We have always had this teaching where “we are in the world but not of the world”. This statement has given us our identity and mission in the world. Yet the tension of this statement comes when we try to define the world we reside in. The simple definition of culture is ‘the integrated system of learned behavior patterns which are characteristics of the members of a society and which are not the result of biological inheritance’. We all behave in such a way as all peoples in our society because this is our culture. Sometimes we do not even know if how we live is good or bad simply because we have become too immersed with the culture we are living in.
Attempts to integrate culture and Christianity often fail simply because we have already made distinctions or judgments about contemporary living. We have divided culture as secular and Christian living as holy. Therefore it is difficult to integrate them.
Yet the bible gives us a cultural mandate in the very beginning of creation. We are to ‘steward’ our society as God has placed us here. This is seen in the term ‘subdue’ used for Adam’s role to the place he was living. And we are called to be ‘creative’ in our stewardship as seen in the fact that Adam had to take care and name all the animals of the garden. In other words, the cultural mandate that God gave Adam and also to us was to creatively steward his society in order to transform it for living.
Adam’s call was not so much just for selfish reasons or for the sake of doing it simply because God wanted him to do so. The transforming act was simply because God acts for transformation. We are made in the image of God and therefore act as he does.
The question here is “are we agents of transformation of our culture today?” Or “are we just people who live in the world and deny strongly our involvement in our culture simply because we are not of the world”? How can we steward our society creatively? When we begin to not see the purpose in doing this, we actually deny the identity of being made in God’s image in ourselves.
Do you see being agents of transformation of culture as one of the roles God has given to us? What are some examples of being these agents? Do share and encourage us.
