Conclusion: Preaching to Create Culture
Cultural Architecture: MEANING AND PRAXIS
I have attempted to explore an alternative to “warfare” as the paradigm for cultural engagement in preaching. My premise is that the church can have its most powerful impact on culture not by fighting it, ignoring it, or even merely conversing with it, but by presenting it with an alternative—a culture that embodies God’s truth in consistent practice. I contend that a key player in this process must be the preacher who intentionally and carefully constructs a culture that reflects truth both in its patterns of meaning and its strategies for action.
Neglecting either axis in our preaching would result in a less viable and effective culture. The preacher who emphasizes the axis of meaning (stories and precepts) to the neglect of praxis may nurture hearers who have a good grasp of a biblical worldview, but an alternative culture will not have emerged. A preacher who presents a strategy for action (symbols and praxis) without providing the foundations of meaning may have, for a time, an active and well-behaved congregation, but signs of decay and deterioration will inevitably appear. A viable alternative culture will be marked by right belief as well as right action.
For the sake of practical application, I would offer two examples of how this rationale might work itself out in our engagement of culture in two very different areas: environmental conservation and human sexuality.
Test case #1: Christians and the Environment
Secular environmentalists have a culture that includes all of the elements we have discussed. This culture has a story: The earth has developed over billions of years, through a process of evolution and chance, to a fortuitous yet delicate balance of systems that sustains life as we know it. Environmentalist culture also offers answers to the world view questions:
Who are we? We are human beings, highly evolved organisms, who have appeared at just the right place and the right time for our existence to be possible.
Where are we? We are on mother earth, a planet of exquisite beauty and delicate balance.
What is wrong? Human beings have ravaged our planet, throwing it out of balance and threatening the existence of life as we know it.
What is the solution? We must change our ways, and treat our planet with care, so that she may recover and sustain our children and grandchildren as she has our ancestors and ourselves.
The key symbols for secular environmental culture are the earth itself, and possibly the scientists who study it. The proposed praxis is an aggressive program of conservation that includes recycling, limiting or eliminating use of fossil fuels, promotion of alternative and sustainable sources of energy, political activism, observance of Earth Day, and any number of other initiatives.
How should the Christian community respond to this growing and influential culture? While we may see nothing wrong with recycling our paper goods or buying a more efficient automobile, the axis of meaning is incompatible with our own world view. One solution is simply to adopt the praxis of environmentalism, since we may actually agree that the earth is in danger, and it seems right to do so. We might even be motivated by the desire to give a good witness to our environmentalist friends, not to offending them unnecessarily so that we may share the gospel with them. However, if we stop here, we have not provided a coherent alternative to which they can respond. We have only responded with a gesture of “copying” the culture. We have created nothing.
A more consistent response would be to begin with our story: God created the heavens and the earth and everything in it. Seeing that it was good, he entrusted it to the stewardship of human beings, whom he had created in his own image. We will also offer different answers to the world view questions:
Who are we? We are the handiwork of God, created in his image.
Where are we? We are in the world that He also created and entrusted to us.
What is wrong? The world is marked in every way by our own sin—spiritually, socially, materially. Our selfish, wasteful and abusive lifestyle has scarred God’s creation as well as our own lives.
What is the solution? Jesus has redeemed us, transformed us, cleansed us. He has recreated us and given us the ability no longer to live selfishly, but to become the stewards of his creation that he intended for us to be. All of this anticipates yet another creative act of God: a new heaven and a new earth.
The symbols of a Christian environmentalist will include the symbols of redemption we have discussed, with perhaps the added symbol of God’s creation as an alternative to the evolutionary vision of the planet Earth. In praxis, there may be very little difference between the culture of a Christian and that a of secular environmentalist. However, the meaning to which the praxis points is entirely different, presenting a genuine cultural alternative.
The world needs to see in the church such a robust culture of creation care, built upon God’s story and expressed in the earnest pursuit of faithful stewardship. For such a culture to grow, preachers will need to cultivate a theologically-based worldview of creation.
Test case #2: Christians and Sexual Ethics
Our response to prevailing culture surrounding issues of human sexuality, however, will involve both a different system of meaning and a different praxis. The temptation of the “warrior” preacher in the face of contemporary sexual mores and all the societal evils they create might be to focus primarily on the praxis—to condemn sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, and abortion. This gesture of “condemning” culture would in fact be appropriate. However, if we fail to offer the foundation of meaning for a different praxis, we have not offered a cultural alternative. Far from creating culture, we have merely succeeded in portraying ourselves as condemning moralizers who hold to outdated standards of behaviour.
We would do well first to understand the “axis of meaning” behind the sexual practice that we find so offensive. Contemporary sexuality tells a story of a humanity that exists essentially for personal fulfillment. In this story, our sexuality is a primary source not only of the pleasure we seek, but also of our very identity. This story leads to some very specific answers to worldview questions:
Who are we? We are sexual beings, evolved to the point that sex is not only a path to procreation, but also a key source of personal fulfillment, pleasure, and identity.
Where are we? We are in a world filled with other sexual beings who exist for our pleasure.
What is wrong? Anything that limits our free pursuit of sexual fulfillment in whatever way or with whatever person we desire.
What is the solution? Cast off all restraints in the pursuit of sexual fulfillment and pleasure.
When seen through the lens of this “axis of meaning,” the sexual practices we see in the culture around us make perfect sense. Even when people come to the point of experiencing the disappointment, frustration, and damage that a purely selfish sexual lifestyle can bring, they are not likely to choose a different path without a fundamental change in worldview.
For this reason, our engagement with this aspect of our culture needs to begin not with praxis, but with meaning. Our message must begin with the story of a personal God who has created us as relational creatures, for authentic intimacy with him and with others. This story will lead us to different world view answers:
Who are we? We are God’s children, naturally wired to live in meaningful relationship with God and others.
Where are we? We live in a world where true intimacy is possible when we live according to God’s purposes.
What is wrong? We live alienated lives, even as we seek relational fulfillment through merely physical pleasure. We selfishly abuse others and we are abused by them as we seek the intimacy we crave through sexual encounter.
What is the solution? Christ can make us new and restore us to intimacy with God, opening the way to true intimacy with others. We experience our greatest intimacy in the context of greatest commitment to another human being.
The institution of marriage itself stands as the defining symbol for this intimacy, the God-centered ideal for human sexuality. This pattern of meaning will lead to and sustain a praxis that is a distinct and viable alternative to the self-indulgent sexual culture of the world.
Conclusion
Shifting epistemologies and the end of Christendom in the West have called the people of God to a missional posture—to see our culture with missionary eyes, and to engage it with missionary intent. This calling demands that we move beyond cultural warfare, pacifism, and diplomacy. It requires us to engage culture, not as a monolithic and static bloc, but as a dynamic plurality of systems. Warfare, pacifism and diplomacy are inadequate strategies for this task. Cultural condemnation, critique, imitation and consumption may all be appropriate gestures at certain times, but as postures, they fall short of the transformation the gospel requires.
We must create. We must not only address culture; we must be culture. We must build the culture of our communities with the intentionality of an architect. Preachers have the unique opportunity to shape this culture according to a biblical and theological design, defining weekly for God’s people our patterns of meaning and our consequent strategies for action.
We can lay the foundation of the Christian story, erect the structure of a biblical worldview, mix the unifying mortar of our symbolic world, and point to a praxis that offers the world the visible expression of a culture that stands as a viable and coherent alternative to the cultures of the age. A missional people proclaims in word, deed, and product a different way of seeing the world, being in the world, and relating to the creator of the world. If our communities are to become such a people, we preachers must lead the way.
