These are the kinds of qualities we would like to see in our politicians and educators and culture-makers, because we believe that if they were more people like this, the culture they created and produced would be more like this, too, as would we who use that culture to define, sustain, and enrich our lives.

And we’re right, of course.

But not just about the movers and shakers of our contemporary culture. The same applies to us. When it comes to working for a culture of love – as opposed to a culture of mere narcissistic self-indulgence – it is time, as the Apostle Peter might say, for judgment to begin in each of our souls (1 Pet. 4.17).

In each of our souls seeds of a culture committed to something other than love for God and neighbor have been sown and are germinating. And, sadly, in many of us, those seeds are being watered and cultivated, perhaps without our realizing the choking danger such self-indulgent cultural ideas and forms can pose.

Dangerous seed

In the parable of the soils Jesus warned that, when the field of our souls is sown with the tares of this world’s diversions and concerns, they will grow up and smother the fruit of true righteousness and love (Mk. 4.1-20). Many of us are opening our souls to the sowing of such cultural seed-thoughts by the culture we indulge and the way we engage it. These seeds will bear cultural fruit in our everyday lives, and in ways other than love for God and neighbor.

Each of us must engage in a continuous searching of our souls to determine where these dangerous seeds may lie, and to root them out before they bear fruit. In your thought-life, your desires and aspirations, your priorities and values, you have been pummeled by advertising and pop culture with the spores and pollen of a culture of self-indulgence, and unless you deal with this continually, it will choke off your ability to engage culture in ways that consistently evidence love for God and neighbors.

Time for introspection

We need to take time specifically to reflect on the state of our souls with respect to our cultural lives. As we shine the light of God’s Law and Word into the dark recesses of our minds and hearts, we will be able to discover anything lurking there that can keep us from glorifying God with our cultural lives. As we listen in patient prayer for the convicting voice of the Spirit of God, He will warn us against this or that cultural form or idea and guide us into the truth of God’s Word for our cultural lives.

This is not a call for us to take up some new and exotic spiritual discipline. It is rather a challenge to engage in prayer and the reading of Scripture in deeper, broader, and more reflective and revealing ways than we have perhaps been used to thus far.

Two Scriptures can guide us in this, and I recommend that you memorize them both and put them on note cards in prominent places so that you’ll see them every day. The first is Psalm 139.23, 24: “Search me, O God, and know my heart;/Try me, and know my anxieties;/And see if there is any wicked way in me,/And lead me in the way everlasting.” As you pray this, let all the different aspects of your cultural life float before your mind – what you watch on TV, your conversations at work, how you do your job, your manner of dress, everything. Listen to the Spirit as He seeks to guide you in ways excellent, lovely, beautiful, and true, and repent of anything that doesn’t fit those ideals.

The second passage is Psalm 119.59, 60: “I thought about my ways,/And turned my feet to Your testimonies./I made haste, and did not delay/To keep your commandments.” If we spent more time during the day actually thinking about and evaluating our cultural lives, we might discover new ways of using our cultural activities to show love for God and neighbor, according to His Law and Word.

It’s time for some serious confronting of unloving culture, and this work must begin in the souls of each one of us.

Next steps

Off the top of your head, can you think of any cultural activities in your own life that don’t rise to the standard Paul outlined in our text for today? Write down the two passages recommended for today, and share them with some Christian friends, explaining how you intend to use these in confronting any areas of unloving cultural engagement in your own soul. Invite them to do the same.

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.