No one is culturally neutral. We are all enculturated from infancy to grave. To be human is to be cultural, and when Jesus became man, He became cultural. Jesus spoke Aramaic, went to Jewish temples, drank wine, wore sandals and grew a beard…

With a better understanding of culture in place, we can think more carefully about our “engagement” with it. We can be wise, discerning disciples who live out the lordship of Jesus through the power of the gospel in our own cultures.

Read the rest of my new article Credemption

I devoured Philip Roth’s newest novel, The Humbling, in about 180 minutes. This brief novel tells the story of Simon Axler’s fall from thespian fame. For decades Axler held the masses captive with brilliant acting. His glory attracted women, money, and fame. And then one day it was gone. He was on stage and froze, unable to act. The magic disappeared.

The Story

Axler mopes about the house, spins downward into a depression, lands in bed unable to get up. He searches for a reason. Why? Why did he just “lose it”? What happened? His wife leaves him. Miserable, he climbs the attic, grabs his shotgun, and contemplates suicide. But then he comforts himself with a thought: “I’m a stable man playing a broken man. A sane man acting like an insane man.” Ahh, that’s the issue. It’s his acting turned inward. He checks himself into a mental hospital to try and gather his wits.

As the story unfolds, Axler leaves the mental ward to retire at a farmhouse in upstate New York. He waits. He’s waiting for something to come, the magic or something. A relative, 25 years his younger, shows up one day. Pegeen. Pegeen is a lesbian with a rocky relational past. Axler takes her in, as his lover. Charged with emotion, pleasure, and happiness, Axler thinks he may have found what he was waiting for. He doesn’t need the fame; he needs Pegeen’s love. Pegeen’s hooks sink in. Axler visits a physician to explore the possibility of fathering a child with Pegeen before he dies, only to return to his farmhouse with Pegeen’s belongings cleared out. He hears a sound, steps outside, and through tears cries out for her. Too late. She is gone, forever.

Axler climbs the attic once more. Shotgun in hand. He can’t do it. He can’t pull the trigger. So, he climbs into character, writes a note, and pulls it.

The Moral

Awfully dark but realistic. Axler’s fall from fame sends him reeling because his self-worth was so embedded in his vocation, his art, and how well he did it. In fact, his worth was so twisted into his acting, like a corkscrew, that he had trouble undoing himself from it. And as he did, he unraveled. Axler needed something more to live for, so he turned to love. But even love failed him.

Perhaps most striking of all, is that Axler actually believed he temporarily lived as an insane man. He made the false assumption that was what was most permanent was his sanity, his stability. And that his fall from grace was a mere lapse in an otherwise ordinary, extraordinary, life. He made the mistake of assuming he was “a stable man playing a broken man. A sane man acting like an insane man.”

This is the mistake of all humanity. We assume that our moments of insanity and brokenness are temporary moments, when in reality, these are moments of lucidity, times when we see ourselves for who we really are: broken men playing stable men. Insane men acting like sane men.

Axler’s fall from glory mirrors the fall of all humanity. Life is a search for the restoration of our true humanity. Fame, love, and balance can not achieve this restoration. The insane cannot talk himself into sanity. The broken cannot put himself back together again. We need a restoration for our permanently broken estate. We need someone on whom we can cast our brokenness, in exchange for his wholeness, someone who can rescue us from our affair with self love and glory. We have stolen the spotlight of a greater glory and made life a story about ourselves. That glory must be returned. And when it is, the stage is set straight, and restoration is possible. Our affair with love can be replaced with love that never fails. Our insanity exchanged for sanity. Our glory returned, in its place, on the greater stage of life.

On the heels of attending the 360 Degree Tour and watching the global webcast of the Rose Bowl concert last night, I’ve been thinking…

There’s something about a U2 concert that makes you want to create. The sheer creativity of a U2 concert is staggering. The past 5 or 6 tours, save the stripped down Elevation tour, have been jam-packed with an awe-inspiring fusion of art and technology. From massive German cars on stilts to larger than life lemons, to a 360 degree screen that expands to triple its size, U2 continues to push the boundaries of technology for the sake of art. The magnitude of these spectaculars border on the absurd, until you realize that each prop, each piece is weighted in symbolism. The POP tour, for instance boasted shopping carts, a massive lemon and olive, and a few other props as if to say: “Look around you. You’ve bought into a life of meaningless, larger than life, pop life.” To quote Bono, “

You know you’re chewing bubble gum, you know what it is but you still want some. You know you’re chewing bubble gum. You just can’t get enough of that lovey-dovey stuff.”

There’s something about a U2 concert that makes you want to give. For all the pomp and circumstance, millions spent on entertainment, and theatrics, U2 continues to use their success to put other causes first. For years they have advocated for the poor, the oppressed, and the helpless. They call us to create, to enjoy great music, but they don’t stop there. They call us through those experiences to engage the global poor and helpless. To join the ONE campaign, to Free Burma, to work with Amnesty International, to live for others not merely for ourselves. To fight for the miracle drug:

“In science and in medicine, I was a stranger You took me in, I’ve had enough of romantic love I’d give it up, yeah, I’d give it up For a miracle, a miracle drug”

There’s something about a U2 concert that makes you want to worship. The raw emotive power alone moves you to sing, to rejoice, to feel for something bigger. Every concert has that song, that moment when the entire crowd is caught up into a moment of ecstasy, of worship. There’s probably a hundred gods at that moment, gods of creativity, success, emotion, power, personality, charisma, talent. But if you listen closely, there’s an unmistakable refrain in Bono’s lyrics, a refrain of worship that points to God, even to Christ. During the 360 Degree Tour, just before he sang ‘Where the Streets Have No Name,” Bono sang “Amazing Grace,” a grace that saves “wretches like me.” Apparently Bono isn’t going PC on that lyric. Now, this grace could be attributed to a lot of things, but Bono sticks with the author of Grace—Jesus. After Amazing Grace, he introduced Where the Streets Have No Name,” with this statement:

“This one’s for you Jesus, glory to the one who died and rose from the grave.”

Whether we agree or not, like it or not, the worship emanating from Bono’s vocal chords, from his soul, is praise to his Magnificent Creator and Redeemer. To Jesus.

A final post on this topic from a series at Resurgence. I hope you’ll read this and begin to think concretely about how to redeem and create culture in your own life.

When we think of  “culture” very often our thoughts drift to the Box Office or the Voting Booth, betraying a superficial understanding of just what culture is. Contrary to popular perspectives, culture is not relegated to the realm of popular or political. Nor is it merely that aspect of human living which most of us cannot reach, located too “high” for the mundane taste of ordinary men–opera, expensive art, and fine wines. Culture is more than the ideals of politics and the product of Arts.

What is Culture?

What then is culture? Culture is the shared beliefs, behaviors, practices and artifacts of a particular group of people who often share a common language. If this seems all encompassing, you’re beginning to get the meaning. Robert Redfield helpfully defined culture as “act and artifact”, denoting the behavioral and concrete dimensions of culture. This shows us that culture includes both activity and product. For instance, culture is expressed through the activity of voting and the digital voting machine.

But what about our beliefs and languages? What of the ideas that motivate the vote we cast? Are those part of culture too? Yes, they fall under beliefs, beliefs that are not shared by all people, all Americans, or even all Texans. So, if we dogmatically say that women should have equal rights as men, we are stating a belief that is part of our American culture. There are plenty of other cultures that strongly oppose such a belief. Equal rights across gender is a particularly strong belief in post-suffrage America; however, many societies today are far from egalitarian. Cultural critic Ken Myers defines culture concisely as “what we make of the world.” This double-entendre refers to the activity of making artifacts, as well as our beliefs about what and how we make it. A helpful aphorism indeed. Language enables us to make sense of the culture we make and is cultural itself. Anthropologists generally agree that language is a good dividing line between cultures because it is used to transmit our shared acts, artifacts, and assessments. So, we can summarize culture so far as act, artifact, and assessment or belief.

Example: Brushing Your Teeth or Smoking a Pipe

So when English speaking American women wake up in the morning and choose to brush their teeth, they pick up a cultural artifact, engage in a cultural act, and may make a cultural assessment—extra white teeth will make you more attractive than not-so-white teeth. This entire process, from act to assessment is cultural. There are many cultures that find this whole process of tooth brushing amusing. However, those cultures have equally curious actions, artifacts, and assessments. For instance, village Shan Tai speaking women wake up every day and put a towel on their head and a pipe in their mouth. Their assessment of this is that it is feminine. Can you picture Angelina Jolie with a towel on her head and a pipe in her mouth?!

To some degree, culture is relative; however, Christians generally claim that there are transcultural truths that are always true no matter what culture. Let’s hope wearing a towel and smoking a pipe is not one of them! The point of all this is to fill out just what culture is. It is everywhere interwoven in everything for everyone. Your attire, your values, and your behaviors—artifact, assessment, and action. Wearing flip-flops is cultural. Driving to work is cultural. Talking on a cellphone is cultural. Going to church is cultural. Covenants are cultural (patterned after Hittite treaties). Your Bible is cultural (a product of Gutenberg’s press). The cross is cultural (Roman torture device). No one is culturally neutral. We are all enculturated from infancy to grave. To be human is to be cultural, and when Jesus became man, he became cultural (spoke Aramaic, went to Jewish temples, drank wine, wore sandals, grew a beard).

Engaging Culture

With this definition in place, it becomes quite clear that conservative or liberal views that view “culture” as inherently good or bad are misplaced. There is no thing called “the culture”, rather there are complex cultures and sub-cultures. Therefore, it is foolish for conservatives to approach American culture as something to be defeated, as the domain of the devil, a force outside the Church that must be contended with. While there are cultural behaviors and beliefs that should be rejected, deciding what to reject and to celebrate should be a careful and thoughtful process. Instead, culture is something we engage in, consciously or unconsciously. When the phrase, “engaging culture” is used, it rarely takes the above definition of culture into account. Instead, engagement is seen merely as participation in culture as opposed to refusal to participate in culture. However, as we have observed, that is quite simply impossible. Instead, what we should have in view is a very deliberate, thoughtful, and wise assessment of our own cultural beliefs, behaviors, and use of artifacts.

Culture is complex and can not be rejected or celebrated without some thought or value. The remarkable thing about culture is that it allows society to create, function, and promote human flourishing—civilization. However, every human is responsible for their actions in contributing or detracting from civilization. And our response will be motivated by certain beliefs. At this point it becomes apparent that we need some kind of belief lens or worldview to help us make ethical decisions about our cultural values and assessments. Are they good or bad, right or wrong, constructive or deconstructive, wise or foolish? Do we engage culture as agents of redemption or as consumers of entertainment? Do we engage culture as fearful critics or as uncritical participants? We all engage culture; we have no choice. The question is: “How will we engage culture?“

Credemptively Engaging Culture

In a recent article, Westminster professor William Edgar reminds us that one of Paul’s lessons was how culture can be redeemed: “It is never enough simply to decry the evils of the world, and then to offer salvation either as a way of warring against culture or as an escape from the world. In his Mars Hill speech, Paul reminds his listeners of the original purpose of history. God is the maker of the world and everything in it. He is to be worshiped as such.” Edgar suggests that we employ Dick Keyes concept of “near and far idols”. The near idol surrenders God-given cultural dominion to worship at the altar of another god, like power, money, success. The far idol is our actual trust in the near idol, a belief that power, money, or success is reliable or will bring us happiness. Identifying near and far idols is redemptive engagement with culture (or applying the gospel to everyday life). Edgar says also that redemptive engagement happens through redirecting or redefining cultural patterns affected by the Fall, such as Paul’s interaction with Greek philosophy and contemporary efforts, such as Prospect 1, to use art to rebuild New Orleans. We could say that there is external and internal redemptive engagement. The external redeems visible culture, the internal redeems our invisible relationship with culture.

In Culture Making, Andy Crouch has advocated not only the redemption of culture, but also the making of culture–good culture for an infinitely good Creator. Instead of simply condemning, critiquing, consuming, and copying culture, the way forward is to create a good alternative. Otherwise, we are simply left at square one, with very little Christian progress in various cultures. So, instead of bemoaning bad movies, make better ones. Instead of copying contemporary music and inserting Christian lyrics, created new music and contribute to cultural change through innovation and creativity. Draw attention to your creator through superior or innovative cultural action.

I suggest that we engage culture redemptively and creatively (credemptive?!). Instead of choosing between the two, what would it look like for you to bring a redemptive worldview into your workplace, where you bring a gospel perspective upon a problem or person, while also working well to generate new solutions and answers. When you gain success, redemptive engagment calls you to make much of God not of yourself. Instead or bemoaning the failing copier, you take the time to fix it and then use it to make copies of your new ideas to better your company! Instead of bragging that you fixed the seemingly unfixable copier, you remain humble and rejoice in the fact that it is working! Instead of just making new innovative music, make music that gives proceeds to relieve poverty and rest in Christ for your significance, not in your notoriety. Be credemptive!

Watching The Soloist made me proud to be human, to possess the capacity to create music, to capture stirring stories with words, to experience the brokenness of our own lives and the lives of others with imperfect compassion. The Soloist is a movie based on a true encounter between L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers. Mr. Ayers is a former Julliard student turned homeless at the hands of mental illness. After meeting Mr. Ayers, Lopez befriends him, leading to a journey of personal discovery and change as he learns to see something of the beauty that Ayers sees, when hearing Beethoven.

What Does Music Do to Us?

Music has a way of healing us, of mediating grace to us, of connecting us to the divine. Of course, like any craft or art, music can also do the opposite. It can cajole us, stir up anger and pride. And as Ayers and Lopez show us, anger and pride, healing and grace are all part of the human experience, or at least they can be.

The film hands its viewers an albatross of emotion, slung over the neck, resting heavily upon the chest. It’s density and complexity leave you stirred, compelled. There are so many themes to respond to–injustice, mental illness, personal failure, urban squalor, homelessness, hope, loyalty, faith, grace, and the beauty and force of music. As I watched the closing minutes of the film and observed the mentally ill dancing through their therapy, I couldn’t help but think of Karl Paulnack’s stirring address to the parents investing in the Boston Conservatory.

Paulnack’s basic point is that art is essential to human survival. When words fail, notes will do. In fact, they do more than “do”; they heal the human spirit. French composer Oliver Messiaen wrote his famous Quartet for the End of Time from the confines of a concentration camp. When life become unbearable, “Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning.” Art has a way of getting at the internal, invisible world within us and giving expression to what we feel but cannot explain.

Not only am I proud to be human, but I am grateful to be human. I am grateful to the grand Artist who created a world with words, a world that sings back to him: “their voice is gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” I am grateful that I can feel, that I can sing, that I can experience sorrow and joy, run the spectrum of emotions and know that life is not in vain.

Ayers felt something in the music that Lopez did not. Lopez’s x-wife, Mary, tells him that it is grace. Perhaps the inexplicable weight on your chest as you leave the theatre is grace, recieving something, being something that really did not originate with you, that comes from outside of us and to us, with every breath we take, with every word we type, with every note we sing. Grace, undeserved, freely given, wonderfully divine.

This is worth your time, especially if you are a creative. Gilbert, author of Eat, Love, Pray, discusses the need to rework the destinies of creatives of the past 500 years. So many successful artists enter rapid decline after their greatest life work. How can we rework that pattern in ourselves–emotional and mental downwardness after a great achievement. Gilbert suggests that we need something that creates a safe psychological distance between artist and art. She explores the daemons and geniuses of the Greco-Roman age.

What do you think? Do we need a genuius, a muse?

HT:  MT

Every once in a while, you meet someone so cool, so noteworthy, you just have to tell others about them. Luke is one of those people. He is a forward thinker, an Oxford Blue (played basketball for them), a gospel-centered missional hipster, an entrepreneur, and an all-round great guy. He started numerous businesses. I’ll highlight a couple: TightBoards.com.

Tight Boards has been newly redesigned and carries sand, skate, surf, and snow gear. He specializes in Burton Snowboards and sells some of the coolest watches out there, Nixons. Also, check out his SandalSuperstore.com which carries almost very imaginable sandal around, at good prices.

Yeah, if you haven’t figured it out by now this is a shameless plug for my brother and his businesses. He’s a great brother, friend, partner in ministry, basketball player, and businessman. Oh, and if you need better search engine placement, SEO is his main gig. Check it all out, better yet buy some stuff and hangout with him!@

Though war hasn’t breached the shores of American soil in over a hundred and fifty years, America is no stranger to fighting. The steady stream of war headlines continue to remind us that there are many who fight every day to defend our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But despite these reminders, the presence of fighting abroad has left an absence of fighting at home. With very little left to fight for at home, Americans are turning to alternative forms of combat.

Virtual Violence

It’s ironic that the very rights our soldiers die to secure are the rights we fight to sabotage in the gaming world. According to a recent statistic, the online gaming industry will exceed movie rentals in 2009. Virtual fighting is among game favorites. The overnight success of games like The World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto demonstrate that our desire for a fight is far from gone. In a new game called Deadspace, the goal is not merely killing but dismemberment. Consider www.666games.net, a website devoted entirely to violent games like Whack Your Boss, The Torture Game 2, and Orchestrated Death. The 666 Games tagline reads: “Welcome to 666 Games, we serve you the most violent, brutal, sadistic and bloody flashgames on the internet. Always keep in mind it’s just digital violence” (emphasis not added). Is this the kind of combat we have stooped to? Killing our digital boss, torturing virtual people, and orchestrating death? Is our fighting pointed in the right direction? Josh Jackson, editor of Paste magazine, cautions our unthinking participation in violent media:

Violence in the media is a terrible thing. Except of course, for those great battle scenes in The Lord of the Rings…I am really repulsed by the idea of torture-porn flicks like Saw and Hostel, and don’t understand how anyone could enjoy watching them. And I’m bothered by games like Grand theft Auto that put you in the shoes of a gangster. Yet I gleefully watch Samuel L. Jackson burst onto the scene like the vengeful hand of God and lay waste to pathetic junkies in Pulp Fiction…From the Bible to the work of Cormac McCarthy, the best stories are filled with conflict, and often that takes the form of violent antagonists and heroes who fight for justice…So where’s the line?

Where is the line? As followers of Jesus in a digital world, we must wrestle with this question. How do we engage the violence in media? Do we passively participate by cheering our favorite fighter in Ultimate Fighting or should we flip the channel to watch a rerun of Friends? Should we actively participate in virtual slaughter and simply shrug it off as entertainment or does the gospel compel us to draw a line in the sand? What does the Bible have to say about violence and fighting?

The media is starting to buzz over the story of Pastor David Pinckney’s housing x-con Ray Guay. Ray was convicted of murdering 12 year old child over 35 years ago. I just got off the phone with David, who is a friend and fellow pastor in the Acts 29 network.

Love Casts Out Fear?

David has been pastoring in Concord, New Hampshire for years, as his father did before him. He and River of Grace have a good reputation in the city and many supporters in the community, Christian and non-Christian. But understandably citizens are scared. One man bought a $4,000 security system. Another neighbor is filled with fear. Standing on the porch, David asked his neighbor and friend: “We are going to get through this, right?” To which is neighbor replied: “How can I abandon the man who gave me the car that sits in my driveway?” The love that courses through David’s family is the love of Christ, a love that he reminded me—”casts out fear.”

This is a complicated issue. Fear is understandable. Protection of families is commendable. But we have to face the fact that even with responsible protection, we can never insulate ourselves or our families from all danger. Unfortunately, criminals will come and go, thieves will break in and steal, and the world will continue to spin as though it is somehow off its axis. We need more than security systems. Beneath all our fear hides the longing for true and lasting security, security only found in the one who made us.

However, it is incumbent upon all fathers to consider the security of their families, their neighborhoods, their cities. Ray will live somewhere, that is sure. The question is where should he live? If not in a pastor’s home under constant supervision, then in an anonymous apartment under no supervision. Is it wisest to house him? Maybe, maybe not. What would you do and why?

The Gospel Changes Criminals

Before we too quickly look for stones to cast at Ray or David, we do well to consider our own crimes against neighbor and God. It was, after all, our God-belittling obsessions with self, success, power, money, sex, and acceptance that have sent our world wobbling. It is our criminal acts that led to the murder of Jesus. Before a holy God, we all stand convicted and are in desperate need of someone to pay our penalty, to change our hearts, and to reconcile us before the just Judge and Creator. The Gospel changes criminals, all of us. The love that David continues to point to is not cheap, naive love; it is robust, self-sacrificing, life-changing love. More than mere emotion, the love of God in Christ actually changes the hearts of men. Prison doesn’t change people; Jesus does.

Making Society Safer

What the media seems to be missing is the fact that the ministry of people like David, and the power of the gospel, actually make society safer not safe-less. The commitment to pastor x-cons into productive, society-contributing, redemptive citizens is precisely what we need. With a recidivism rate of over 66%, it is clear that cells and stripped freedoms aren’t actually making society safer.

What is remarkable that in the midst of so much fear, the Pinckney family has not become the target. Their constant love and service have earned them a good reputation in the eyes of their fellow citizens. Could that be said of you, of me? Do we know and love our neighbors well enough to have them stand with us, albeit fearfully, in the midst of trial and controversy? Oh for more men like David, that love with the love of Jesus, so much that society actually becomes safer.

A Pastor with a Good Reputation

In the midst of an decade of fear and pastoral scandal, it is refreshing to hear of a story that demonstrates a steady flow of love and faithfulness, of which Ray’s acceptance into the Pinckney household, and into the community of Christ, is a sign of hope. Apparently, Ray has a 17 year track record of transformation, to which his prison chaplain is glad to testify to. I trust David’s wisdom in this situation, but that is easier said from the confines of Austin, Texas than from the rural roads of Chicester. But more than that, I trust in the God who redeems x-cons, criminals of all kinds. Oh for more men, more pastors like David who carefully, lovingly, and faithfully lead other to a life-changing encounter with Christ, who contribute to the safety of society, and enrich thier cities and towns with a good reputation.