Tag Archives: Culture

Psalms 5: Vampiric Culture: 71/365

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You know you’ve been watching too much Buffy the Vampire Slayer when every time you read the Bible you think of a vampire simile to back it up. However, on this occasion, I think it works appropriately.

In this song David is imploring God to fortify him against the temptations of the world, to

lead me in Your righteousness because of my adversaries.

What is it that his adversaries are doing that is causing David such distress? It appears that they are making promises of some description, maybe even scheming:

For there is nothing reliable in what they say; destruction is within them; their throat is an open grave; the flatter their tongues. Punish them, God; let them fall by their own schemes.

Now I have little other than an educated guess to back this up, but having recently completed reading Joshua and concurrently reading Hosea it doesn’t seem like a large tangental link to suggest that David is struggling with the geo-political power-plays in the region. Indeed this seems to be an ongoing thorn for Israel, trusting in the might of God as opposed to the might of neighboring nations.

Unlike the leaders in Hosea’s time, who God likens to unfaithful wives fleeing to another’s bed, David is yearning to remain stoic in God’s provision. He is begging to be surrounded “with favour like a shield”. The two driving reasons are clear: he sees the corruption of the world for what it is and, he recognises and hopes for the shelter God can provide his people.

This is where the Buffy analogy comes in!

I’ve been trying to think of a good way to describe culture, to explore its attractive veneer and dangerous underbelly. To this extent I think culture is a vampire. It once was a man, it once was alive and walking according to God’s approval. However, upon death, it arose.

From the outside it looks the same, it has the same face and defined features. However this exterior is a shell. For it no longer desires and serves God’s ways, what is good. Rather it rebels against God and desires “bloodshed and treachery”.

The targets to support this theory are varied and interesting. Having just watched Margin Call it’d be altogether to easy to run the “blood-sucking” theme into the culture of self-interested finance. However there are more pervasive cultural forces at play. Consider consumerism, the maxim that suggests that ‘stuff’ will make us happy. We watch ad after ad espousing the social benefits of their product. Case in point: have you ever seen a coke ad that doesn’t focus on the relationship building aspect of its product. There are either Arctic bears sharing a family moment, young adults jumping into the ocean whilst ‘opening a little bit of happiness today’, or names on bottles to remind us precisely whom we should be sharing our coke with!

Yet, how many of us actually feel that sense of social inclusion whilst downing the bubbly? I don’t know about you, my drinking an extra coke actually makes me feel less inclined to take off my shirt and strut around in boardies. Perhaps that’s because my personal 6-pack seems more like a keg…

Herein lies a perfect example of:

their throat is an open grave

The resolution of our desire for community is not sought in God but in a bottle of liquid.

If this example hasn’t proven illustrative then try the following little test: What was the main present that you got for Christmas last year? Can you remember it? Great, now how about the year before? What about the present you got 4 years ago? Or when you were 21?

Why is it that products that we were sooo excited about yesteryear are probably gathering dust or landfill this year? Could it be that they “flatter with their tongues” and after time we realise that we don’t feel the way they promise?

Just like David, we too are surrounded by potential allies in this world who offer everything.  Yet we need to remember that “there is nothing reliable in what they say”. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t easy pressing the mute button on the world’s screams. However, I think we get a strong role-model in David’s prayer right here.

Acts 20: Don’t be an Emo: 61/365

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Do you ever wonder if humanity can be more? Have you ever looked at the scurrilous city from atop a bridge and struggled to see the defining qualities that separate us from the rest of creation? I have recently been overwhelmed by how impersonal people are. So much so that, if someone randomly talks to you, your first assumption is that they want something; your second assumption is that they are selling something.

I know I’ve referred to The Matrix in the past and joked about using old films to analyse contemporary culture; however, I’m going to do it again. Have you ever got the feeling that the dystopic warning in this film was spot-on? Not so much the stuff about robots taking over the world, but the themes: Humans as batteries…? I look at the lives I, and those around me live, and I can help but wonder if that is what we are.

We wake up and rush. There is no time to enjoy each other’s company in the morning (or breakfast for that matter) because we (in our tired state) sleep in as long as possible before being required. Required by whom? By work. So we hasten our paths into work, the giant Energiser Bunny that needs fuel for sustenance, and we spend increasingly long hours donating the majority of our passion; our energies; our creativity; and, our attention. Exhausted, we may engage in some kind of recreational activity. We’ll probably be interrupted by emails from work screaming like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors “Feed Me!”. Most likely we’ll vegetate in front of the box, desperate to recoup our energy. We crash in bed and get ready to wash-rinse-repeat. Thus ends the day of a battery, if you ask me.

Add on top of this, we are constantly bombarded with data that we have to sift. The internet is a brilliant place, but the masses of information that it produces every second necessitates its users to pretty quickly develop adept censorship or suffer information overload. I remember reading somewhere that we, in the Western world, consume more data on a daily basis than a medieval peasant did over the course of a lifetime! I remember thinking “No way”, perhaps you do to. If so, try out this little test. Take a look around you room for only corporate branding. Try to see how many companies still vie for your attention whist your on the computer…

  • For a start I’m typing on a Mac
  • On the website wordpress
  • I’m wearing a Threadless T-Shirt
  • On my Ikea table (which isn’t branded so I’ll let it slip) I can see the remotes. A Sony remote, an LG remote, and a Kenwood remote. Those same brands appear on my TV, PS3 and Sound System.
  • I have bags from Taylors Magic Supplies
  • I also have a Vodaphone bag
  • There are so many book, boardgame and DVD brands on my bookshelf that I won’t even start listing them
  • There is a deck of US Playing Card Company cards
  • My fan is a Heller (never realised that)
  • There is a Garmin exercise watch on the desk and a Fossil watch on my wrist

Thus far I have yet to move my head! I’m just looking straight ahead and noticing what is in my field of vision. I hope the point is clear here.

Now I may be on the wrong track in trying to find a cultural culprit but I do believe it is undeniable that our generation, myself included, is a hoard of hollow men. I’ve felt the process overwhelming me for some time now. I no longer talk to charity workers seeking contributions on the street. I watch the news out of academic interest – I never let it affect me. I talk only to those people I know, I don’t want to be seen a weirdo on the street.

What a contrast Paul is to me. This man has spent three years traversing and talking. Or, in his own substantially more emotionally charged words:

Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for three years I did not stop warning each of you with tears

This verse stunned me. To care about people, previously strangers, so much to be continually brought to tears… I don’t think I have ever heard of that in a modern day context. About the closest we get to that level of heightened emotion is on Oprah, “I read your email and was moved, here is free stuff!” *insert screams and tears from the audience*.

Paul here is offer a far more valuable salve. He is also operating with far greater risks:

And now I know that none of you will ever see my face again – everyone I went about preaching the kingdom to. Therefor… be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock that the Holy Spirit has appointed you to as overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which He purchased with His own blood.

You an almost hear the agony as Paul writes this, aware that his work will cost him his life soon. He is reconciled with this fact, “But I count my life no value to myself, so that I may finish my course and my ministry”. His emotional imploring juxtaposes so starkly with my attitude of dispassionate satire.

I think, like the rest of the Western World, I too have been so overwhelmed by – well, everything – that I have found myself increasingly dehydrated. The steak is now beef jerky, if you will. Paul has shown how hydrated men can be when basking in the cool waters of God’s word. I need to get my swimmers on.

Acts 19: They took our Jobs!: 60/365

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Sometimes Southpark really does it for me.

I know, I know… before anyone takes out pitchforks  to demonise me for liking Southpark, I’d like an opportunity to explain why. I’ll admit, as a teenage I loved the crassness of it – hey, I was immature like almost any other teenage boy you’ll ever meet. Then it went of the boil for me. There were several seasons where I wasn’t interest at all in Cartman’s selfish exploits. I guess I was growing up. Or perhaps Southpark just took a while longer than me to mature.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to start preaching on the virtues of Southpark as a cultural artifice or anything like that. However, I do think that Southpark has improved immeasurably since Trey Parker and Matt Stone turned their attentions moreso towards satire than crass. A couple of their episodes really stand out for me: their snide critiques on logic structures within almost every major religion (especially Scientology); their double episode on Stan dealing with depression; their wonderfully irreverential exploration of the global financial crisis as told by Stan trying to return a Margarita Maker; and, finally, their exploration of mass hysteria and intolerance towards ‘others’ coined in the beautiful phrase “They took our jobs”.

Acts 19 feels a little similar to this last episode. To recap, the Southpark episode starts with people from the future returning to 2008 via a portal. They are welcomed, at first. After all they come from such a dreadful place that they are happy to do menial low-paid jobs like flipping burgers and cleaning. After all, they are happy to be paid next to nothing as it is better than where they came from. The problem (for the original inhabitants of Southpark) happens when they start to undercut workers for mainstream jobs. People from the future continue to flood in and become white-collar professionals. This is when the refrain “They took our jobs” starts, and never seems to recede.

It is interesting that, when Paul spends time preaching in Ephesus, it is also financial self-interest that causes people to revolt. Specifically, we are introduced to Demetrius a silversmith whose livelihood relies on the production of metal idols. He quickly realises that:

our prosperity is derived from this business. You both see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, this man Paul has persuaded and misled a considerable number of people by saying that gods made by hand are not gods! So not only do we run the risk that our business may be discredited, but also that the very temple of the great goddess Artemis may be despised and her magnificence to the verge of ruin.

There are many things that are interesting in this statement. The first is that self-interested denial wasn’t invented with the GFC or even recent Goldman Sachs Op-Eds. The second, and by far more important, is to look at the way that Demetrius interacted with Paul’s arguments. He uses emotive language stating that Paul not only “persuaded” but also “misled” hordes of people. No worries, how does he intend to prove this misleading? This is where the problem lies. He doesn’t. Demetrius doesn’t engage with the content of what Paul is preaching, rather he goes on to explore the consequences of Paul’s lessons to show its fault. Foremost, it is going to hurt his business. Subsequently, it will effect the prestige of the goddess whom he makes.

I think this is telling and a valuable reminder for Christians who are interested in apologetics. I can’t remember where I found this, but I remember being mortified at the power that confirmation bias holds in our capacity to reason. Specifically, our emotions are actually intrinsically linked in our capacity to recall. Consequently, the way we feel about information affects the way we catalogue and apply it. I used to think that logic was pure and devoid of emotion. Since having issues losing my memory and learning that it is plausibly related to my emotional duress at various stages of my life, I have come to value emotions with a new respect.

We need to be aware of this in apologetics and prepared to respond to this.

Further, here in Acts we see just how powerful the will of the masses can be. Buoyed by little more than a chant, “Great is Atremis of the Ephesians!” A crowd was whipped into confusion, a malleable frenzy that served the purpose of Demetrius perfectly. As the author of Acts commented:

Meanwhile, some were shouting one thing and some another, because the assembly was in confusion, and most of them did not know why they had come together

Again, this is not just an ancient phenomena. Indeed, in our contemporary society we have this form of control fine-tuned to an art. It is well known how fear manipulates and motivates and, without causing too much controversy, I could easily direct you to how it is being used in our news media on a daily basis.

What is important is not the conspiracy-esque theory that this could be mistaken for. Rather, what is important is to observe how masses can react without unifying leadership. The Senior Chaplain at the school I teach at has a saying that is quite appropriate here, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”. This is exactly what we see here in Acts 19.

I really like the above saying, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”. Only last post I wrote about how I want to be deeply rooted in faith. I want to stand for God like a might oak as opposed to blowing away like chaff. I think there is good warning in this phrase too. We live in a pluralist society that believes that anything stands so long as it works for you. The problem with this worldview is that it infers that the ultimate arbiter on life is… yourself. Yet how often do we see people, ourselves included, just getting it wrong. Even earlier in this chapter of Acts, Paul comes across disciples who have good intentions but have gotten it wrong.

We haven’t even heard there is a Holy Spirit,

They replied to Paul’s simple question. They needed guidance. They needed correction.

Our choice is simple, we can fall into the confusion of the mob. We can be swayed by rhetorical chants and the influences of others (whilst all the while ironically pretending that we are still the ultimate arbiter). Or, we can acknowledge that there is a right way that is given from a perfect authority. Do the humble thing of submitting to it. And see the woods from the trees.

There it is. We can bemoan those who “took our jobs” because money is the only tangible evaluator we can find in this world. Or we can focus on the truth.

Acts 17: Turning the World Upside-Down: 57/365

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For lack of a better phrase, I’ve been thinking about how to brand the Christian message more intentionally. I started to articulate my thoughts during a reflection on Acts 15 and this chapter has brought me back to this line of thinking.

My thoughts thus far have built on a series of reasoned assumptions:

  1. Paul’s actions in teaching the gospel demonstrates that the good news should be culturally relevant in its presentation. He reasons Jewish law with the Jews, is like one “without that law” to the Gentiles, and even whilst in Athens uses the Greeks religiosity as a segue for the Gospel.
  2. My current western culture, that I engage with on a daily basis, operates on two foundational principles: pluralism and expressive individualism. As I paraphrased previously, I believe our culture can be surmised in the following: “Feel free to be whoever you want, so long as: it makes you happy; and, you don’t judge me for my own individualism”
  3. My culture’s current god is the god of fun and recreation. If you consider a god as the person or ideal whom you primarily devote your time, attention, affection, and resources to; then the nature of our ‘Church of Fun’ becomes quite clear. Fun and enjoyment is what we strive for. Happiness is the ultimate arbiter and judge of the quality of our lives.
  4. Given all this, we need to be careful that we do not conform to culture. Rather, everybody has needs that they try to fulfill culturally, our aim should be to show how Christianity satisfies these needs most completely.

Now there are challenges to these assumptions. If we do live in a pluralistic society then it is exceedingly difficult to clearly preach the belief of owning ‘the truth’. Indeed, as the Jews accused the apostles, we are presenting a message that will “turn the world upside down”. It is interesting that, in this scenario, in order to rebuff the power of Paul’s preaching the Jews do not turn to inconsistencies within his teaching, but to culture:

They are all acting contrary to Caesar’s decrees

It is interesting that this referral to culture occurs even with the supposedly broad-minded Athenians whom “spent their time on nothing else but hearing or telling something new”. They are able to discuss philosophically broad topics, and are intrigued by Paul’s “new teaching”; however, it is once a cultural/worldly maxim is challenged (resurrection from the dead) that Paul’s reception begins to sour.

Now my fourth dot point is one that I only added since reflecting on this passage. Specifically, I believe it is important to be culturally relevant without conforming the message of the gospel to our culture. Further, I noticed that each time Paul taught, he sought to address the human needs that people sought to fulfill within their culture. What I mean is this: to the Jews – people who strived continually to seek the fulfillment of the law – he demonstrated how Christ ably fulfilled the law on their behalf. He identified their preoccupied need and demonstrated how the Scriptures fulfilled it.

Another example, to the Athenians – those who sought clarity of the existential nature of their world (so much so that they had an idol to “an unknown God”) – he did this by clearly demonstrating the role of God in our world and how we may relate to him. Paul used the scriptures to demonstrate how Christ ably fulfilled their need for purpose and reason.

Given this, I am challenged to think of what our needs our in our Western society. What dark holes in our sole do we strive to fill, or cauterise, via our culture. Now this is a series of in-depth posts on their own but I think we have a need for community and for acceptance. Community as, as the pace of our modern society strains our relationships, we turn increasingly to technology to enable us to “be together” even when we can’t “be together”. And acceptance as, at the core of the ‘don’t judge me’ and desire to express ourselves, we just wish to be accepted without needing to conform. We’ve rebelled against the conformity that has defined prior generations.

I need to dwell on this more to see if this hypothesis holds water; however, it if does then it holds major ramifications in the ways I should be thinking about presenting the gospel to others and even to the nature of our church life. I’m not sure if the universal acceptance by virtue of God’s inclusion is realised in our Sunday meetings. I don’t know if our filial bonds that we acknowledge by talking of God as our “father” and similar nomenclature like “brothers and sisters in Christ” is realised in our community. I seldom go out of my way to see church members in the way I do my family.

I most definitely don’t welcome newcomers like a potential new brother. I don’t do enough to turn their world upside-down on its expectations to help them feel surprisingly included.

Joshua 1: Perched on the Tip of my Tongue: 43/365

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I used to get really angry and frustrated when an overt emphasis was placed on committing scripture to memory. This frustration was hidden when I listened to sermons an much more overt when I struggled to run memory verse games for the youth group. In truth, I am an intelligent guy and used to succeeding at things, but I have an abysmal memory and got continually annoyed at my inability to commit things to memory.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about the pub conversation version of a bad memory when I’m saying it just to start a conversation. I’m talking about struggling to remember anything longer than a couple of months ago type of bad memory – including my wedding day.

Consequently, when I read the following lines, my initial reaction was one of frustration:

Above all, be strong and very courageous to carefully observe the whole instruction My servant Moses commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right or the left, so that you will have success wherever you go. This book of instruction must not depart from your mouth; you are to recite it night and day so that you may carefully observe everything written in it. For then you will prosper and succeed in everything you do.

It seems to me like it is pretty important to be able to remember. Frustrating stuff.

After reading this again, though, I think I am slowly coming around to the idea. I wouldn’t say I’ve warmed to it, but I can recognise the benefits of it. In short, I believe a lot of it comes down to discursive power.

What I mean by this is, the way you narrate the world affects the way you see and interact with it. Our discourse can, in effect, conjure a bubble which may clarify or distort events and ideas so such an extent that it can hide certain values from us entirely. Take the example of the economist. This individual is most likely trained in Keynesian economics and is used to rationalising world events in terms of their impact on the markets. A flood occurs in a region, they are hasty to consider the impact on industry and agriculture. Consequentially, they be be tardy to consider the personal cost of such an event.

Equally, a poet sees a field of sunflowers. Fueled by their knowledge of romantic poetry they’ll view these flowers in a vastly different way to an actuarialist. Now I know these are cliched examples and draw broad generalisations but hopefully you can see the gist of what I’ve been contemplating.

Perhaps one final, more specific example, will help cement this idea: A friend of mine had a missionary from Central Africa stay at his house. Now his house is by no means opulent. It is comfortable, and spacious, but – by Australian standards – it is not vast nor over-the-top. By Central African standards, however, it was bamboozling that only one family lived in a multi-bedroom house.

Here is where the story gets cute. The missionary noticed another house outside, near the front of the property. “Who lives in that house”, they inquired. My friend had to think fast, what language could you use to describe a garage? His solution, “It is a house for my car”. The missionary’s face lit up, and they burst out in laughter. What a foreign concept, a house for a car!? As my friend later recounted to me, “I’m sure glad she didn’t see the shed out the back, how would I explain a house for the tools?”

The premise of these examples is our language, and our lifestyles, impact on the way we see our world. The shed is still a shed, but we’ll see it in vastly different ways according to what influences our worldview. It is a bit like experiential blinkers or glasses.

Given this, and given the deluge of secular data that we consume on a daily basis (don’t believe me, stop a take a look at the branding in your room at the moment. Don’t forget to consider clothes and electronics too!) then it makes sense why we’d need to be particularly vigilant with God’s word to ensure we don’t “turn from it to the right or the left”.

 My problem is that my memory is shoddy, which makes it hard to practice what I preach. I think, at the moment, that the response to this is the fact that I’m not just engaging with culture, but God’s living word. A word that has been promised to never return empty.
At least, that is what I’m banking on at the moment!