What is culture? We all have one, apparently, and the lucky ones may have several. We are well-tuned to abhor ‘cultural insensitivity’—I know that—but what is this thing called culture?
Wandering around ‘culture festivals’ doesn’t seem to help me much. ‘Culture’ seems to be different kinds of music, food and dress. Not to mention the people playing it, eating it, or wearing it: they seem to have ‘culture’. I try not to be insensitive.
Wandering around in the city doesn’t help much either. There seems to be some kind of ‘culture’ at the Opera House—at the concert hall—at the Belvoir Street Theatre—and even among the Rockdale Musical Society. I try to pick some up, but it doesn’t seem to stick. Being sensitive is getting harder. Rock ‘n’ roll seems much easier.
Language seems to be part of it. They either speak in strange tongues, or with strange accents. I, of course, speak properly. So how come they don’t seem to understand me when I am in another country? I try to be sensitive. But it isn’t easy when you have to shout and speak really slowly to be understood.
And customs—grabbing your wrist as you shake hands. Kissing on one cheek or two (and man-kisses too!). Who eats first, and how they do it. Who speaks to whom, and what do they say? What days or months are special? Who belongs to whom, and how do they acquire such responsibility?
It all seems so nebulous. It is there, but not there. There is a human being in front of me. But where is this thing called ‘culture’? It seems easy to listen to the person who is talking, but how do I hear their culture? I can see them, and I think I see it, but it seems to be beyond somehow—larger than any individual, and yet affecting every individual.
And yet I am supposed to be multicultural, cross-cultural, subcultural, culturally aware, culturally sensitive, and, yet, I am told, I am probably culture-bound.
Culture-bound: that doesn’t sound good. Culture blinkered. Culture inescapable. Cultural slavery.
Days and weeks and years: what shall you eat? What shall you drink? What shall you wear? Law, statute and custom. Ritual, feast and festival. Do not handle. Do not taste. Do not touch. Questions of food or drink, a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. Moods, methods, mores. Rules, regulations, restrictions.
Elemental spirits. Principalities and powers. Apparently the gospel liberates people from these evil beings, and from all this long list of strange things that we call culture. Apparently they are only “human precepts and teachings”, and their value is limited, to say the least (Col 2:16-23).
So what does this say about culture? Is human culture simply another vehicle for the principalities and powers?
That doesn’t sound very culturally sensitive.
I like Leland Ryken’s straight-forward definition of culture: “institutions, technology, art, customs and social patterns that a society evolves”. Then he puts the individual perspective “Culture is the context within which every person inevitably lives his or her daily life”. (New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology IVP, 1995, 278).
If we ask Peter’s question about a part of culture (family, art, government, sport, food …). Are they a vehicle for principalities or powers? The answer seems to be that they can be, but there is more to them than that.
So is human culture another vehicle for the principalities and powers? Yes.
Is human culture SIMPLY another vehicle for the principalities and powers? No.
Beyond that the term ‘culture’ is too broad for a useful analysis. We have to ask how are various elements of our culture (whatever that consists of) distorted by sin and used by the powers? Then we have to ask how we respond.
The contrasting assessments of government in Rom 13 and Rev 13 are intriguing examples of this.
I have been fascinated by the Principalities and Powers blogs and have just perused all six of them.
In your first blog you wondered if they had been defeated at the cross. My “person in the pew” understanding is that they were defeated but the battle was to continue until Jesus’ coming again.
My indigenous Australian friends, my friends who minister among them and my friends from Africa all understand principalities and powers that are not flesh and blood. They acknowledge the reality and power of this other world (but not its victory: there many examples, even recently, of spiritual battles won by Christ’s Name).
How has our Western culture’s reliance on empiricism (“it only exists if I can measure it”) distorted our understanding of theological truths? Is post-modernism just a reaction to empericism?
I am not stating these points of view as an attack but in genuine seeking of a thoughtful response.