A Third Culture

Recently, I wrote that all gospel outreach is cross-cultural; today, I want to expand on that idea in a particular direction. Let us suppose for a moment that we are engaging “our” culture. I place “our” in quotation marks because Jesus said that we are not of this world, even as He is not of this world (Jn.17:14). Nevertheless, we are (according to God’s plan) in the world–planted into a cultural context. Let us freely acknowledge that our most familiar cultures need to be transformed.

When we reach out to someone who belongs to the familiar culture in which we grew up, we do so as people who have been adopted out of what once was our indigenous culture to become people of the kingdom of heaven. From now on, we are no longer from our own culture, or the culture of any of the people we seek to reach. Our culture is a third thing: the culture of heaven.

What is the distinctive nature of this new culture? The Lamb is the lamp (Rev.21:23). In His light we see light (Ps.36:9). Jesus Christ is central in our culture. We remember that He is delegated authority (1Cor.15:25-28) and that we honor Him who is the source of all authority by submitting ourselves to that which He has raised up (Rom.13:1-5). In all of our submitting, we are to make our aim to clearly show forth that all we do is done in honor of Christ (1Pet.3:15).

This knowledge of our unique culture as citizens of the kingdom of heaven ought to move us away from making cultural clones (like what took place in the early days of the Western missionary enterprise). As people who humbly acknowledge that we were born into cultures which need to be redeemed, we must stifle the impulse to mold people into broken cultural forms which must ultimately be laid aside. Rather, each people group is to embrace Christ as Lord and seek how God made them uniquely to reflect an aspect of His majesty. In that climate, each of us has something to teach and each of us has much to learn.