07/11/24 CULTURE MATTERS

07/11/24 CULTURE MATTERS

Culture Matters. Choose your culture carefully. 

Culture expresses our values and beliefs. People are raised with a given culture or they adopt a different culture (whether a popular culture or a sub-culture), but much of human culture is often based in non-Biblical principles and preferences. Nastiness (moral and physical) is often part of a Christ-less and a Biblically poor culture. Wherever the message of salvation has gone it has raised people morally, educationally, medically, hygienically, economically. In Missiological terms, this is called "Redemption and Lift." 

Salvation is the reconciling of men to God. Redemption and Lift is the work of God lifting the standard of living through the application of Biblical principles. These two things work together in the transforming of a society. The more a society accepts and submits to the Biblical message, the more refined and advanced that society will become. Societies that have been evangelized have experienced better health, education, morality. As non-Christianized people take over a more evangelized society, there will be a rise in poverty, oppression, disease, crime, pollution, physical filth. The United States of America reached its zenith as the greatest country in the history of the world because the fundamentals of Christianity were given more latitude. This country was built on Christian principles, as found in the Old and New Testaments. However, if people do not trust and obey Christ as their Lord and Savior, then the advantages of the Christian culture are easily abandoned and exchanged for a Humanist and Secularist worldview. We are watching as the USA is trading away its Christian principles and allowing anti-Biblical principles to take over our education, legal system, political parties, military protection, economic foundation and moral values. 

Culture is not salvation and a newly saved person will likely manifest many principles of their Christ-less, native culture. However, salvation is not only a change of eternal destination, it is a change in our beliefs, behavior, socialization. Though personal morality is not the cause of salvation, it is an evidence of salvation. Becoming a Christian delivers believers from the domain of darkness, which includes non-Christian values and actions, which are part of cultural norms. As a believer, do not be so committed to your cultural background that you continue in principles and practices which are contrary to godliness.

Christian beliefs and behavior should be the foundation of your culture. Christian culture does not save, but salvation will deliver from non-Christian culture.