In my post a little while ago about Driscoll's New Calvinism, I noted that I had some more things to say about the current catchphrase ‘cultural engagement’. Given that the spur to write about cultural engagement came from Driscoll's post, it might be reasonable to assume that my beef is with him. So I guess I want to say at the start that my comments about this aren't directed particularly at Driscoll at all; it was just that he happened to use a phrase that, I admit, I find a little unhelpful. It's a line that everyone everywhere seems to be using. And apparently it's good if you do it and bad if you don't, but what I want to know is what on earth does it mean?
It's a phrase that is made up of two words that say so much, they're in danger of communicating nothing. Take this definition of culture from dictionary.com: “the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another”. Is culture what anybody anywhere does? Is it what cool people do—what particular groups within society do? Is it anything that they do, or is it only worthwhile things? Are pornography, the theatre, eating ice-cream, car racing, beer drinking, dwarf tossing, swimming, hanging upside down off the local playground equipment, and talking over a latte all examples of culture? The significance of these questions, if it's not already emerging (pardon the pun), will be seen shortly.
But let's move on to engagement. I can get engaged to my future wife, engage in nuclear warfare (and, yes, it is unfortunate that these two things are side by side), engage third gear, engage the services of a house cleaner, and engage just about anything I jolly well like.
So is cultural engagement having any sort of relationship with anything that any other human being does?
Now, before you all get upset about me being a grumpy old man riding my high horse, or get annoyed at me because I have failed to engage, let me tell you why I think it's important.
Firstly, unless we can talk meaningfully about what it actually means to be culturally engaged, it becomes a weasel word that allows you to call some people in and some people out. Cultural engagement is, I think, a description of a vibe. And while I think that there's a time to describe a vibe, I think, in this case, it's ultimately unhelpful. For example, if I don't like your vibe, I say that you're not culturally engaged, and that's the end of the argument.
A second issue, though, relates to the question of culture and the idea of redeeming culture (which seems to me to be why everybody wants to engage culture in the first place). The assumption is that this culture thing is something inherently valuable that needs to be preserved. But if culture is just the actions of human beings, then the Bible leads me to suspect that culture requires not so much preservation as repenting of. If we take the Bible's teaching on human depravity seriously and give any weight to Romans 14:23, then we will conclude that our culture is essentially anti-God.
Now, at this point, we need to be a little careful, so let me slow down a bit and explain what I do mean and what I don't mean. My last statement enters onto some essentially difficult ground because of the nature of ethics. It seems to me that, according to the Scriptures, the evaluation of any action by any human being involves at least two areas of inquiry: an assessment of the action in and of itself, and an assessment of the motivations involved in the action. For example, I might decide to help the proverbial little old lady across the road. The action gets a tick. I might help her every day because I am hoping to get to know her well because she is a rich little old lady who will be dropping off the perch sometime soon. The action is, all of a sudden, less noble. Of course, while it is possible the action in itself and the motivation involved can be detached like this, they do also work together much of the time. And so my evil intentions will often issue forth evil doings. (Yours will too, by the way!)
The problem with all of this is, of course, that we then have a problem with evaluating culture. Some of what we do culturally is, when viewed from the perspective of the action in itself, morally neutral. For example, drinking coffee is relatively morally neutral (although, of course, the economic conditions of the labourers who produced it isn't, so let's assume for the moment that you grew the coffee in your own backyard and did it fertilizer-free, thus lessening your environmental impact). However, as someone in rebellion against God, even your coffee drinking is tainted by your rebellious anti-God stance: everything that does not proceed from faith is sin. Now, we quite wisely don't want to go around telling people that their coffee drinking is inherently sinful because the nuances required to understand what you are and aren't saying are too difficult to communicate easily. However, there's another issue involved: because the life of the person in rebellion against God flows out of their essentially rebellious heart, they will (to a greater or lesser extent) keep creating culture that is anti-God. And so we end up in a conundrum: do we point out the essentially antisocial and anti-God reality that is consumerism? Or do we say that shopping is neutral? After all, you've got to wear clothes. (I'm pretty sure, at least, there's a biblical imperative in there somewhere.)
What all of this essentially means is that culture—our actions as human beings—can be viewed from one angle as neutral (neither good nor bad). But when viewed from the perspective of our motives, even what is neutral is essentially anti-God. And because our motives and our actions line up eventually, our tendency as a society will be to keep heading in that direction (even though it might be possible to isolate any bit of it and describe it as ‘neutral’). So when we talk about redeeming culture, what exactly do we mean? Do we mean that we destroy culture? For example, I presume that the goal of the Christian isn't to make Christian porn; it is to make a world in which there is no market for porn at all. The gospel doesn't redeem that culture; it just destroys it. Or do we mean taking the kind of morally neutral culture (like my friends who play soccer together on Saturday) and getting them to play Christian soccer (whatever that is)?
The problem, it seems to me, is that in talking about engaging and redeeming culture, we are talking about the fundamentally wrong thing. Culture isn't a thing in and of itself; it's the outpouring of human hearts. What needs redeeming is not the culture, but the hearts of my non-Christian family and friends. So I take it that when we talk about being engaged in culture, what we really mean is that we need to be knowing and loving the people around about us, living faithfully for Christ and sharing Jesus with them. But phrased like that, the issues become slightly different.
The phrase “culturally engaged” can (and, it seems to me in various contexts, does) mean almost anything. So for some people, it means Christians should adopt their left (or occasionally right) wing political views, or that Christians should watch certain kinds of movies, or that Christians should be more involved with world aid organizations, or that Christians should ... I'm sure you can fill in your own blanks. But nearly all of these things lie on the periphery of what Jesus thinks is important (if you can call being totally outside of the circle on the periphery). Jesus isn't asking us to engage or redeem culture; he's asking us to love God and love the people around us enough to live like Jesus and share the truth about him. God wants to redeem people, not culture, by the death of his Son.
I know that there are people out there who mean something like loving people and bringing Christ to them when they talk about engaging and redeeming culture. But I think that the term is hopelessly confused. It will be clearer for everyone if we just use the biblical language. So let's use the biblical terms, shall we? Let's love our neighbours enough to know and serve them, and seek every opportunity to share the good news of Jesus.