Culture and Faith

Continuing on from last Wednesday regarding the faith we hold and how it remains "unchangeable".  

I also see this in the way people approach culture and faith.  I don't believe culture should define what we believe, but I know that we need to adapt the way we tell our story in order to reach people in the culture.  

And I also believe that the Bible was written to a particular culture in a particular time.  We need to investigate how that culture (2000 years ago) shaped the words of the writer at the time.  We can't just plop words written to a particular community 2000 years ago in our time and expect them to apply to our own culture and time.  

This doesn't threaten our faith.  It is a way to remain true to it.

Transforming the World

I heard many people at annual conference talk about how the influence of culture is changing our faith. They cautioned us to not be influenced by the culture - even as it changes, we should not.

It occurred to me that we are awfully afraid of change. Why is that? Why do we look at the culture and assume that all of the change is wrong? That we should avoid it?

As I was sitting in the annual conference sessions I wondered if we could ever be open-minded enough to consider the idea that some of the changes in culture are the work of God as God transforms the world? Or are we so afraid of change that we would never consider that?

I think sometimes change is God at work. Consider the leaps that women's rights have made over the last century. Those who read the Bible  then (and some people even now) would read it and say that it was the will of God that women shouldn't preach, shouldn't speak in church or teach men, that they should submit their lives - their will, their property, their dreams and hopes to the men in their lives. There are those who would have told you then that that kind of attitude was biblical and the will of God. 

And yet, now, I hope, we know better. We know it isn't the will of God that women should be thought of as less than men. It isn't God's will that when God calls a woman to preach, those around her should stop her because she is a woman. It's a change that probably came to the culture before it came to the church, and we finally realized (most of us) that the oppression of women wasn't and isn't the will of God. God transformed the world - and then the church caught up.

Don't be afraid to examine culture and look for where God is at work, revealing himself.

(Note about image: This is me at the podium presenting during the business session).