The Bible and Culture

For years I was under the impression (through no one’s fault but my own) that Christianity had a responsibility to oppose culture. Culture was typically bad, and using the bible, we’re going to fix it.

I open up with this because I want to clearly express to anyone reading that this is an unhealthy way to view culture, Christianity, and the bible.

There are also voices out there who claim the bible transcends culture, and that’s why it is timeless in its truth.

this position I have less problems with, but it still doesn’t sit right. If the bible is essentially beyond culture, how in the world does anyone in the world understand it? (cue the people who go, “We’re not of this world!” which is true, but we are in it)

Another position, the best one, in my view, is that the bible has a cyclical relationship with culture.

See, culture is defined as the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of human intellect regarded collectively.

All of these things are given to humans by God, and human agency allows us collectively to form culture and continuously influence each other.

The bible is a form of what Christians call divine revelation, which is revelation given to humans by God, who transcends human culture but does not disregard it.

Right away some of you are going, “See!? the Bible does transcend culture!”

Hold on a minute. God’s revelation comes in more ways than just the bible. Here’s what happens.

Humans are given revelation by God, maybe through God speaking to them, through prophetic witness, through angelic messengers, or some other way. These revelations utilized ancient cultures to frame the context in which they were given.

Here’s an example: Covenants are all over the bible. God makes a covenant with Noah (Gen. 8:20-9:17), with Abraham (Gen. 12-17), and with Moses and Israel (Ex. 19-34), Laban makes one with Jacob (Gen. 31:44-50), God makes a covenant with David (2 Sam. 7), and so on.

Covenants were one of the most widespread practices in ancient cultures. They were a way of creating family-like relationships beyond natural family. Major nations established covenants with smaller people groups (called vassals) all the time. This was visualized for the parties involved by taking an animal, dismembering it, placing it on the ground, and having both parties pass between the pieces. This was to show what would happen to the person who broke the covenant.

God did not disregard the powerful practice of covenant-making when he entered into a relationship with humans, rather he worked within the cultural context and operated in covenants as well (see Gen. 15:17).

So, here’s the process broken down:

God creates the universe, including humanity.

Humanity creates culture.

God divinely communicates something sensible to humans within human culture.

Humans then take the influence from God’s revelation and use it to reform culture.

Culture shifts and changes.

God divinely intervenes again, this time within the context of where culture has shifted, and gives new revelation.

The cycle repeats.

The bible is a collection of divine revelations given by God to humans within the context of their culture, giving the bible and culture a cyclical relationship where one impacts the other.

This does not mean culture in any way has authority over the bible. It simply means that culture helps us understand the bible because culture helped us receive divine revelation from God, the same way culture helps us receive anything.

Without culture, we wouldn’t be able to understand anything. That’s why God gave us culture.

When you see the world getting increasingly chaotic and confusing, don’t blame or fear culture. Instead, ask how this moment in culture can help strongly communicate God’s divine revelation, and pray for God to move within culture to powerfully display his truth, love, grace, and kingdom to shape this world into his good created world once again.

God’s Promises in Unlikely Places

Admit it. There are sections of the Bible that you dread reading because the immediate value of the scripture passage is not apparent, so you glaze over it, or skip it altogether. Genealogies and levitical laws are the most common of these passages. We know they exist for a reason, but do I want to be that person who figures out what that reason is? I’ll let some bible scholar do that and appreciate John 3:16 over here.

Well, I’d like to highlight one of these passages for you and share something amazing from it. You know all those gross chapters in the Book of Leviticus where God writes commands that deal with animal blood, food laws, and women waiting outside the camp after childbirth?

There are incredible promises for your future in those chapters.

What?! Crazy right? But watch this.

In Leviticus Chapter 12, after a woman gives birth to a child, she shall “not touch any consecrated thing nor enter the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over.” (12:4) Passages like this can be difficult to read because we’re all subject to evolutionary social morality. This just sounds cruel.

But an important thing to understand about “purification” in the Old Testament is that it is not dealing with vague spiritual taboos from thousands of years ago. It deals specifically with worship. If a person is “unclean,” they are removed from God’s holy presence, and they cannot do what they were created to do, worship and enjoy God’s intimate presence, until they are somehow made clean again.

This isn’t just about blood and rituals. Stick with me here.

There is a remarkable similarity between the middle chapters of Leviticus and the beginning of Genesis, where God creates all things. In the creation account, Adam and Eve are in the garden, spending intimate time in worship with God (Genesis 1-2). As soon as they sin, they are removed from the garden (Gen 3:6-7; 23-24) and thus removed from God’s presence, and cannot worship Him intimately. There is remarkable similarity in the wording of these passages. When we are “unclean,” we are unable to be with God in true worship, until something makes us clean again. Adam and Eve could not worship God in the garden, and Israel cannot worship God in His tabernacle. Both must be made clean again. Both locations, the garden, and the tabernacle symbolize God’s presence with humans, and in both places, God rejects human presence due to uncleanliness. The goal of creation in Genesis 1 and 2 is the worship of God. The goal of the laws in Leviticus 11 and 12 is the worship of God as well.

In Genesis 1 and 2, God creates animals, birds, sea creatures, creeping creatures, and then humanity. In Leviticus 11 and 12, God deals with sacrifices and food preparation concerning animals, then birds, then sea creatures, then rituals regarding humanity.

The Levitical Laws are revealed in the same manner the Creation Account in Genesis is revealed. Why?

Because the same blessings God granted us in creation He promises to restore to us in covenant!

This passage is intentionally written to show God’s promise to restore humanity in relationship with Him through cleansing. The author of these books wrote this because God always planned to make us clean again and allow us to worship Him like we were destined to from the beginning! Just as God purposefully created a beautiful world where we could spend time with Him, so He purposefully crafts a covenant where we can be restored to Him through purification.

So here we are in Leviticus, talking about bloody childbirth (literally) and how it causes one to be unclean. But the word for childbirth in Leviticus 12:2 in Hebrew is “seed,” and it’s the same word used in Genesis 3:15, where God promises to put enmity between the serpent and future human children. In other words, God promises to eventually overcome evil through the “seed” of humanity, which will trample upon the head of the serpent. God’s promise to fix what is broken will come through human pregnancy, which will one day result in the purification of all mankind, restoring their intimate dwelling with God. It is from this same promise that God purifies the entire world through a human, Jesus Christ, through blood sacrifice on the cross, making us, the unclean, clean again, and able to enter into the presence of God unashamed and free to worship Him, just as we were designed to do from the beginning of creation.

The similarities continue in Leviticus when God commands cleansing laws concerning skin issues and diseases (Leviticus 13-14). God also covers the shame of Adam and Eve after their sinful fall using animal hides (literally skins in Hebrew; Genesis 3:21). I won’t go further into those passages, but look them up for yourself and recognize the parallels between Genesis’s early chapters and Leviticus.

The bottom line is that God’s promise to restore you and keep you in close relationship with Him is firmly rooted throughout the Bible. Hold fast to them. Cling to them. Don’t let anyone try to remove them from your heart.

This small, simple passage about ritual purification regarding childbirth is a promise that echoes throughout all of eternity that God will make us, the rebellious, unclean, sinful wretches that we are, purified and able to enter into His presence once again.

Don’t rush through these chapters in the Bible. They may seem odd and out of place in our contemporary context, but there are powerful promises in them that reveal the hope of a good God who redeems His beloved creation, you and me.

Sexual Immorality, the Human Body, and Community Holiness.

Paul’s first address to the church in Corinth articulates a unique theology of the human body and its purposes in God’s inaugurated kingdom on earth. In examining 1st Corinthians 6:12-20,  Paul addresses boundaries and abuses of freedom in the Christian life (6:12-13), God’s purpose for the human body in Christ (VS 14-20), the sinful practice of sexual immorality against both the body and the Lord (VS 14-18), and communal holiness for the collective church as Christ’s body (15-20). This paper will endeavor to explain and support the position that Paul’s theology of the human body, explicitly expressed and supported in this passage, was unique in Paul’s day and is coherent and consistent within greater Pauline literature. It will begin by addressing the wider issue at stake in Paul’s entire letter to the Corinthians.