▼

1/21/2010

Andy Crouch on Creating Culture

"Our posture is our learned but unconscious default position, our natural stance. It is the position our body assumes when we aren't paying attention, the basic attitude we carry through life. Appropriate gestures toward particular cultural goods have become, over time, part of the posture Christians unconsciously adopt toward every cultural situation and setting."

These necessary gestures that become various postures are:
  • Condemning Culture
  • Critiquing Culture
  • Copying Culture, and
  • Consuming Culture.

What Crouch suggests is that we use these as "gestures" at appropriate times, but that the call of the Christian (according to Genesis 1:28ff and Genesis 2:15) is to Create Culture.



Source: jubilee.tv, 2009 Jubilee Conference

4 comments:

  1. Ann1/23/2010 12:28 PM

    I just recently realized that the cultural mandate was made before the fall of man. We were given "dominion" before we fell. I just wonder how our role changed, if at all, because of the fall?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bob Robinson1/24/2010 1:14 PM

    Ann,
    Wow, excellent question.
    Here are a few thoughts:
    1. The original mandate was never rescinded and has always been in effect. We see throughout human history that we have "created culture." The dominion of humanity has brought about great advances that have benefited both man and the rest of creation.

    2. The Fall, however, has warped humanity's motivations and purposes. Instead of "serving and taking care of" the creation (Genesis 2:15), we have more often exploited it for our own selfish desires.

    3. However, the redemption found in Christ is meant to re-blossom the imago Dei in humanity, so that our motives are realigned with God's motives. We are able to glorify God as his image-bearers because of Christ. We can, therefore, more purely create culture because of the grace of God found in Christ.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ann1/27/2010 3:17 PM

    Thanks Bob.
    I'm still trying to wrap my brain around this. Some things that are bothering me is the fact that Adam was able to talk to and name the animals pre-curse, but post-curse that ability is gone. A deep shift occurred. Just thinking out loud.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Bob Robinson1/27/2010 7:08 PM

    Ann,
    I always took that as simply because that original job was finished. Humans have been naming animals ever since: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_classification

    ReplyDelete