basic referent--there is a culture out there (ex. general American culture). Culture refers to public culture, culture of the world or nation state. Then, since God is interested in culture, Christians are to do their best trying to redeem that (public, national) culture. So, aren't we supposed to argue for family rights, religious liberties, ethical law; we've supposed to make our world more compassionate to the weak, more caring for the suffering. Better school education--better sex education--teach abstinence in the public school, crack down on drugs; and not just that: encourage kids to be all they can be, rather than our current culture of lazinees or mind-numbing video and TV overload; try to see our country have better marriages, rather than cohabitation and divorce, etc. In other words, we're trying to reform our nation to make it look more...just! moral! really, to make it look more christian.
But, I think (or wonder) if this neglects an important and radical biblical distinction between church and world, perhaps doing so because of following in (cultural!) modernistic univeralistic thinking. Our enlightenment worldview says that all people are basically one / the same. Fundamentally, we are human [this might not be a purely enlightenment commitment], and all humans are of one basic kind. In this common brotherhood, we share a common identity and we use reason as our common meeting ground. And in this common ground we form a shared life called the public arena, governed by reason, the fruits of which is culture. That is where culture occurs.
But that all seems questionable to me. Biblically, the church is a separate community. Fundamentally, we are something else, with our own story, our own calling, called to live a common life together as God's people. A people who are no longer Greek, no longer American. and what does that mean if not a new identity, socially, and consequently, culturally. This is the church-world distinction.
I believe this distinction between church and world has some import to our thinking about missions. Sometimes we think of God so loving the world. God displays his love of the world by using the church to be a vehicle to love the non-church.
But I think that God's love for the world is displayed in the church. God's goal of a redeemed world reconciled world is realized in the church, not outside it. So, we see, in my opinion, a mission of the church to the world which is primarily a call to join it, to be included in the community of Christ, the sphere of restoration, blessing, reconciliation.
But the distinction between the church and the world not only supports the idea that the church is the domain of the realization of God's mission to humanity. It also, I think, will capture the fact that God's mission to to the world is not just achieved when people are brought into the church. The church has not yet itself fully become that community of restoration, reconciled to God's lordship. The church needs to grow into the life which is the goal of redemption, and it is a life which comes progressively, through the continuation of God's mission. I guess what im saying is that justification is not the culmination of God's redemptive mission, but rather the sanctification of the community. God labors for a people who are both his own and who have receiving in them (communally) the new (and eschatological) life of Christ.
The church-world distinction helps us think about the church as a distinct community, as the domain of God's enacted redemption, and as the place where God's mission climaxes. I think those commitments end up supporting the idea that the church's cultural and social mission is not in transforming the culture and character of the world, but rather in itself being a new, redeemed culture / society. (And therein is its verbal and deedful testimony to the world that Jesus is its lord!). God is interested in a redeemed culture; but he is looking for that redeemed culture in his redeemed community, not in his unredeemed community.
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