Every Square Inch

An Introduction to Cultural Engagement for Christians

Bruce Riley Ashford

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781577996217
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Jesus is Lord over everything. So his lordship should shape every aspect of life. But what impact does faith really have on our day-to-day existence? And how should we, as Christians, interact with the culture?In Every Square Inch, Bruce Ashford skillfully navigates such questions. Drawing on sources like Abraham Kuyper, C. S. Lewis, and Francis Schaeffer, he shows how our faith is relevant to all dimensions of culture.The gospel informs everything we do. We cannot maintain the artificial distinction between "sacred" and "secular." We must proclaim Jesus with our lips and promote him with our lives, no matter what cultural contexts we may find ourselves in.

Chapter 1: Competing Views on Theology & Culture

My second week in the former Soviet Union, I was introduced to the banya. My buddies told me that it “will be a lot like an American sauna.” And sure enough, it was a square room with a lot of heat. But there were a few differences. One difference lay in the fact that steam was generated by pouring vodka onto a barrel full of hot coals. (I wanted to join in, but as a Baptist I didn’t have any vodka and couldn’t find my bottle of Nyquil.) Another difference lay in the fact that many of these “saunas” have bundles of birch branches in the corner, with which the men whip one another on the back, starting at the heels and working methodically and consistently up to the shoulders. Afterward, they go outside the banya and roll around in the snow. I’m not kidding. I’ve never prayed so hard for the Second Coming.

Aside from a few odd moments, such as the one I just described, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of being immersed in a very complex culture, one that was a multilayered synthesis of Soviet-era atheism, Central Asian Islam, global capitalism, and postmodernism. On Friday evenings, I could pay a dollar to attend world-class symphonies and piano concerts at the performing arts center one mile from my apartment. On weekday mornings, I took language lessons in Russian and Tatar, discovering how human languages provide unique categories for thinking and unique advantages and disadvantages for mediating the gospel. On weekday afternoons, I taught at three universities that were cultural legacies of years past. In the evenings, I drank hot tea (the manly drink of choice in Central Asia, best imbibed with a spot of milk and a spoon of sugar) and watched snow fall on a mosque and an Eastern Orthodox cathedral that stood just outside my apartment window. Often, I had a huddle of undergrad or grad students in my apartment, asking me questions about why I believe in God (atheists) or how in the world I could believe that a man was God (Muslims).

As an evangelical, Protestant American living in a part of Russia populated mostly by Central Asian Muslims, I was forced to live in a cultural context that was different in many ways from the one in which I had grown up. There were some aspects of this culture that I preferred to my home context, and some that I did not. There were things that I embraced easily, and things that I did not. The question that kept surfacing, however, was: “How should I, as an evangelical Christian, approach ‘culture’?” In other words, is culture something good or bad? On the one hand, is it something I should try to escape or avoid, or against which I should fight? On the other hand, is it something I should embrace? Or is there some third and better alternative?

When it comes to interacting with culture, Christians face a choice between several options. One option is to live a life that can be characterized as “Christianity against culture,” which views culture as something that a person tries to escape from or fight against. Another option could be called “Christianity of culture,” which views culture uncritically as something that can be accepted wholesale into a person’s life and church. A final option can be called “Christianity in and for culture,” in which a believer seeks to live Christianly within his or her cultural context and for the betterment of that context, while not rejecting it wholesale, on the one hand, or accepting it wholesale, on the other. The remainder of this chapter, and in fact the whole book, will attempt to articulate what it might look like for American Christians to live out their faith in the midst of their particular cultural contexts.

What Is Culture?

Before going any further, however, we should take a moment to discuss what we mean when we talk about “culture.” When some people talk about culture, what they really mean is “high culture,” because they have in mind sophisticated cultural products such as Beethoven’s music or Rembrandt’s paintings. When other people talk about culture, what they really mean is “popular culture,” because they have in mind everyday cultural products such as television shows, movies, or Top 40 songs. Still others use the word “culture” to refer to anything that is against what they believe as a Christian.

Unlike these three senses of the word “culture,” the meaning I have in mind is all-encompassing. “Culture” is anything that humans produce when they interact with each other and with God’s creation. When we interact with each other and with God’s creation, we cultivate the ground (grain, vegetables, livestock), produce artifacts (clothes, housing, cars), build institutions (governments, businesses, schools), form worldviews (theism, pantheism, atheism), and participate in religions (Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Atheism). We produce culture, and at the same time our cultural context shapes us, affecting who we are, what we think and do, and how we feel.

So the concept of culture is very broad, encompassing in one way or another the totality of our life in this world. For this reason, we don’t want to “get it wrong” in figuring out a Christian’s relationship to culture. If we get the relationship right, it will positively transform our lives and the world around us, but if we get it wrong, it will deform our lives and the world around us.

Now that we have a basic grasp of what culture is, we are prepared to outline three models for relating Christianity and culture. As I am describing these models, you will probably be able to place yourself and other Christians you know in one of the categories.

Christianity against Culture

Some proponents of “Christianity against culture” tend to view the Church primarily as a bomb shelter. This is especially a temptation for Americans who realize that their country is becoming increasingly post-Christian—and, in some ways, even anti-Christian. They realize that their beliefs on certain theological and moral issues will increasingly be rejected and mocked by the political and cultural elite and by many of their fellow citizens.

Under such an ideological assault, Christians sometimes have a collective anxiety attack. Their dominant mood tends to be protective, conceiving the Church as a bomb shelter trying to protect believers from aerial assault, or perhaps a monastery where people can withdraw from the contingencies of contemporary existence—or even better, a perpetual yoga retreat where we can empty our minds of certain harsh realities.

Believers with this mentality have good intentions. They want to preserve the church’s purity, recognizing that the church is under attack and that therefore we should hold fast to the faith (Rev 3:11). They know that there is a great battle being waged (Eph 6), a battle that plays out both invisibly in the heavenly realm, and visibly in the cultural realm.

However, this mentality is misguided, arising from a timid fear of humanity; it is spurred more by secular wisdom than by biblical faith, more by faithless fear than by Christian courage and vitality. It views the church as a walled city rather than a living being, as a safe-deposit box rather than a conduit of spiritual power. It externalizes godlessness and treats it as something that can be kept out by man-made walls, rather than understanding that godlessness is a disease of the soul that can never be walled out. This mindset tends toward legalism and tries to restrict Christians’ interactions with society and culture. While it rightly recognizes that the Christian life involves war against the powers of darkness, it wrongly tries to wage that war by escaping from the world. This obeys only one half of Jesus’ admonition to be in the world, but not of it (John 17:14–16).

Other proponents of “Christianity against culture” view the Church primarily as an Ultimate Fighter. The Ultimate-Fighter mentality shares much in common with the bomb-shelter mentality, but it deals with its anxiety in a different manner. It tends to see Christians exclusively and comprehensively as fighters, whose weapons are beliefs, feelings, and values wielded in spiritual warfare. Unlike those hiding in the bomb shelter, the fighters venture forth into the surrounding culture, seeking greater awareness of it so that they might assault it with lethal force.

Believers with this mentality are clinging to the biblical principle of waging war against what is evil. They rightly recognize that we must put on the whole armor of God (Eph 6:11), fight the good fight of faith (1 Tim 6:12), resist the devil (Jas 4:7), and cast down anything that exalts itself against God (2 Cor 10:4–5).

However, this mentality is misguided to the extent that it wrongly applies the principles above. The fault of the Ultimate-Fighter Church (UFC) is not that it wants to fight, but that it suggests that the entirety of the Christian life is nothing but war. Our social and cultural contexts are full of unbelievers—but those unbelievers are not only enemies of God, but also drowning people in need of a lifeboat. The church is not only a base for soldiers, but also a hospital for the sick. The Christian life is surely a battle, but it is no less a journey, a joy, an adventure, and a trust. In other words, Christians must indeed fight, but that is not the only thing they do; their battling is done from within the broader context of the entire Christian life.

Christianity of Culture

Those with a “Christianity of culture” perspective tend to build churches that are mirrors of the culture. Christians with this mindset tend to view their cultural context in very high esteem—perhaps disagreeing with aspects of it here and there, but for the most part finding it to be an ally rather than a threat. They tend to interact easily and uncritically with the dominant philosophical, political, and cultural trends of the day. Unlike those who seek to escape from culture or to fight it with lethal force, they seek to incorporate the dominant culture seamlessly into their lives and churches.

Believers with this mentality rightly recognize that God ordered the world in such a way that humans would make culture, and they rightly recognize that their culture exhibits real aspects of truth, goodness, and beauty. However, this mentality is misguided because it fails to sufficiently see the way in which every culture, and every aspect of culture, is corrupted and distorted because of human sin. When Christians adopt a “Christianity of culture” mindset, they take away Christianity’s ability to be a prophetic voice and usually end up sacrificing doctrines and moral beliefs that run contrary to the cultural consensus. This mindset comes at too high of a cost, as it ends up subverting the historical Christian faith.

Christianity in and for Culture

We live in and for our cultural context. A third and better mindset is one that views human beings as representatives of Christ who live their lives in the midst of and for the good of their cultural context, and whose cultural lives are characterized by obedience and witness.

Every culture possesses some inherent goodness. God ordered the world in such a way that people spontaneously make culture, and the very existence of music, art, food, housing, and education represent a fundamental human good. Furthermore, God has enabled all people—Christian or not—to make good and valuable contributions in the cultural realm. But under this view, the Christian also recognizes that every culture is corrupted and misdirected. Since the time of the first couples’ sin, all human beings sin, and our sin corrupts our cultural efforts. We are idolaters—people who worship things that ought not to be worshiped, such as sex, money, and power—and the cultural realities we produce tend to be directed toward those idols rather than toward Christ. So God structured the world so that it would be a cultural world, but we humans have misdirected our cultural realities. Every cultural context is structurally good, but directionally corrupt. For this reason, we must live firmly in the midst of our cultural contexts (structurally), all the while seeking to steer our cultural realities toward Christ rather than toward idols (directionally).

In order to help us think clearly about the cultural aspect of our mission, let me explain more precisely what I mean by “structure” and “direction.” When God created the world, it was a “good” world both structurally and directionally. The way God designed the world (its structures) was good, and the way humanity used his world was good (it honored God and was directed toward him).

After the fall, the world remained structurally good but became directionally bad. The world is still good in its design (structure), but human beings use the world in ways that are oriented toward self-worship and the worship of things rather than God (direction). We live in a fallen world. Our tendency as humans is to worship things like sex, money, and power, rather than worshiping God. And when we worship idols like this, it affects our social and cultural activities. Our activities are misdirected, being aimed toward idols rather than toward God. As Christians, we want to speak out against this misdirection of God’s world. But in speaking out against the world, we are doing the best possible thing for the world. We are being against the world for the sake of the world.

Because of Christ’s redemption, we are new creatures. God has transformed us so that we live in an entirely different manner than we did before. That transformation affects all of the things we do, including our cultural activities. For this reason, our mission as Christians includes identifying the ways in which our cultures are corrupted and misdirected by sin, and then doing everything in our power to help bring healing and redirection to them. When we do this, we are obeying Christ and being a witness.

We do this as a matter of obedience. If Christ is the creator of everything, then we must realize that his lordship is as wide as creation. Nothing in this universe escapes his lordship. And if his lordship is as wide as creation, then our obedience to his lordship must be as wide as culture. The call to be disciples of Christ is the call to bring absolutely every square inch of the fabric of our lives under his lordship.

We do this also as a mat...