This, of course, is a good thing. We should be encouraged that more believers are taking seriously the Bible’s call for them to pursue our twofold mandate of making disciples and exercising godly dominion over all things.

We can’t escape culture, so we should work to make the most of it for the honor of Jesus Christ and the progress of His Kingdom. Human beings are made for culture. By our culture – the various artifacts we use each day, the institutions which organize our social lives, and the conventions of language, manners, and so forth that govern our being-in-the-world – by our culture we define, sustain, and enrich our lives. We are made in the image of God, and, since God is the Maker par excellence, we should expect that we also would make and use culture.

It’s not a question of whether Christians should be involved in culture. The question is not whether, but how.

And beyond that, even, the question is, “To what end should we engage the culture of our lives?”

Put another way, what is culture for? How should we engage culture to accomplish the larger purposes for which we take culture up in the first place, and what, precisely, are those larger purposes?

Standards of culture

When Christians think about engaging culture we should look to the Bible for guidance, since the Scriptures are the Word of God which He has provided to equip us for every good work (2 Tim. 3.15-17). Historically, Christians have been guided in their cultural activities by such standards as beauty, goodness, and truth. Culture is valid and useful to the extent it rises to one or another of these standards. The pages of Christian history are filled with examples of cultural achievement to which we can look for understanding into what these standards look like as we begin to realize them in cultural creation and activity.

Culture comes to us as a gift of God and the product of human thinking and making. Not all culture fulfills its God-given purpose, as we know. Culture becomes debased and even dangerous when it loses sight of God’s purpose for it and takes on a mind of its own. Once culture-makers and culture-users abandon God’s purpose for culture, standards such as “beauty, goodness, and truth” become arbitrary templates amenable to whatever seems right in anybody’s eyes.

The purpose of culture

So it’s not enough just to have standards to guide us in our cultural endeavors and engagement. We must look beyond the standards of culture to the purpose of culture, and the purpose of culture – all culture, in every age and category – is the glory of God, expressed as love.

For the Christian, nothing matters but faith working through love in every area of life. God gives human beings culture because it can be a useful tool in making known His presence, character, and purposes, and these can all be summarized in the word, “love.” The goal, purpose, and end of culture is love. God is love, and those who make and use culture in His name must do so in line with the requirements of love. Once we understand this, we can begin to make and use culture in ways that truly reflect God’s intentions and, thus, enable us to know His pleasure in every area of life.

I rather suspect, however, that most people who make and use culture – including those whose cultural activities we might regard as debased or decadent – can argue that they love what they’re doing, and they’re doing it out of love for themselves and others like them. Indeed, even a casual look at or listen to pop culture today will reveal the presence throughout of various expressions of “love.”

So it’s not enough to say that “love” is the goal and purpose of culture. We need to make sure we know what we mean by that notion, and that we use culture in ways appropriate for it to serve as a valid means and end to love.

Next steps

Make a list of all the cultural activities you have been involved in thus far today – the things you’ve used, conversations you’ve held, ways you’ve behaved in conformity to some cultural convention or other. Can you say that you have engaged each of these activities consciously out of a motive of love, or to the end of love? Share your thoughts about this with a Christian friend.

Additional Resources

Download this week’s study, The Purpose of Culture.

You can also download the two previous ViewPoint studies in this series, Engaging Culture and Redeeming Culture, by clicking here and here.

For a brief study of what it means to pursue culture every day for the glory of God, order T. M.’s book, Christians on the Front Lines of the Culture Wars by clicking here.

Sign up for ViewPoint Leaders Training and start your own ViewPoint discussion group.

Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.