Your Culture Is God's Idea

Transcript

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[0:00] So now we go to our time of our sermon, and our sermon text is from Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 through 31. But before I begin reading that, a few words of introduction. Again, as you know, we are beginning on a six-week, actually seven-week series on this book called Many Colors. Last week we had a very nice introduction to the book and a question-and-answer session with Dr. Seung-Chan Ra, who was the author. That was great. Again, you can still join the discussion group. The goal for doing this as a body is to increase our cultural intelligence and proficiency so that we can serve God better in our multicultural society that we live in, that the church is situated in, and as a multi-ethnic church. Because we are a multi-ethnic church, and so we can grow and become a healthier, better church by reading this book and kind of implementing what it invites us to do. And it's actually... One of the goals of our church, that we had a church sort of goal-planning meeting in the fall, and one of the goals of the church was for us to do a book together. And so this is the first of the goals that are being met.

[1:11] And actually, and I'll be frank about this, the reason we're doing this and the book that we've chosen is a response and a good first step for us to faithfully live into the justice that God wants us to embody. In this case, it would be racial justice.

[1:28] And we know that our nation has been... It has been simmering with racial tension forever. Ever. It's always been an issue in our nation. It's probably always been an issue almost everywhere in the world, right? But the murder of George Floyd opened up the floodgates, and it roused me from my complacency. And I was troubled in my spirit, and there was... It was just a lot of energy and anger around this. And I thought, we need to just come together as a body and pray. So we had an open invitation to anyone, and many people came. It was online to a prayer meeting where we just prayed about this. And out of that kernel of a prayer meeting came the idea that we wanted to form a racial justice team. And that team has been meeting very faithfully. At first, it met every other week for almost a year. Since then, it's met less often because we're trying to sort of get more into a marathon and less into a sprint. But the racial justice team has been learning and growing. And trying to understand what God wants us to do and what the racial justice team is doing. It's hosting this book study, and it's inviting you to become involved. And people from the racial justice team are going to be facilitators of each of the different meetings as we meet.

[2:45] And so this is good work that we're doing. And this book study is part of that work of pursuing racial justice as a congregation. So for six Sundays, Pastor Victoria and I will preach on the book. And we've broken the book up into six segments, even though there's ten chapters. But on the seventh Sunday, we're not going to rest. But we're going to use that time that we usually set aside for the sermon. And we're going to have sort of a town hall meeting in person and hybrid. And that's where we're going to dream and listen to the Spirit. And we're going to share with each other insights that we've gained from our time together in this book. And then we're going to ask, is there anything new or different we can do as a church as a result of reading this book together? And so that's seven weeks from now. And that's six weeks from today. Or six weeks today, actually, it would be. I'm very excited that we're going to be doing that.

[3:34] So we're going to actually say, what are we doing next? What now? What do we do next as a result of reading this book together? So again, last week, we heard from the author. I thought he did a very good job introducing the books and answering the questions. And today, for this first session, I want to look at the scriptural basis that Dr. Ra uses for the books. Because we can't have a sermon just on a book. We can't have a sermon on a topic devoid of Scripture or divorced from Scripture. That's not our tradition. That's not our culture as Covenanters. We always have every sermon. It can't be good advice. It can't be a political speech. It can't be any of those things. It has to be rooted and grounded in Scripture, an exposition of Scripture. But thankfully, the book is a Christian book, and it uses Scripture to make its case. And so we're going to look at some of the Scriptures that Dr. Ra uses in the first three chapters of the book.

[4:28] So I've chosen three passages which shed light on the question of human culture. And that really is the topic this morning. What is culture? How do we experience culture? And what does God have to say about culture? And there's some new ideas in here that were new to me, and I'm very thankful for them. So you've already heard from Revelation 7 and Acts chapter 10. And now I'm going to invite us to look at Genesis chapter 1. So our first reading... Our sermon reading is Genesis 1, 26 through 31, and it goes like this.

[5:03] Then God said, Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

[5:23] So God created humankind in his image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. God blessed them. And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. God said, See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. And it was so.

[6:12] God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. We ask that you would add your blessing to it today. In Jesus' name, amen.

[6:35] Well, I want to give you a news flash, which is that it's as simple as this. You live in a culture. You have a culture in your own who you are. Okay? And if we wanted to find culture, there's many ways. But in our book, Dr. Ra quoted somebody else saying, Culture is acquired knowledge and lived experience, that helps you navigate the society you live in, and provides guidelines for your interactions with others. I'm going to read that again. It's kind of a mouthful. Your culture is acquired knowledge, what you know, lived experience, what you have experienced all your life, and these two things help you navigate the society that you live in. It guides your interactions with other people, and that's what your culture is. And so you could say your culture is knowledge, and experience, lived out in culture, lived out in the social structures that you find yourself in, whether they're in your family, or your school, or your work, or extended family, or going out and walking your dog with other people. Your culture is dictating for you from within how you interact with all these external things. So our culture is what we know, and what we know defines our interactions, and so on.

[7:53] So this knowing, how to interact, generally, is baked into us so early that sometimes we don't even know what we know. We just think that that's the way the world is. That's just how the world is. The world is like me, and that's a very childish way of thinking. Until, unless, and this is a big point that we kind of will come back to several times, unless we are in a culture that is not the dominant culture where we live. Okay? So in your home, you could grow up in what we would call maybe a minority culture. It doesn't mean, it means that your culture in your home does not reflect the larger culture.

[8:36] And so, you're a young child, you grow up, you think that's just how the world is, but then you go out of your house and you see that the world operates in one way at home, but you go to school or work and it operates another way, and you start seeing the difference. So if you grow up in a minority culture, you learn very soon, that there are multiple cultures. On the other hand, if your culture is the dominant culture, you're almost not even aware that there are other cultures. You really are, you are rarely confronted with the differences. And when you find them, they may not matter much to you. You may say, oh, there's some people over there that do things a little differently, but that's really nothing to me, because your brain may evaluate that and say, well, understanding that other culture doesn't really benefit me in the short term. The errands of this day doesn't help me get my next meal. It doesn't help me with much. But we will find, and this is important, we will find that understanding and even appreciating other cultures is good for you. It is good for you, and it is actually a mark of discipleship. It's a mark of growing deeper in faith with Jesus. It allows you to move, to more effectively do the work that the Spirit calls you into,

[9:51] and so it's worth your time. And this book is worth all of our time. So this book will kind of help guide us in that. Now, when you travel, you definitely notice this, right? People dress different. They eat different foods. They structure their social interactions differently. And even language, or I would say even especially language, carries culture. Some languages have multiple modes of addressing other people from familiar to formal, different genders, different levels of honor in a family or society. And so you find some languages that have multiple pronouns, depending on how much honor a person you're addressing has. And you have to use the right pronoun for the right person. It would be one pronoun for your brother, a different pronoun for your parents, not just you and you and you, but it would be something else, and a different pronoun for the mayor of your town, and so on.

[10:45] And that's just different. So then you see that the cultural practices of honoring different layers of our culture, or different layers of our society, is baked into the language itself. And so you really probably cannot pull language apart from culture very easily.

[11:03] Now, if you have been away from your culture, say you've been traveling for a long time or you've lived overseas for a time, and then you come back, generally, not sometimes you can have reverse culture shock, but generally, you come back and you find that it's very pleasant to come home to it again. Whether that's coming back from a day at work where you're in the minority of cultures and you can put your feet up and feel more relaxed and even yourself, or you come back, like I said, from a long trip.

[11:34] Or, like me, you grew up in a certain culture in a family and that really wasn't a very dominant culture, as I learned. And the reason I say that is while I definitely have kind of grown up in what we would call Anglo culture, from an early age, I grew up in what I would call second-generation immigrant Norse culture. Norse culture is a kind of Norwegian-American culture. My mother was born and grew up in Norway, and often culture has something to do with food as well as language, so that was part of it, the food. But there was singing and prayers in the Norwegian language that we did as a family. We celebrated Norwegian holidays. We went through the city parks of Tucson with a Norwegian flag on Norwegian Constitution Day, which is May 17th, and people looked at us really funny. In fact, we dressed up in Norwegian folk costumes to do this. I can't believe my parents made me do this, but to me that seemed normal. That's just what we did, right?

[12:29] We were in a Norwegian folk dance group. So those were some of the things that I grew up with. That was partly my culture, I could say. So what I want you to do now, and I'm going to ask Erik to show the chat window.

[12:43] There we go. Good, people have already started. Excellent. Put your culture in the chat. If you can't chat, not everybody can chat, and everybody has the means to chat in this. If you don't, send it by email, and we'll read it out. But I want us to get to know ourselves just a little bit with our own culture. So put the name of your culture, however you want to name it. I named mine Second Generation Norwegian American Immigrant Culture, kind of.

[13:09] What are some things that your culture did? What foods, what festivals, holidays, what forms of art or music did you experience and do? And put that in the chat log, and as we go through the sermon, we'll kind of read them, and everybody else should be able to see this right. So already we have Andres put in, Yucatecan American culture grew up hearing Spanish, English, and Mayan.

[13:34] Foods, relleno negro, black pepper soup, enchiladas, Jack in the Box, McDonald's, and pizza. So Andres is quite, so we see even cultures can kind of blend together. Alicia has a heart and two clapping hands for that, praise God. Music was strictly Spanish worship. Dad was in a guitar trio, and mom sang harmony with her sisters.

[13:55] And Renee says, can we have a demonstration? The Norwegian dance. Oh, the Norwegian dance. Oh, not, I'm shy. I'm shy right now. Not right now, but I will. I might have a video of it somewhere. Okay, good, good, good. So the emails have come in. I'm going to need my glasses for those.

[14:19] Let's get to know our family, Culture. Let's see here. We have Andy is, he describes it as Silicon Valley Anglo. Mother was a third generation full Swedish immigrant, Swedish food for Christmas. Emily says Heinz 57. That's her culture. Parents raised in Indiana and Christian homes. I was raised in Taiwan with a live-in Taiwanese helper who cooked, cleans, et cetera, at Western breakfast. Chinese soup with American sandwiches at lunch. His Chinese food for supper. Man, a lot of blending going on here. Sundays, our helper had the day off and we ate American food. Stew in the slow cooker, et cetera. Holidays we gathered with others in our mission for American food. Vera, white American cross-cultural missionary family background from Taiwan. Grew up in Thailand. Lifelong close contact with Chinese people, mixed culture foods. And Lydia, American English speaking family. Spent most of childhood in Thailand going to an international church, then moved to America. Good. And we have Adele. Says my nuclear family were WASPs, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. We are also from the southeast United States, but moved to California this summer before I started third grade. Good.

[15:38] And let's see. Oh, we've got a few more selfies. Thank you. Hopefully they'll show up. We have one of Caitlin in the NICU and one of Pam. And let's see here. The chat is going up here. I'm going to be able to read the chat from my phone. So let's see here. We have Michael is second generation Taiwanese American, celebrated Chinese New Year with the local Chinese Association. Hot pot every New Year's. Also everyone in church is uncle or auntie. Craig Eklund, fourth generation Swedish American, elements of Swedish culture, holiday foods and customs mostly. From the time that my great grandparents immigrated from Sweden, they branched from the modern Swedish culture, which is true. And that's one thing we find is that Norwegian American culture ended up being different from its contemporary Norwegian culture. And so when I went back to Norway to live, they didn't do some of the things that we did. And that just shows that cultures can kind of swirl off and kind of become their own thing.

[16:42] Brian Smith, white upper middle class with little exposure to black communities. Craig says also highly influenced by the faith history of our family. Yuki, I grew up as a Korean American as a third culture. I think this is Steve. I grew up as a Korean American as a third culture kid or 1.5 generation immigrant. Born in South Korea, grew up in Chicago proper.

[17:10] Natalie says Yonsei, which is fourth generation Japanese American and third and fifth generation Cantonese American. Celebrating Japanese New Year's with ozone soup and sushi and Girls' Day and Boys' Day, Chinese New Year. Oh, I figured it out. I figured out. Yuki says, sorry, that was Steve, not Yuki.

[17:31] And Zach says surf conservative evangelical Christian metal rap, African American, Latino jock technology culture. Stan says third generation Swedish American. Looks like the Eklunds have their numbers straight. That's good. And Ryan says Swedish American. Isabel says Ecuadorian British kids are American slash Mexican because of where they live. Spanish and English in the home. Cardamom bread, mole, Christmas pudding and pizza. And Stan says foods included rice pudding, lutefisk. That's going to come up again later in the sermon. Lingon, rye bread, et cetera.

[18:11] Ellipsis, so that means could be more. Could be more. This is a great participation. Keep them coming. We'll get more of those. So I'm going to put this in the smart place. So I'm going to come back a little bit to that lutefisk a little bit later. Kind of interesting. But let's get to the book. The premise of the book is one that I had not considered before. And here it is. Dr. Ra contends that our cultures are God given. I'm going to say that again, because I think that's something we want to understand. And this is a new area that I had not thought of. Dr. Ra contends that our cultures are God given. And I had thought in the past that since cultures are human creations, that they must be corrupt and really beyond redemption. That only the kingdom of God that Jesus describes and our eventual lives in heaven are the only real human cultures that will be good.

[19:14] And everything else is a bad culture or sort of an inferior culture. But, and it doesn't matter, because of human fallenness, because humans are fallen and humans create culture, then all cultures really are irredeemable.

[19:29] But we go to Genesis 1. This is where Dr. Ra sends us. And we look at the well-known command from God, which is in verse 28, which says, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And I had thought this was really good. This was really biological only. I thought this was just, you know, just have children. And your children should have children. And eventually the world will be full of people.

[19:51] But the point is that God created humans as social creatures. That's important. Social creatures who will by nature and by design order their social interactions when enough of them are together in one place. So you put one person alone, there's not much of a society. Two people, you're kind of getting there. Three, four, five, six people. Eventually now you're starting to have a society, a culture, that has to decide amongst itself how it's going to structure its social interactions and its life together. And so by saying, make more people, God is also saying, make cultures to order your lives. And so cultures are indirectly God's creation. They're indirectly God's creation because he made us in such a way that we love to live in community and we need to live in community. Just the way that God also lives in the community of the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So he made us for each other. He made us for community. He made us for social interactions. He made us for families. And so he made us for culture. And when we create culture to order our lives, we're fulfilling this same imperative from Genesis 1.28. Go into the earth, be fruitful and multiply, make more people and make more cultures. And so culture is not just about

[21:11] Culture is a good and God-given thing. And I had never thought of that before. So I'm thankful for that. This more nuanced view of culture. It's God-ordained, it's God-designed, but it is also, it can be both. The nuance is that even though God made it and ordained it and kind of even models it for us, when we get involved with it, it is also fallen and broken because people are operating within it. We are all fallen sinners. So you have to hold those two things in tension.

[21:45] So this is the foundation of this book and this is the foundation of how we're going to think about this. And all else flows from this. And so culture is a good thing. It can be a good thing. And we need to have our eyes open to where it's fallen so that we're not taken in by it, but we can celebrate the good things about it. But I want to mention two things, and they're related to our two other passages. And these are two of the points that we're going to talk about. And I want to mention two of the points that Dr. Ra makes in the beginning of the book. First, since God ordains and indirectly creates cultures, it's a mistake to think that some cultures are superior and some cultures are inferior. And I'm going to say that part again too, because this happens all the time. Because God is involved in the creation of culture, it is a mistake to say that some cultures are superior and some cultures are inferior. You may prefer one to others, no doubt about that, but it doesn't mean that intrinsically one is superior or inferior to the other. Now we're likely to do this, and we usually do this in respect to our own culture. So we tend to, this is how humans are wired, and it's a sign of our brokenness. We tend to think that our own culture is the best culture,

[22:58] and all the other ones are kind of maybe quaint, interesting, but really not up to the high standards of our culture, right? If we look at Acts chapter 10, so this would be one of the readings that we had. Acts chapter 10, we see the story of how Peter encounters Cornelius, who's a man from a very different culture, from Roman culture. Peter's from a Jewish culture.

[23:22] But all along, Cornelius has found a way to be faithful to God despite not practicing Jewish culture. He didn't practice Jewish culture. And so one message is that we cannot say true faith can only be practiced or carried by one culture. That would be a huge mistake, right? Cornelius did not start need to observing Jewish culture or Jewish dietary customs so that he could then receive the gospel and be baptized in the faith. Peter never says that. And in fact, Peter is pointed in the absolute opposite direction of that. And now missionaries, when they go out into the world, they understand now, hopefully it didn't always used to be this way, that the way to helping someone come to Christ is not to first make them an American, and then a Christian, or whatever other culture that that missionary comes from first. Well, to become a Christian, first you need to become a Norwegian, or an American, or a Korean, or whatever nationality or ethnicity or culture that missionary's sending agency was. But to say no, we need to find those things in the culture that they encounter that already point to Jesus. Because we understand that Cornelius was already pleasing God by his life, even though he wasn't practicing dietary laws.

[24:37] In Judaism. And so, what does Peter say? He has this sort of cultural aha moment of the kind that I think Dr. Ra hopes that we will have. This is what Peter says. He says, I now, I'm going to put the word now in here, I truly, I now truly understand that God shows no partiality, no preference, no partiality, but in every nation, every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right, is acceptable to him. And so, cultures are not equal because they're different, but none of them are superior or inferior to each other. They're equal in status, I would say. And that's a challenge for us. To give away, if we ever have that feeling that our culture is the best, is to say, well there's a whole lot of other cultures out there, for one, and we need to educate ourselves about them. And then it would be a scriptural teaching that we cannot view one culture as a whole. And so, we need to teach one culture as better than the other, or one culture to be a better avenue to faith than any other culture.

[25:42] Now, the other passage you heard me read earlier was Revelation 7. But before that, it's a good place to check in. Can you show the chat log again, Eric? Let's see who else has... Oh, one more email too, okay.

[25:56] So, we have an email. Let's see, okay. Renee Wasp, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, Nazarene, Church, Southern California, Christian culture of the 80s and 90s. Okay, good. Did that include big hair and large shoulder pads? I don't know if that's like 80s culture style, but anyways.

[26:18] Renee, let us know if the big hair was part of it. I really want to know. Pam, second generation English American, or British, I guess, right? We got our first TV to watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. Well, that makes sense. Like, you would buy a TV just for that.

[26:34] Eight Roast Peaf in Yorkshire, New York, remember how great our country is. So great for our country. So great for our country. So great for our country. So great for our country. So great for our country. So great for our country. who taught me. There were many not as privileged and demonstrated the importance of sharing Jesus' love and provision with others through missions. I remember our family hosting many missionaries over the years, never dreamed that someday my husband and I would also become missionaries and serve in Africa, giving our children the opportunity to live in Ghana and Liberia. Good. And then I thought something else came in. Yep, big hair. Big hair. Okay, not that big. Okay, good. Thank you, Renee. I thought, okay, here we go. And we have a, okay, a greeting from Krista on a different platform saying a greeting from Krista. So put that in your hat from before. Good. Okay, so we have a few more cultural check-ins. Now let's, I want to talk about our other passages that we read today, which is from Revelation chapter 7. And here at the end, we have all the tribes and nations gathered at the throne praising God. And the list of differentiating nouns is very long for a Bible passage. There's

[28:14] four of them, right? There's every nation, all tribes and peoples and languages. And those are four different words. They're not all the same word, just kind of spelled differently. They're all different words. So the word for nation in Greek is ethne, which is where we get the word ethnicity. And it could mean a very large people group, or it could actually mean, sometimes it's the word that's used for the Gentiles. So for the Jews who are sort of, they're like, there's us, and then there's all those other people, and they're all in one big bucket, the ethne, the Gentiles. Or it could mean a nation. So here it's translated as nations. The word tribe is phile. It's like the word phylum in taxonomy. Lower level distinction between peoples. And then the word for people is laon. And that's where we get the word lay people, the laity, those are the people. This can be people groups with an emphasis on social grouping, or what we would actually call cultures. And so this word laon, where it says people, you could put the word culture there and you would not be far off. So you could say every nation, every tribe, every culture. And finally, language, glosson, which also carries culture with it. Now here's the,

[29:25] interesting thing about Revelations 7. One important thing. There is no passage where all of these different nations, tribes, peoples, cultures, and languages are subsumed into one perfect or homogenous whole. Kind of like if you watch Star Trek, like the Borg kind of assimilating you into the collective. It's not like that. God does not insist that at the Feast of the Lamb, that all these diverse nations, cultures, peoples, languages, all become one uniform and all dress the same and all that. No, they're all present at the end. So that again points to the reality that God loves and creates culture and that he doesn't seek to destroy them or merge them into one sort of bland vanilla culture at all. He doesn't try to do that. Now I have to say some nations have tried over the years and some are still trying to either force minority cultures to become like the majority by taking away their language, by taking away their art, by taking away what they call the culture. Whatever makes them unique. And our nation tried to do this with Native American children. They would take them off the reservation, put them in these schools. A lot of them died. It was one of the darkest parts of our history. The idea was let's make them all like us so that they're not so

[30:41] different from us. Because if they're different from us, that's a threat. And that was broken. That was wrong. That was to take away their cultures. So there's this, the destruction of cultures is like genocide. It's very much like it.

[30:55] So these cultures, these countries in the past and even yet now are trying to force minority cultures to become like the majority or if they won't do that to exterminate them so that they can have one big uniform country. And this is a crime not only against humanity but it's a crime against God from Genesis all the way to Revelation. And we have to, in all of our scripture, and we need to stand up for that. That's part of the racial justice I think that God calls us to. is this forced genocide of people groups to destroy their language, their culture, their everything so that they could be more like. And it is happening now in this world. And we have a prophetic voice we have to speak up. Now it can happen, it can happen in other ways than simply a decree going out from a tyrant saying it should be this way. A whole cultural minority can in essence demand this from the cultural minorities by controlling absolutely everything. And that's what the Bible says. It says, And it says, And it says, access to wealth and education and social status and opportunity. And they can do this without even thinking too hard about it. They can just say, oh, if they want to get ahead in our culture, they have to act like us, talk like us, dress like us, enjoy our music, you know, all these things. And that's for another time. This is a racial justice issue in itself. And those who are in the majority often don't know that they're doing it. And that part of what we want to do is wake up to the reality of what we ourselves are doing.

[32:24] And that's what the Bible says. And that's what the Bible says. So it showed me that coming back to your culture can feel good. And your own culture, if you enjoy it, that's a good thing. The challenge that we get is not saying that other cultures are inferior to ours. And not saying that other cultures need to disappear for us to feel comfortable. But that we live in a multicultural and multiethnic society here in Silicon Valley. And our church itself is multicultural and multiethnic. And our church itself is multicultural and multiethnic. And our church itself is multicultural and multiethnic. And our church itself is multicultural and multiethnic. And our church itself is multicultural and multiethnic. and that puts on us a special obligation to live into that multicultural and multi-ethnic reality of where we are in such a way that honors the other cultures as God-given and God-ordained and God-created and to realize that even our all our cultures have fallen and broken parts of them and to be have our eyes open to those as well so then we structure our faithful lives of discipleship around understanding well all of what's in this book and then taking the next steps and that's week seven where we're going to decide together how we want to move forward with what we've learned

[37:49] together so again I'm going to ask you to join the study groups it's still not too late email if you want to join a group and you haven't joined a group yet but I look forward to the study I look forward to the groups and I look forward to what the spirit will reveal to us in the next weeks let's pray father thank you you again for your word thank you for this journey that you've sent us on we pray that you teach us well and we ask it in Jesus name amen