Culture is one of those things you often find on the debating block. Some love it. Others hate it. It’s thought by some to be an expression of beauty. Others consider it a tool used by society to manipulate us into what they want.
I happen to be a lover of culture. Part of me believes when God made us, he put a little bit of his personality in each part of the world. Perhaps that is why Jesus prayed to the Father that we would be unified. When we come together with the mix of all of our differences, we can see the whole of God.
One of the things I love about culture is what it teaches us about God. When make the effort to look deep within a culture and allow ourselves to look beyond the distractions, we often see a principle, a piece of God that we should strive to imitate. This is the purity of culture.
However, externals of culture often steal our attention, externals we have created and/or added. We end up missing the intended beauty and lesson. It’s the same ol’ lesson; when we take our eyes off of God, we pervert stuff and mess it up.
An example of this is a wedding. God obviously enjoys celebrations. From the beginning he told Israel to worship him and continually gave them annual festivals to celebrate. He even carried it over into the New Testament. Jesus was at a wedding and when the threat of it coming to an abrupt halt due to a lack of wine, he saved the day by turning the water into wine.
So we see God celebrates the union of two of his children. He smiles as he watches the families and friends rejoice in it together. But it’s our “additions” to the celebrations that kill the true joy, i.e. the “party before the party” that causes one to enter his or her marriage burdened with guilt. These are things that give culture a bad name and prevent us from seeing God’s face in it.
Over the years I’ve live in Russia, Chile and Germany as a missionary and done some short-term trips as well. In each place God revealed a piece of his personality through the home culture. Each country left me with a life principle I strive to attain. My next few blogs I will highlight a culture and share a story to illustrate these principles.
So, in the mean time – what are your thoughts on culture? Are you a fan? Not a fan? Any thoughts or insight into that will guide me over these next few blogs?
Until then – have a great weekend!
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