The Church as Culture

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I just learned from this OT scholar/teacher that a lot of the first Tabernacle copied some of the forms/art of the Egyptians, but with some significant differences of course that set it apart to specifically point to the one true God... but it still used things that the Hebrews just leaving Egypt would have been familiar with... I always assumed all the trappings/adornments of the tabernacle were brand new forms/creations from God alone... turns out He gently leads us using some things we're familiar with... His grace is amazing!

Yes — that’s a really good example.

Pretty much most of ANE studies (Ancient Near East) is about this: how Israel’s life with God took place in a common cultural world they shared with their neighbors. You see overlap in architecture, music, art, even law codes. You also see the distinctives, how those same forms were reshaped to point to YHWH instead of the local gods.

It’s striking to realize God didn’t drop His people into a cultural vacuum; He started with the stuff they knew, then bent it toward His purposes. That pattern feels very much like what we’re talking about with “redeem.”

[Bootstrap]

I think we can also repurpose this grid for our own church traditions and church cultures. What is wine, and what is merely wineskin? Which wineskins are useful? Which wineskins are traditions that make void the Word of God?

A simple grid
When we live as the Church within any culture, we can only speak and act using that culture’s tools — its language, symbols, emotions, and institutions. The question is whether we simply mirror them, or let Christ reshape them so they carry something new.

• Receive — take what is truly good as a gift from God.
• Redeem — reshape the tools of the culture to serve Christ.
• Resist — refuse what leads away from love and life.

In our own communities, what should we receive, what can we redeem, and what must we resist? Which parts of our culture are the common language we use to reach out to others? Which definitions of Church and Culture are most useful for thinking clearly about this?