The Christian and Culture

Newsletter article for February 2005

by Rev. Paul Wolff

© 2005 by Rev. Paul A. Wolff

It has become something of a commonplace for Christians in our culture to believe that in order to win converts we must be sensitive to the culture of the people we are witnessing to, instead of seeking to replace the godless worldly culture with a true worship of God. This would only be true if the process of winning converts would only involve trying to please people. Holy Scripture rejects this view. Saint Paul writes to the Galatians, “Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.” (Gal. 1:10) If we seek to accommodate earthly culture in order to please people then we have made the people and their culture into false gods, which God condemns.

In the Old Testament God did not give the Israelite people the specific task of evangelism or making converts. God’s people were to give witness and testimony about God’s gracious kindness through their history and the blessings of life. There’s actually more directions from God about totally destroying the pagan idolaters who were inhabiting the land which God reserved for His people, Israel, than about converting other peoples. They weren’t told to destroy all pagan idolaters, just the ones living where God wanted His people to live. For those foreigners who saw God’s gracious dealing with Israel and wished to be a part of God’s people, God gave guidelines as to how this was to be done. In many cases foreigners were welcomed into the family of God, but they had to submit completely to God’s laws, including circumcision and the ceremonial and religious laws, and they had to completely forsake their previous way of life including all worship of other gods and even foreign dietary practices which conflicted with God’s Law.

In Deuteronomy 7:3 God forbade intermarriage with pagans because God knew that these spouses would tend to turn the people away from God, rather than vice versa. The Israelite people were a people holy to God and He wanted them to remain in His love (see John 15:9-10) and that is why He warned them not to accommodate the cultures of other people.

In Deuteronomy 7:7-11 God explains that He did not choose Israel because they were more numerous or more powerful than the other nations. The Israelite nation was small and weak in comparison with many of their neighbors. Actually when God chose them as His people there were only two of them: Abraham and Sarah; and they were already rather old at the time. This fact is also a good answer to those who question the validity of Scripture by saying, “What makes you think Christianity is the only true religion?” as if to say that “might makes right” or because two thirds of the world denies God this means that four billion to two billion – you lose. Four billion people can be wrong if they deny God’s Word.

One person who is faithful to God’s Word can stand against any number of those who deny God even if the odds are six billion people to one person. Jesus says, “If you hold to my teaching, you really are my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” Notice that Jesus doesn’t make any concessions to cultural considerations, unless you count faithfulness to His Word as a cultural consideration, but that would be God’s culture, rather than earthly culture. When God chose Israel as His people He looked after them and gave them prime land to live on, and He defeated their more powerful enemies, and protected them as long as they were obedient to Him and kept His law.

When the Israelites took over the land of Canaan God told them to destroy all cultural artifacts which went along with the false worship practices of the pagans. God’s people were instructed by God not to have respect for the cultures of the pagans. These cultural artifacts were not some quaint reminder of the olden days without any deeper meaning, they were an ongoing threat to the true faith and a stumbling block which would lead people to forsake God if not destroyed. When Israel did as God asked He was pleased and blessed them and gave them victory and protection. When Israel disobeyed God and saved some of these foreign cultural artifacts, God was angry and He punished the people for their rebellion.

When God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20 & Deut. 5) He specifically stated in the preamble to the First Commandment that the authority of these commands comes from the fact that the one who spoke them is “the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” This would be true and valid even for foreigners even if it were not specifically historically true for those who came from other nations originally. It would be true spiritually when the foreigners abandoned their cultures and were adopted by God and made a part of His people through His eternal covenant.

Even in the New Testament where Christ sends His Apostles to go to the “ends of the earth” to make disciples, and the ceremonial rules of the Old Testament have been fulfilled and completed in Christ himself, God’s people are not to make concessions to culture. Jesus commissions His disciples to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them … and teaching them….” Jesus commands His people to use the means of grace so that the Holy Spirit would change the worldly cultures into a Christian culture.

Peter writes, “once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God.” (1 Peter 2:10) Christianity has its own culture which supersedes all worldly cultures. Paul also writes to the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Thus the cultural identities which we formerly had no longer apply to the Christian.

Should we be worried that we might offend people’s cultures? No, we should fear God rather than men. Are we going to offend? Evangelism always includes calling sinners to repentance. How can that not offend someone? St. Paul recognizes this reality when he writes to the Corinthian Church that the message of the crucified Christ is “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” (1 Cor. 1:23) Does this fact stop him from offending such people? Not at all. Only ten verses later in his letter Paul writes, “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

Selected to Escape Tribulation

Newsletter Article for November 1996

© 1996 by Rev. Paul A. Wolff

As we approach the end of the Church Year the themes of the Sunday Morning Bible readings begin to focus on the end times, death, judgment, and heaven. This reminds me of a piece of junk mail I received while I was on vicarage. Through a window in the front of the envelope, printed in red, were the words “Escape Tribulation,” and beneath that was printed on the envelope (also in red) “Notification of Selection.” Well, I’m not the sort of person who gets a kick out of tribulation, and I did feel a little honored to be selected to escape it, so I opened the letter.

You can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that the letter was only an offer to subscribe to a magazine. The enclosed letter described the content of the magazine. Apparently the magazine attempts to take Biblical prophesies and apply them directly to present history. This is like taking an oversized square peg and trying to force it through an undersized round hole—even if you get it through you lose something valuable in the process.

This publication seems to claim to be a Christian publication. And they claim that their conclusions are based solely on the Bible, but something doesn’t ring true. Their attempt to make Biblical prophesies correlate to our present history only takes away from the true object of the Biblical prophesies, which is Jesus Christ. Also from the tone of the letter it seems that the underlying message of this magazine is to encourage fear and anxiety over current events. They want us to believe that we are headed toward destruction or tribulation. This is also anti-Christian because it denies that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Rom. 8:28)

I don’t know what sort of a gospel they are preaching, but from their advertisement, it seems to be a “different gospel” than the one preached in the Bible. This “different gospel” is really no gospel at all (See Galatians 1:6-10). The Bible was written to show us that Jesus is our savior from sin, so that we know what God has done to save us. The Bible gives us hope and confidence in our salvation, it doesn’t lead us to fear and despair.

I have seen these sort of ideas before. I was working as a pizza delivery man back when the Persian Gulf War was going on. On the evening when the bombers began bombing Baghdad one of my co-workers got very excited, like this was the end of the world. He was particularly worried and remained glued to a radio, listening for news. He was pretty much useless for the job at hand, partly because he was enlisted in the reserves, and partly because he thought this was the end. I must admit that I benefited from this because I took nearly all the deliveries that night and made a ton of money. (I honestly tried to reassure my friend that this wasn’t the end of the world, but he didn’t want to listen to me.)

My friend had been told that because ancient Babylon is located in what is now Iraq that they would destroy Israel and the world would shortly come to an end. Of course, nothing like that happened. We defeated Iraq in such a lopsided victory, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since Biblical times. To me the defeat of Iraq is closer to a metaphor for Christ’s victory over sin and evil, than any sign that evil is somehow going to be victorious.

The moral of this story is that there are still people who will pervert God’s word to try and make it say what they want it to say, and not what God intends. God doesn’t want us to be fearful about what the future holds, because the future is in His hands. If God wanted to make us fearful He would not have given us the Holy Scriptures, He would not have told us that He loves us, and He would not have sent Jesus to save us. It is the task of every Christian to keep the Second Commandment and uphold the truth of God’s word, and his name. The best way for us to do that is to study the Bible regularly so that we know what the truth is, and we won’t fall for lies.

No one knows when Jesus will return, and when it happens it will be “like the lightning which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other” (Luke 17:24), and it will happen “in the twinkling of an eye.” (1 Corinthians 15:52) Jesus made it a point not to tell us when, so that we will always be prepared. I don’t know what my friends were so worried about. When Jesus really returns we won’t mistake it for anything else, or he will wake us up with trumpets. In the meantime, there is work to be done. We should tell everyone about what Jesus has done for us so that when He returns His coming will be a joyful event for them, just as it is for us who believe, and not a fearful event.