Culture is ubiquitous. From the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the music we listen to, and the movies we watch culture in inescapable. In my experience as a Christ follower, I have listened to dozens of sermons either tackling the issue of culture head on or mentioning the alleged depravity of the world in which we live. Often times reality is split in the drastic dichotomy of “things of the world” and “things of Christ”, a distinction taken from the New Testament of the Bible. When such a dichotomy is made, culture gets lumped into the category of “things of the world” which are inherently evil and will pass away at the second coming of Christ. The advised approach to culture then becomes either isolation or drastic transformation through becoming a “world changer,” both of which leave us frazzled and wanting of real progress.
Andy Crouch, executive editor of Christianity Today, redefines how Christians should interact with culture in his award winning book Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. Culture Making is a must-read for any Christian who has felt this obligation to become isolated from culture or to become a “world changer” and experienced the inevitable discouragement and anxiety from failed attempts to live that way. Instead of automatically condemning culture as evil or worldly, Andy encourages his readers to reevaluate the role of culture both in their own lives and in the story of God’s interactions with humanity. Through an in depth analysis of culture, Crouch reveals that culture is much more complex than what people generally think and cannot be avoided or so easily changed. Instead of aspiring to be world changers, Crouch suggests that we should primarily be cultivators and creators of our spheres of culture and offers practical questions for us to answer and advice to follow in our attempts to do so.
An important take-away from Culture Making is the concept that before culture can be changed it must first be understood. Crouch promotes paradigm shifts in the way culture should be understood and the foundational nature of culture in our lives. Culture is defined as what human beings make in order to make sense of a world that is cultural from the beginning. Culture is not an amorphous intangible entity; it is a composite of the plethora of cultural goods found within society.These cultural goods determine what is possible and impossible for those within the culture. Crouch emphasizes that we don’t make culture; we make cultural goods that eventually become integrated into the framework of culture and have the potential to shift the cultural horizons of possibility and impossibility. Crouch also explains that there is no such thing as a global culture. Instead, there are multiple spheres of cultures ranging from as small as two person family units to as large as entire nations. Any attempts to change the culture is hindered by the fact that the larger the reach and influence of a culture, the more difficult it is to change.
Crouch’s two options of responding to culture, postures and gestures, promote a liberty in our approach to culture. Crouch defines posture as the unconscious stance toward a culture that one takes and gestures as the momentary intentional stances taken toward particular aspects of a culture. Over the history of the church, Christians have opted to adopted postures of either condemning, critiquing, consuming, or copying cultural goods in an attempt to change culture; however, none of these positions taken by themselves are adequate means of dealing with cultural goods. Instead, we should adopt a posture of creating and cultivating while utilizing condemning, critiquing, consuming, and copying as gestures. The posture of creating and cultivating place us in a stable position that allows us to evaluate each cultural good and determine which gesture is most appropriate. The best approach to changing culture is to create novel cultural goods and cultivate the existing culture through preserving beneficial and life giving cultural goods while weeding out cultural goods that increase injustice and hinder life.
In order to change culture it is vital to understand how God interacts with culture. Crouch retells the history of Israel with the emphasis on God being foundationally cultural in His attempt to redeem creation. From the beginning of creation, God has intended humanity to live within culture and be both creators and cultivators of culture. Adam and Eve are first placed within and instructed to cultivate a garden, a cultural good. Crouch reinterprets Genesis 1-11 in order to illustrate how humanity initially used culture as a means of separating themselves both from God and each other and as a means of ensuring self-preservation, security, and sufficiency. At each turn of the way, God responds to humanity’s sinful acts of rebellious culture making with making more culture, reinforcing Crouch’s statement that the only way to change culture is to make more of it. The culmination of God’s cultural redemption of humanity is found in the culture cultivation and creation of Jesus, who is innately cultural as a result of his humanity. Jesus’ ministry is filled with positive examples of responding to culture through the gestures of condemning, critiquing, consuming, and copying the cultural goods he experienced. Crouch exemplifies Jesus as the pinnacle example of culture making, highlighting how His acts of cultivating and creating culture have dramatically shifted the horizons of possibilities and impossibilities even to this day. Crouch insists that the power behind such drastic change in culture is the result of Jesus redirecting the reasons for creating culture. Instead of using culture to secure his own security, Jesus disregarded his own welfare and acted on utter trust and dependence on God’s power. Revelation is retold with the emphasis on the preservation and transformation of cultural goods. The cultural of the world will not be destroyed and replaced with a culture-less afterlife. Instead, Crouch claims the afterlife will be as full of culture as the present life; however, only cultural goods that promote glory and life will be permitted. Through viewing the narrative arch of the scriptures in the light of culture, we can take comfort in embracing the good of culture and be empowered to change our culture.
Crouch insists that God frequently uses both the powerful and powerless to create and change culture. Crouch warns his reader that while it is possible for someone to propose a new cultural good, it is impossible for someone to impose a new cultural good. It can never be known how a new cultural good will fare within the myriad of current cultural goods. In order for creative culture to change culture, it must operate on the edges of possibility and impossibility, which also ensures a higher risk of failure. Nevertheless, Crouch encourages the continual creation of new cultural goods. Such goods are best created locally through working within concentric circles, what Crouch encourages through the 3:12:120 model of people aiding in the creation of a new cultural good. As one last note of advice, Crouch encourages his reader to create culture at the intersection of grace and the cross, where our deep joy meets the deep need of the world, and where God rewards our efforts with the multiplication of fruit.
Culture Making encourages Christians to be empowered in their endeavors to be active participants in the God given calling to be a cultivator and creator of culture. The lifeless dichotomy of “secular” and “Christian” culture can be rejected in place of the much more satisfying understanding that creation at its core is cultural. Culture making should be modeled after the approach used by Jesus and take place in humility and utter dependence on God.
(This book review was published in celebration of National Reading Awareness Month. Continue to check back for more ways to celebrate reading during March).
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