Defining The Playing Field

Culture, starts somewhere. Every racial, religious, social, or geographical culture has it’s origins in one person, one family, one clan, etc., that values, preserves, & modifies their nascent society.

If we are to define something, we must go back to it’s origins and that origin is stamped with the character of the individual(s) propagating their cultural norms. Character then, is said to be, “the complex of mental and ethical traits marking and often individualizing a person, group, or nation <the character of the American people>” (Merriam-Webster). What we value is derived from our character. And the definition of character is uncannily similar to the one of culture, telling us that they are sisters in a family of terms.

Probably no other influence upon mankind has been as poorly understood & woefully misjudged as to it’s effects in the lives of humans through the centuries as the ubiquitous pluralism of culture. Culture, by Webster’s definition, is said to be,

“the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time <popular culture> <southern culture>”.

What we are going to examine is the premise that culture shapes worship: if our culture is not right, then our worship is not either. First though, we need to more thoroughly define what exactly culture is.

From the director of the International Studies Abroad at the University San Diego, website, on the question of what is culture, we read this:

Culture...

influences our expectations of what is appropriate or inappropriate
is learned
reflects the values of a society
frames our experiences
provides us with patterns of behavior, thinking, feeling, and interacting

In summary, culture affects every aspect of daily life - how we think and feel, how we learn and teach, or what we consider to be beautiful or ugly.

They also utilize the concept of an iceberg (common in almost all cultural studies I’ve researched) as depicting the true nature of culture, as we see in the figure below:

Please look at Fig.1 carefully. It is important to recognize that culture is far more than the imprinted sum of scrutinized National Geographic articles on aboriginal tribes; or the liking of certain foods or music tasted or heard in “Chinatown” for instance. Culture, is vast influence.

Even along with other variations on this definition, we can say broadly that culture is the social liquid we are immersed in, the communal transforming air our lungs inhale that finds its way into every cell of our being from the day we’re born to the day we die. Whether it is the micro-culture of our immediate family, or job, or school, or city; or the macro-culture of religion, or country, or race, etc., it shapes us, molds us, and fashions us imperceptibly day by day, and year by year.

Like the proverbial dandelion flower with its stem placed in water dyed red, we soak up the reddish liquid of culture unknowingly and exhibit its converting effects for all to see; all the while believing we are free and untainted and capable of objective reasoning.

If there is one thing that the Bible and conversion has taught me that my former evolutionary world-view did not, it is this:

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer.17:9; see 5T, p.332) And Jer.10:23 as well: “It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.”

Not only culture, but our very inherent carnal nature bias us toward certain end results. This is where culture starts. We are puppets on strings, and the sooner we come to grips with this, the better we will be. We are not “on top of it”; rather, we are under the influence of it. See for instance, this eye-opening study from Ohio State.

This is also what makes man’s wisdom wholly inadequate without God to fathom “what is Truth?”(John 18:38). Relativity marks the history of culture; though there may be a few timeless ‘truths’ that have weathered the test of time, culture is no respecter of persons when it comes to massaging ‘truth’ to fit its vacillating populous. Absolute truth is antithetical to culture, for reasons that will be addressed later on.

It is one reason why in Jn.2:24-25, the Bible says of Jesus, “But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.” The Jewish culture had its draw-backs too.

Ellen White comments:

In the days of Christ the town or city that did not provide for the religious instruction of the young was regarded as under the curse of God. Yet the teaching had become formal. Tradition had in a great degree supplanted the Scriptures. True education would lead the youth to "seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him." Acts 17:27. But the Jewish teachers gave their attention to matters of ceremony. The mind was crowded with material that was worthless to the learner, and that would not be recognized in the higher school of the courts above... In their search after knowledge, they turned away from the Source of wisdom. The great essentials of the service of God were neglected. The principles of the law were obscured. That which was regarded as superior education was the greatest hindrance to real development. Under the training of the rabbis the powers of the youth were repressed. Their minds became cramped and narrow {DA 69}.

Jesus understood that the only way He would be able to fulfill His purpose in life born as a man with 4,000 inherited years of genetic degeneration and totally inundated by the devil’s social engineering experiment in Jewish as well as Gentile culture, was to live “..not by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” (Matt.4:4). This is also why Jesus was not taught in the schools of the prophets of His day; tradition & culture had in a great degree supplanted the Bible (John 7:15).

With the pagans as well, it was their culture that shaped their worship. Worship is one of the visible demonstrations of the underlying influence of culture; the iceberg illustration.

As in Jesus’s time, so in ours, the culture we live in, irrespective of social status or majority acceptance does not have the ability to “..lead us into all Truth...”. In fact, it will only aid & abet our deceitful hearts.

There is no one on the planet, not Christians, not Muslims; not men, not women; not saint, not sinner; not conservative, not liberal, who has not drunk the Kool-Aid of culture. At the risk of seeming mellow-dramatic, it must be said: ALL of us are puppets on strings, manipulated by some form of culture & heredity. None of us has the ability or the intelligence to reach around and grab it by the throat and throttle its hold on us.

There must be an alternative culture to correct the warping of our reasoning powers. Stay tuned for Part 2!