To many, the mainstream evangelical subculture is a confining ghetto.
Creators, intellectuals, workers, entrepreneurs who would otherwise involve themselves in their callings and in the production and enjoyment of good art, literature, architecture, or cuisine are exhorted to leave aside worldly things and seek those things which are above. While this causes some to become cynical and bitter, others are rescued by brethren who know that God created the world to be enjoyed. While the liberty that these people offer is a true liberty, its basis is often misunderstood. When the right relationship of culture to the faith is misunderstood, the pursuit of culture which was once neglected is not only legitimized, but sacramentalized, often by individuals who do not believe in sacraments!
Is Every-Day Life Sacramental?
There are many Christian voices today who tell us that we need a more sacramental view of life. By this they mean that because God is Creator, we can get to know him by getting to know what he has made. Culture is one window that these Christians use to peer into heaven. There is much to commend in this view. It seeks to emphasize that God is the Author of History as well as of the church, and that the Lordship of Christ extends to all spheres of life. Some distinctions need to be made, however, if we are to avoid drinking to our judgment at the sacrament of culture.
As Christians, we are citizens of two kingdoms. We were born into the world as citizens of the world. This citizenship along with its rights and responsibilities pleases God, for he created the world. (The Bible uses the term world in at least two senses. I am using it exclusively to refer to what was created, and not to the world-system which seeks to defy God.) When we came to faith in Christ, we became citizens of the kingdom of heaven by virtue of the redemption accomplished for us on the cross. Only believers are citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Nevertheless, when we became Christians our citizenship in the world was not revoked, so we share that citizenship with unbelievers.
The message that we are free to engage in cultural tasks (e.g. raising families, building cities, writing books, restoring houses, going to movies, making music) is grounded in our citizenship in the first kingdom, because God created the world and put his stamp of approval on it. We are free to do these things not because we are redeemed, but because like the unbelievers, we are human.
Unfortunately, some people are given the impression that the reason that these activities are open to them is that they are spiritual, because all of life is spiritual. This confuses what God is doing in creation with what he is doing in redemption. Some say that all of life is spiritual. Fine. Now how are we to evaluate our activities in light of this insight? When we view an avant-garde film produced by a brilliant non-Christian director, do we really want to say that this is a spiritual experience? It is one thing to say that it is worthwhile, or even God-pleasing, but does this activity have the same power to bring us into the presence of God as the Word or Sacraments?
The answer has to be, Certainly not! No unregenerate person seeks after God, and even the regenerate do not know how to find him apart from where he has chosen to reveal himself. If an individual is enjoying the presence of God, it is because God revealed himself to that person, and he has revealed his graciousness to us nowhere other than the Word and Sacraments. This is not to rule out movie-going or any other cultural activity. What we do in the world can still be God-pleasing even if it does not contribute to bringing people to God and even if it is not, strictly speaking, “spiritual.”
I am cheered by the fact that of the great literary scholars of this century, C. S. Lewis was able to consider literature to be of little importance in comparison to the Gospel, yet still felt free to throw himself whole-heartedly into this endeavor to enrich his own life and that of others. He saw his calling as that of providing his students with a living specimen of old Western Man, one who knew the old books of the culture intimately, and the lost world they contained. Lewis knew that his painstaking research into Icelandic saga and sixteenth century poetry would contribute to the salvation of nobody, but he did it to the glory of God. It was of little importance in comparison to the gospel, but it was his calling.
The Dangers of Spiritualizing
First, there is even a danger to culture in our insistence that it is sacred, sacramental, or spiritual. How many universities have spoiled the study of literature by not reading it for pleasure but as political and social criticism? The underlying assumption is that nobody would endorse the use of tax-payers’ money for the university to teach people how to enjoy a good book, but they might pay to have their values insulted. Our belief that human creativity must be justified by its importance to the gospel is just a variation on the culture’s general insistence that literature and art serve some higher social purpose. This does not free us to enjoy culture more, for when we use it to another end, it ceases to be what it is.
Second, when we use culture to the wrong end, we endanger not only culture, but ourselves. Luther said of the scholastics and mystics of his time that they used reason and mystical experience as a ladder by which to climb into heaven so that they could peek at God in the nude (the Deus nudus). These men wished to know God as he was in himself, not as he revealed himself in Christ. If God is sought apart from Christ and the scriptures, the God who is found is a severe Judge and a consuming fire. This is because his holy Law, the Law that demands utter moral perfection of all, was written into the fabric of the universe at creation. The Gospel was not.
The heavens declare the glory of God everywhere, always; but God became man in the days of Caesar Augustus in a small village. The message of his grace is found in the scriptures alone. It is not found in the data from a radio telescope at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, nor in the beauty of Paris or the music of Mozart.
Today alongside of reason and mysticism, we see culture being offered as a ladder to heaven. When we are told that we can find God in culture, or that culture can be Christian and sacramental, we must beware. If we do find God in culture, he will be a naked God, a disincarnate God, a judging God. Apart from Scripture, we do not know what lessons to draw from our experience. Instead of considering the lilies of the field and learning that we can trust God to fulfill our need for clothing, we might, like the cannibals, consider the beasts of the field and trust our neighbors to fulfill our need for food. Sooner or later, our ladder to heaven will fall, and the farther up we have climbed, the more secrets of God we have learned from culture, the greater will be our fall.
If we are ever to see God in culture, we had better use scripture as a lens so that we see the right image projected onto the cultural screen. Culture is not a sacrament by which we can grasp hold of God. In order to see culture rightly, we must let God find us through his Word and Sacraments. Then we will know that the God who has created the world is a gracious God, and we can enjoy culture and the world as a gift.
Cultural activity is not spiritual, if by this it is meant that we get close to God by engaging in it. As Christians this ought not bother us. We should not mourn that our ladder to heaven has been taken away, for we need no ladder. God has come down to us. Now we are free to enjoy culture as culture, simply because God has already drawn close to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.
