GOSPEL DELTA

Christ and Culture

// February 18th, 2010 // Doctrine, Life

This is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I’ve come across on the role of Christians in culture. From D.A. Carson’s Christ and Culture Revisited:

Created by God, this world cannot ever lose all the glory that God has built into it (Psalm 8), and God himself continues to do good and bestow good gifts. For a start, he sends his sun and his rain upon the just and the unjust; he orders governments to reduce the dangers of anarchy in a world of malignity; he demonstrates his patience in holding out for repentance. All of the potential of the so-called “natural” world was  called into being and operates under the authority of the resurrected Christ: all of art, music, administrative gifts, colorful diversity, creative genius. And yet everything is corrupted by sin. Our creative genius may build weapons of destruction, our administrative gifts may become exercises in personal power and self-promotion, our art may become wretchedly ugly and celebrate everything that is disjointed , our nationalism easily identifies our own race or vision with the will of God, our democracy is in danger of proclaiming vox populi, vox Dei (the voice of the people, is the voice of God), and our liberalism is tempted to confuse the pursuit of liberty with the pursuit of God — a vision of liberty, in tragic irony, that enslaves us in a new idolatry. Thus the word “culture” in “Christ and culture” may refer to that subset of culture that refuses Christ’s authority, even if it cannot escape it. In such usage, culture frequently ignores Christ and Christians; sometimes culture explicitly contradicts Christ and Christians; sometimes culture persecutes Christ and Christians; on occasion culture very selectively approves and disapproves Christ and Christians. And the responses of Christians correspondingly adapt (sometimes wisely, sometimes unwisely) to such varying cultural stances.

 

The unease we feel at such tension will not be resolved until the last day. We await the return of Jesus Christ, the arrival of the new heaven and the new earth, the dawning of the resurrection, the glory of perfection, the beauty of holiness. Until that day, we are a people in tension. On the one hand, we belong to the broader culture in which we find ourselves; on the other, we belong to the culture of the consummated kingdom of God, which has dawned among us. Our true city is the new Jerusalem, even while we still belong to Paris or Budapest or New York. And while we await the consummation, we gratefully and joyfully confess that the God of all is our God, and that we have been called to give him glory, acknowledge his reign, and bear witness to his salvation. By the proclamation of the gospel, we anticipate the conversion of men and women from every language and people and nation. And as redeemed human beings we “seek the peace and the prosperity of the city” in which we find ourselves (Jeremiah 29:7), until the new Jerusalem comes down from heaven. It is written: “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor to it” (Revelation 21:24).