Missiologists are people that study mission and how to make the gospel relevant in the wide variety of cultures and contexts in the world. the look at how to take the gospel into a new culture and how to keep the gospel relevant and yet true to it's biblical heritage.
H Richard Niehbur wrote a book called "Christ and Culture" and as he looked at culture in relation to Jesus he saw 5 models:
Christ against culture:
Think of this as a holy huddle, everything of culture is evil and we must isolate ourselves from the influences of the culture in which we live.
Christ of culture:
Here Jesus is made in the image of the culture. In this ethos molds a Jesus who is more reflective of the culture than of the scriptures. (In a rich culture Jesus becomes the bringer of further prosperity, in an oppressed culture Jesus is a political liberator) Whatever the culture values most highly, their Jesus becomes like that.
Christ above culture:
Jesus and culture affect the way that we live life, but Christ's truths are above our cultural truths. This is a synthesis of views and people live with both sets of truths, moving fluidly between them.
Christ and culture in paradox:
This is similar to the previous one, however the truths are in dichotomy and so we live with multiple personalities, at church we use one set of truths and the rest of the time another set of cultural truths. This often distils down into the spiritual/material dichotomy that is not what the scriptures teach.
Christ the redeemer of culture:
Here Jesus comes to redeem the broken parts of culture and to bless the good parts of it. This takes seriously Colossians 1 where we are reminded that all things will be reconciled to God through Jesus. This is I believe where Jesus wants us to be. Cultures have powerful good parts to them that affirm God's goodness and fulfill his plans for human life. But many parts are broken and need to be made new, rethought and sometimes even thrown out.
So what got me talking and thinking about this is how culture affects the way that we think and understand Jesus and his mission. We all have cultural predispositions that affect the way we look at the world and the way that we interpret the scriptures. At one point last night I made the comment that culture can be demonic, which of course always gets peoples attention! So I thought I might explain :)
All cultures have good and bad things about them. So let me explain using Afrikaans culture. I do this because I am married to an Afrikaans girl and at least half the membership of our church is Afrikaans and it is the prevailing culture in the Northern suburbs of Cape Town so I reckon most of us would understand at least pretty well where we are at.
Afrikaans culture has some really good things about it. They are very family focused, they bring up their kids well, as a culture there is a high value on regular worship and they are a fiercely independent and proud people. Lots of good stuff to work with here.
But as with every culture there are broken things and one of the things that has been used by evil is the culture of private faith. This thinking says "my faith is private and it's between me and God. I see no need to talk to other people about Jesus". This is a little strange when the New Testament tells us to be witnesses, to make disciples, to be Christs ambassadors, to always be ready with a reason for the hope that lives in us and many, many other things. Culture itself has overridden the Bible as a paradigm by which the culture lives, and silence and privacy about the good news has meant that the good news has in many places become the hidden news. (although many young Afrikaans Christians are proud to follow Jesus, so the culture is being redeemed!)
Anything in culture that stops Jesus message getting out, or Jesus kingdom advancing or stops the church living as the Bible calls us to live, needs to be transformed, redeemed and renewed by Jesus. It needs to be twisted out of the clutches of evil and used as God intended it to be used, as a tool by which Jesus might get glory!
- Culture may tell you to keep quiet and be private about your faith, but what does Jesus and his word say about it?
- Your culture may teach you to love only people like you, but does Jesus allow us that thinking?
- Your culture may have bought into a 'low cost' Christianity that requires nothing from you. But how do you understand that in light of Jesus instruction to "take up your cross"?
- Culture may tell you that there are many equally valid truths and yet Jesus claims to be the truth
So if we allow our culture to stop us living like Jesus calls us to live it is demonic. The culture then is being used by the evil one to undermine and confuse the great mission of the church: "go and make disciples of all the nations teaching them to obey all that I have commanded" Any one of the great gifts of God can become a tool that takes us away from Jesus rather than to him. Money, family, sexuality, work, play - all gifts from God intended for his glory, but when they become things that draw us away from Jesus and his mission to the world, they become demonic and they need to be redeemed and restored by Jesus, the only one who has that kind of power.
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