On Thursday, May 31st, 2007, at Mars Hill Church's West Seattle campus, Pastor James Harleman gave the fifth of a five-part lecture series called "Christianity and..." James' topic was Christianity and Culture.

What is Culture?

"By the word culture, we have to understand the sum total ways of living developed by a group of human beings and handed on from generation to generation. Central to culture is language. The language of a people provides the means by which they express their way of perceiving things and of coping with them. Around that center one would have to group their visual and musical arts, their technologies, their law, and their social and political organization."

"And one must also include in culture, and as fundamental to any culture, a set of beliefs, experiences, and practices that seek to grasp and express the ultimate nature of things, that which gives shape and meaning to life, that which claims final loyalty. I am speaking, obviously, about religion. Religion—including the Christian religion--is thus part of culture."
Lesslie Newbigin

Why do we create culture?
God is our Creator and He made us creative to create culture (Genesis 1:28). The cultural mandate remains in effect even though sin has entered the world (Genesis 9:7). People create culture simply because they bear the image of God the Creative Creator.

• Culture is the tool and trade of worship – culture-making is the manifestation of our worship
  • We are all worshippers – everyone worships
    • (Harold Best, Unceasing Worship)
• Culture reflects who/what we worship
• Culture reveals our sinfulness
• Culture is the medium through which Jesus reaches us (incarnation)
• The Church – the true church - is the place where the gospel intersects culture

Why does culture seem corrupted?
As culture is the tool and trade of worship, we experience a cultural exchange when we exchange suppress the truth of God and exchange it for a lie. This permeates the culture we create. The values of each culture, the language of each culture, the social mores of each culture are built by people with distorted filters.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
Romans 1:18 – 25

Personally, each one of us engages in this idolatrous cultural exchange due to our own sin, and exacerbated by the culture we are shaped by. We support and create culture that glorifies idolatry. These cultures act as incorrect lenses that distort our worldview, feeding off of our own deceitful hearts.

Thankfully, the Gospel of Jesus Christ restores a Christian's worldview, enabling someone who lives for Jesus to engage culture and reject, receive, or redeem it for God's glory.

Cultural Engagement:
Understanding our Culture and Redefining Entertainment

Acts 17 – Paul's sermon

• Paul walks the streets, examines idols, reads poetry – he knows the culture of his audience.
• Paul unashamedly exploits the culture and its tools for the sake of the gospel.
• Likewise, Christianity must change contextually to address its audience
  • Our commission must involve:
    • plundering a culture for its contextual tools
    • entering a culture and using its own weapons against it
    • overcoming enemies by turning their own devices toward Christ
    • we should always be looking to pillage

Living in an Entertainment Culture

entertainment
Pronunciation: "en-t&r-'tAn-m&nt
Function: noun

1. the act of entertaining
2. archaic : MAINTENANCE, PROVISION
3. something diverting or engaging

en-ter-tain
Pronunciation: "en-t&r-'tAn
Function: verb

1. archaic : MAINTAIN b obsolete : RECEIVE
2. to show hospitality to
3. to keep, hold, or maintain in the mind : to receive and take into consideration

Where is "mindless" a part of entertainment here?
Entertainment is not evil. Webster's definition defines two postures toward entertainment: one is "diversion" and the other is "engagement". Arguing that "It's just entertaining" is not an acceptable answer to "Why do you like this?" "It's just entertaining" is a euphemism for "me not think".

• Why does it push your entertainment buttons?
• What is it engaging within you, or diverting you FROM?
• What is "entertainment" to a Christian?

More to the point, what should entertainment be to a Christian? Diversion or Engagement? Should entertainment disconnected from Mission? Is Sabbath to be mindless?

If entertainment is for self-indulgence and absorption, then we should probably just stick with our Bible. Sadly, that would belie the purpose of our Bible. If we're truly living biblical lives, "mission" and "entertainment" should be synonymous.

Entertainment should not be about feeling happy either.
Things that entertain (things that we entertain in our minds) should distress, impress, disturb, encourage, convict, excite, and more. Scripture certainly does this, and hopefully chief above all other things; our interactions with others certainly does; the daily newspaper most definitely does; I would think that television and film and video games would be very much the same. Depiction does not always mean glorification, and our Bible is the perfect example of this.

Paul was not a cultural couch potato; he was entertained by finding in-roads to the gospel through what he filtered. We must always walk by the Spirit with discernment and choose our battles strategically.

What is "safe" to engage?
Nothing is safe to watch. It disturbs me when Christians follow FCC and MPAA [ratings] guidelines and just assume and consume without discernment. Disney films have terrible philosophy and theology. Some of the "family" films out there contain the most subversive content because they are 95 percent wholesome with a subtle twist. This has always been Satan's most popular tactic.

As a Christian, everything I watch makes me uncomfortable on some level, and it should; something's wrong if it doesn't. Even my Bible makes me uncomfortable in places, because I read about sinners who hurt each other and murderers and rapists and people who rebel against God and don't love Jesus or their neighbor. Many times it makes me uncomfortable because it surfaces similar sinful attitudes in me that I need to repent from. For the Christian, engaging film and media should be much the same way, only with even more discernment because it's not perfect, like Scripture.

Philippians 4:8 is often the "champion verse" of those who say not to watch certain types of movies – or not to watch movies at all. However, they usually omit the surrounding verses.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.

VERSE 7

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

God will guard our hearts and minds
When I walk down the street and see an injustice, I am reminded that my God is a God of justice. When I hear someone profane the name of God in my presence, my mind recalls that God's name is holy. This verse is not talking about our stimulus, it's talking about our life in light of it. It does not mean we are to isolate ourselves so that we are only amidst things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable. To truly pull this off, we would have to leave this world.

The good news is that when we are confronted with bad examples and evil – or when we read or watch a tale that illustrates such – we are equipped by God to think about what is lovely, admirable and excellent in spite of the sinful world around us. That doesn't mean we go rushing in where we know we are weak in our sin, but it does mean that we do not shrink back from the marketplace (physical or ideological) or we have ceased to engage the culture around us like Paul did and cease to be evangelistic because we don't want to be exposed to sinners around us.

The "logical" progression that kills evangelism
What usually happens in evangelical circles is that the Christians shun the popular media because of its content, and concurrently cut themselves off from co-workers and neighbors as a result. Not only do they disconnect from water cooler conversations because they don't know the culture or have any conversational connection, it even becomes "logical" that, if you don't want to be surrounded by fictional characters that are rude and vulgar and blasphemous, you don't want to engage them in real life. Suddenly evangelical Christianity has ceased evangelism because of logic, instead of being biblical and missional like the apostle Paul, not to mention Jesus. The dysfunctional characters in Office Space are the type of people Jesus went and had dinner with.

Can't people just use this as an excuse to engage garbage?
Of course. Some Christians will wave a few verses about their freedom in Christ and that "everything is permissible" so they can watch junk to their wicked heart's content. Others will go even further, declaring themselves missionaries like the apostle Paul in Athens, examining the idols and art of the culture in order to contextualize the gospel message (Acts 17). However, some will abuse this idea to justify watching every chainsaw massacre or a film like Showgirls.

"garbage in, garbage out"
To be blunt, this is not a biblical saying and should be excised from Christian thought. If that saying were applied, we would realistically have to cut ourselves off completely from the world... and even our fallible brothers and sisters in Christ... and ultimately ourselves. We ARE garbage in, being redeemed by Christ, and called to move through this world littered with garbage relying on Him to protect us, proclaiming the redemptive work of Christ so that some will be saved when our Father takes out the trash. Scripturally, we certainly are called to avoid certain things, but this kind of blanket generalization is dangerous and damaging, both in regard to maturing in one's walk and evangelism.

"Everything is permissible for me"–but not everything is beneficial.
"Everything is permissible for me"–but I will not be mastered by anything.
1 Corinthians 6:12

The goal here is that you will not be mastered by something. A practice is certainly not beneficial if it is your master and not God. Here's an interesting tidbit from The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition, 2002 on the definition of the phrase our generation is so familiar with:

garbage in, garbage out: this saying points out the fact that a computer can do only what it is programmed to do and is only as good as the data it receives and the instructions it is given. If there is a logical error in software, or if incorrect data are entered, the result will probably be either a wrong answer or a system crash.

The problem here is that humans are often nowhere near as good as the data we receive and malfunction (sin) despite many good instructions we are given. We fail to glorify the God we know full well we should glorify and Romans illuminates this quite well. Our external stimuli is not what makes us sinful - it is our hearts (Jeremiah 17). It is the sin nature in which we were conceived (Psalm 51). Likewise, it is the power of the Holy Spirit poured into our hearts that enables us to stand against the "flaming arrows of the evil one." Our goal is to put on the armor of God and stand firm in battle (Ephesians 6), not remove ourselves from the battlefield.

I grew up in a church where you didn't even DARE teach the basics of other religions out of fear it might intrigue instead of equip. That type of methodology keeps weak Christians weak and doesn't build them up in their faith. As for whether or not something should be "entertaining one filled with the Holy Spirit", there are some assumptions here. One is that entertainment is allowing something to pour into your mind without discernment - hence the need for it to be "safe", when in fact a mature Christian's engagement of entertainment should always have a missional filter on it. Part of the joy of entertainment for the Christian should BE examining the narrative to see where it's true and where it errs (as any story by man will do BOTH in variant proportion).

The Holy Spirit is there to embolden us as we face the world and help us to stand firm against it; He doesn't reside in us as something we need to coddle. We should avoid doing that which is ungodly, but if we simply avoided everything in our culture that was ungodly we'd be out of the world again and off-mission.

Now, if someone is indulging the detritus out there with their brain turned off, soaking up the influences of the world like a sponge, parroting the platitudes they hear and see, there's an imminent problem; if they have no clue HOW to engage it biblically, avoidance is definitely sound advice... but they should also seek teaching and training to grow OUT of that.

Honesty (and conscience) is the Best Policy
An educated Christian has to be honest with God and themself. One can say they're engaging culture for the cause of Christ and use that noble premise as an excuse to fuel and titillate their sick depravity. A severance - at least a temporary one - for self-examination may be in order for some, and maybe quite a few as things stand right now. For others, seeking teaching and training to turn the hurtful blades of these cultural weapons back on the culture itself is a great way to mature in practical evangelism.

Of course, if simply having sex, rape, bloody murder, adultery, lies, deceit, disembowelment, and even blasphemy depicted were inherently sinful, someone would have to - sooner or later - accuse our Bible of being sinful. I don't think anyone is going to make that claim. Observing sin is completely different from participating in it, whether it's on my TV or out on the street. If I had to cease observing sin, I would turn off my TV... and never leave my house... and never interact with another living soul for the rest of my days. Somehow, I don't think that's the biblical answer.

Scripture calls us to be IN the world, but not OF it. We are NOT called to segregate ourselves into little Christian clusters and create our safe, surrogate culture and stick our heads in the sand and hide from the big bad world. Scripture's language is that of strangers and aliens in foreign lands. We were not called to retreat from the world by creating a safe harbor - Christ has called us to rely on him for our safety as we chart enemy waters. And do not fool yourself - whether we are in the public square or on our living room couch, we are always on the battlefield.

Where should our Sabbath be?
Jesus pulled away from the crowds to rest – was this away from God? His Sabbath, as with ours, is always to be "in the Lord". Christians should always be engaged – eyes open, mind on, on-mission – intentional. Christians should engage life with discernment, and this means both the people they talk to as well as the media they consume. To allow movies and video games and other things to serve as diversion seems at odds with what we profess about joy and hope and satisfaction in this life though Jesus Christ.

Turning to entertainment as your comfort (or escape), apart from relationship with Christ, is idolatrous. Though many Christians will give this lip service, it rarely manifests in lifestyle.

"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God."
1 Corinthians 10:31

How was Jesus Entertained?
Was Jesus "entertained" when he hung out around hookers and tax collectors? Was he "entertained" when he engaged the Pharisees? As he was enjoying each conversation, sifting the right thinking from the detritus, pointing out sin or recognizing the Father's hand moving through someone's life, I think the answer is yes. Was Paul "entertained" reading Athenian poets or navigating their landscape of idols? I think he was. Recognizing hints of the Father - a glimpse of the Savior - amidst all their truly blasphemous crap was surely a joy.

You'll note that I didn't say Jesus was entertained BY the things mentioned, he was entertained BY the engagement - by the experience which was His work for the Father in working WITH them in conversation. Whether or not we're entertained, and how it entertained us, really hinges first and foremost on our initial goal in engaging, whether it's people (directly) or culture (indirectly). When was Jesus ever off-mission? When was he "taking a break" from seeking God? Even his breaks for rest and solitude were focused on God for prayer and refreshment. Sabbath is not about mindless relaxation - it's about taking a break to focus on our Lord. Entertainment is meant for one of two things - diversion or engagement. A Christian should never allow it to "divert" them. They should always be engaging.

If we're taking a "break" from seeking God's face to dally with aspects of culture, we're off-mission. The world dictates that there are appropriate times to use cultural tools (movies, video-games) to distract us from the burden of our lives... but this thinking is not biblical. Relaxing in front of the television because you had a hard day at work is one thing - that can be fine. However, if your walk with Christ is a burden you need a secular, "mindless" break from... something is horribly amiss.

For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…
2 Corinthians 10:3-5

Where do you still have "household gods" that compromise your walk with Jesus?

Christians must to do the following as needed:

• steep themselves in scripture, because the reason they're hiding from culture is that their foundation is weak.
• renew their commitment to engage culture and cease any intentional or unintentional disengagement.
• repent of a self-righteous seclusion from the world that has impeded their gospel work.
• admit where they've compromised the gospel and let culture rule their time, treasure and talents with no connection to mission.

However, what this should NOT be:

• What this challenge should NOT be is an excuse for cultural gluttons to justify their feast, declaring media saturation or idolatrous focus on business or politics as "working for Jesus". Simply Declaring it "missional" won't suddenly alter that fact.
• This should also not serve as a gauntlet pressuring Christians admittedly weak in specific areas to throw themselves headlong against their toughest temptations.

The Apostle Paul's mandate:

Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me--put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.
Philippians 4: 9

What we see in Paul:

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, 'To the unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for "'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, "'For we are indeed his offspring.'
Acts 17:22-28

I'm sure Paul was entertained by His engagement of pagan poetry (or the poets themselves), marked particularly in the instant when the Holy Spirit helped him discern a line he could parallel with biblical thinking ("we are His offspring"). I can imagine the intriguing smirk and raised eyebrow when he spotted that altar to the Unknown God and realized God had once again provided another connection point.

For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.
1 Corinthians 9:19–23