To what extent are our thoughts, beliefs, and actions shaped by the world around us? Specifically, how do the things we see, hear, and experience influence our views of ourselves, others, and God?
The culture you live in is something you rarely notice, yet some of the most important influences in life can go unnoticed or remain unspoken.
For instance… “There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What in the world is water?”
Culture is the shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that characterize a group or society, encompassing everything from language, food, and art to social norms, laws, and ways of interacting, learned and passed down through generations, shaping how people see and navigate the world. It’s a collective framework for understanding and living, providing a sense of identity and guiding actions, even on unconscious levels.
But, much like the two young fish in the story, culture is not something that you often see as much as it is what surrounds you, or what you live in.
Culture shapes your worldview, and your worldview determines how you process everything you experience. For instance, “There are these two guys sitting together in a trading post in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says, “Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out ‘Oh, God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.’” And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist, all puzzled. “Well then, you must believe now,” he says, “After all, here you are, alive.” The atheist just rolls his eyes. “No, man, all that was was a couple of Eskimos who happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.”
I was reading the other day in Samuel James’s book, Digital Liturgies. It’s a book that I believe fits into a small category… a category filled with books and authors who clearly articulate the problem and provide direction toward the solution. These kinds of books are usually not on the bestseller list, but they are the ones that influence the books that do.
On a practical level, one of the aims of his book is to help Christians exercise wisdom in the world as it has become.
I say “in what the world has become” because the world has radically changed. But, much like the two fish that have never been out of the water, there are some who don’t know the world any differently, and there are some who have seen the customs and behaviors of the world change more than once.
Culture is always changing, but the pace of change is not consistent.
Before I ask a question, I am not asking you to weigh in on whether or not you think the changes are good or bad, and it might be hard to hold that back. But for the sake of the conversation, I am asking you to consider answering only the question as asked, without offering opinion or interpretation.
Question: What are some of the shared beliefs that you have seen change in your lifetime? What about customs or behaviors?
When it comes to the pace of change, technology has a significant impact on how fast things change.
Examples include the printing press, telegraph, typewriter, phone, internet, smartphone, social media, cars, planes, and trains.
Have you considered the impact that technological advancements have had:
- Central heating
- Automobile
- Railroad
- Transatlantic flight
Technology provides a glimpse of what life should be like.
- Technology said we should be able to travel half the country in a day.
- Technology said we should be able to cross the oceans.
- Technology said we should be able to spread out into our homes with heat.
- Technology said we should be able to get the message out to as many people as possible.
- Technology said we should be able to call each other anytime.
When you realize that technology provides assistance and that this support aligns with a view of life as it should be… You begin to realize the influential impact technology has on how we think and experience the world and people in it.
Central heating revolutionized home design. The automobile changed where and how people live. The train connected cities across the country for commerce and trade. The interstate took that even further.
We don’t live in relative isolation, in small houses in sparsely populated regions… and all of that is because of technology’s impact. And with it has come the continued transformation of our culture…
How did we get to a place where technology went from shaping the way we build houses and travel to a world where our beliefs on gender, sexuality, and humanity have changed?
In the same way that technology has created revolutions in design, it has also sparked revolutions in ideas.
The printing press changed the world.
- It made information affordable and easily distributed.
- It fueled the Renaissance and the Reformation of the 1500s.
- It gave education and theology to the common man and took it from the wealthy and powerful.
With each evolution of technology, especially that related to moving people and goods and to the transfer or communication of information, culture has changed, and the pace has quickened.
“Evangelical Christians in the West today sense that the ambient Culture has changed dramatically over the past few decades. The moral language that was commonplace in schools, workplaces, and town halls just fifty years ago were not only absent but considered hateful, even treasonous. We know this, and our preaching, teaching,writing, and evangelism often reflect a sober awareness of our post-Christian situation. At the same time, however, many evangelicals struggle to understand how the situation has been transformed so quickly. Ideas about gender identity that were strictly the domain of far-left bastions in higher education just a decade ago are now topics of conversation among pastors and parents in middle America.” – Samuel James.
The dilemma in the church today is that Christians were paying attention to the content of the new technologies, but we missed what they would empower people to do.
We are right to pay attention to the content that comes through technology, but now we have to catch up and understand how technology itself is impacting our relationships with God and with one another.
Before we become the two young fish who don’t know what water is… we need to catch up to the reality that in our technologically shaped culture, we are being impacted by the technology itself.
Now, I look forward to unpacking more about the technology itself. But, my first goal was to get you to consider the fact that you’re swimming in water and may not know it- to consider that you are being impacted by something that you rarely notice- culture. And, I hope, to believe, or at least open your mind to the possibility that some of the most important influences in life can go unnoticed or talked about.
The second goal is to propose a way for you and me to live in whatever culture we are in.
With the radical changes we have witnessed in our lifetimes, the world we live in is different, and this different world is shaping people and society in different ways. Regardless of what our culture becomes, we must be able to identify what it looks like to walk in wisdom and be faithful to God.
Ephesians 5:15-17 says, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”
Walking in wisdom is the combination of understanding God’s will and obeying it with your actions.
Wisdom means carefully examining your life in light of God’s will.
God’s will is known and understood through the Word and is testified to by the Spirit.
Wisdom means carefully examining the culture around you in light of God’s will.
- This doesn’t just apply to the unchurched world; it also applies to the churches of our day.
- The Bible is filled with testimony of people who feel justified in doing what is wrong in God’s eyes and right in their own.
- Wisdom looks at the world through the lens of Scripture, which the Holy Spirit affirms and empowers us to follow.
Wisdom requires knowing the Word and is demonstrated in the life you live in relation to God and others.
“Wisdom is submission to God’s good and given reality.” – Samuel James.
