Culture Care

Here’s a better paradigm than “culture wars” for advancing the Kingdom of God.

We Christians have not been called to be a tribe, nor have we been called to depart from the culture at large, as the old Fundamentalists did. Instead, we are called to be sojourners in this culture, and to heal it and transform it by ministering to the people we encounter daily whether they are believers or nonbelievers.

Makato Fujimura, who was once a member of Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, wrote a book entitled Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for Our Common Life, with “culture care” being superior to “culture war.” Our role is to seek common ground with those who we are in opposition, to engage them with reason, grace, and love, to help them explore their beliefs or lack of them, and offer them an alternative way of life, one of peace and joy, one of purpose, one with a future and a hope, one centered on beauty, majesty, righteousness and justice. Our role is to affirm those aspects of our culture that enrich us, the beautiful, engaging and enchanting that exists in many of the arts, music, sciences, literature, and artifacts. Even those aspects that are not beautiful speak honestly of the human condition, of loneliness, hopelessness, hurt, pain, and sorrow.

Culture care enables us to affirm the positive, to affirm the honest, to affirm friendships with believers and nonbelievers and with people of different colors, languages and backgrounds. It enables us to engage, rather than to rage. 

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