3.4 All our thinking and living is enculturated (part 4)

The philosophy journey continues...

1.1 Unexamined Assumptions
1.2 "Unitary" Thinking
2.1 Binary Thinking in Ethics
2.2 Contextualization in Missions
2.3 Beyond Relativism and Absolutes
3.1 Setting the Stage for Political Conversation
3.2 Binary Thinking in Political Thinking
3.3 Assumptions about Christ and Culture I
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18. There are other options. As an Arminian, I believe that God -- in his sovereignty no less -- gives us the freedom to disobey him. Yes, there will be eternal consequences. But he has built choice into the way he runs the world. Therefore, both because of human fallenness and because God has created a world where we have to choose, I believe the Western model that separates government from religion is actually a fair mirror of the way God runs the world.

As I (and most) understand the U.S. Constitution, there is meant to be a clear separation between religion and the law. Congress should not pass laws that are based on specifically religious beliefs or practices. It should allow Muslims and Hindus the freedom to practice their own religions unhindered. This is the now long-standing interpretation of the Constitution, and it has the wisdom of history behind it. We will explore this boundary in more detail soon enough.

Arguably none of the freedoms in the Constitution are absolutes. There are exceptions. If someone's religion involved sacrificing random individuals off the street, it would contradict a more fundamental principle. I am getting ahead of myself into some of the content of chapter 9. What we as Christians might call a basic moral code is really the basic stipulations of a social contract we make with each other. I won't kill you if you won't kill me. More on that to come as well.

This set up creates a distinction between what I as a Christian believe is right and what laws we should have as a nation. The Constitution largely sets us up as a relativist nation with regard to religion in general. The government is supposed to be agnostic with regard to which religion is correct (or if any of them are). You could argue that -- to a large extent -- this is how God is running the world before his second coming, although occasionally he might step in to steer the course of nations.

One way or another, we can have a lively debate about what we think God's approach is. He let the Nazis wreak havoc on the world for over ten years -- not very long. He gave the Amorites about four hundred years before he destroyed them. Nineveh got a reprieve because of their repentance but were fried a couple hundred years later.

So here is a question. We do not believe in gay marriage or abortion in the first trimester. What should the government do? Can we make a non-religious case against them in the secular sphere?

Or should we try to change the US Constitution and make America a religious state? There are people who would like to do so. Some would say that the forces associated with Project 2025 have ultimate goals along these lines. Are they correct? Perhaps we'll see. 

The question for now is about our unexamined assumptions. There are so many questions and so many options. Have we considered the options in perspective or are we blindly following the impulses handed to us by our upbringings and Christian subcultures?

Like the "Christ against culture" option, I believe many American Christians simply assume that the "Christ above culture" option is what Christians do. It is an unexamined assumption. And of course, others have unexamined assumptions on the "separation of church and state" side as well. Get these two sets of unexamined assumptions together at a Thanksgiving dinner table and let the fun begin. 

Are there aspects to American law that we would call "moral"? Yes, but I would argue that they technically should result from our implicit social contract with each other. Is freedom of religion absolute? No. There are clear exceptions. When freedoms come into conflict, they have to be prioritized. America was arguably designed to give us maximal religious freedom as long as our freedoms don't overrun the freedoms of others.

19. Some do not know how to reconcile their faith and religious identity with their existence and life within a secular environment. Some have therefore opted for a Christ and culture in paradox option. This option basically follows Christian faith when it is in a Christian context. Then it lives a potentially contradictory life in the world.  

Think "Sunday Christian." Worship God on Sunday and live like the Devil the rest of the week. I think of the mafia and organized crime movies I have seen where a family can be very religious on one level but then murderous on another. Go to Catholic mass and then have somebody murdered during the week. The contradiction doen't have to be that sharp.

Few of us face such sharp pressures unless they are of our own making. It is an incoherent life. But no doubt most of us have inconsistencies in our faith and life. These may come from blind spots we have. We might claim strongly that we don't have any racist attitudes when they are obvious to others. 

In the 1920s, large portions of white Protestant churches in certain regions (especially the South and Midwest) were deeply intertwined with the Ku Klux Klan, and many members saw no contradiction between Klan membership and their Christian faith. Indeed, there's a story from 1899 where Christians went to church and then took trains out near Newnan, Georgia to watch the lynching of Sam Hose. These individuals saw no contradiction between their faith and what seem to many of us blatantly unChristian attitudes and behaviors.

While most of us would dismiss this sort of "two kingdoms in paradox" approach, we probably all live it out to some extent in our lives.

20. Niebuhr called another approach "Christ in culture." Although it is not exactly how Niebuhr meant it, it is popular to connect this approach to Christians who are perceived to be taking on worldly values. They are conforming to the world and letting the world influence their Christianity. They are being "syncretistic" -- inappropriately mixing their Christian faith with worldly values.

I have most heard Christians point the finger here at the acceptance of homosexuality by other Christians. Acceptance of a homosexual lifestyle by Christians is placed in the category of accommodating worldly perspectives. Support of women in ministry has also been included at times in this category as absorbing worldly feminism. Another possible example is Christian Smith's concept of "Moral Therapeutic Deism." By this term, he referred to a sense of some young people that God is distant and mostly interested in whether you are a good person. The goal of life is to be happy.

In each case, the concept is that the Christian has absorbed foreign elements into their faith from the surrounding culture. In other words, your faith has been compromised without you realizing it. You have unexamined assumptions about what Christian faith actually is.

That leads to an important question. What is the difference between contextualization and syncretism? When are you simply giving your faith a different form and when are you actually altering the substance of your faith? Our faith is always incarnated. It can never be "de-formed" into some pure substance. So how can we tell when we are mixing our faith with hostile elements and when we are simply "re-incarnating" it?

21. Here's the kicker. All our thinking and living is enculturated. Culture is not simply something that is "out there." The church has a culture -- in fact many cultures and subcultures. Similarly, culture is not "buy one, get them all." Simplistic worldview thinking often suggests that if you accept one piece or element of a worldview, you are accepting the whole thing. This is the fallacy of composition.

I am amazed at how ludicrous such thinking is, and yet it is very common. "You believe the government can run the post office; therefore, you are a communist." It is nothing but another example of binary thinking. If the government were to run health care, we would be socialist. This is ludicrous illogic because, as we will see, there is a spectrum of possible degrees to which the government might administrate society.

With regard to the incorporation of culture into one's faith, I would argue that some of those who most point the finger toward others typically have significantly mixed their own faith with foreign cultural elements. Indeed, it is possible that some of the criticisms of other Christians can actually reveal foreign elements in one's own faith.

Let me use the issue of women in ministry as a case study. I come from a tradition that has ordained women since the 1800s. I like to say that we were ordaining women before it was cool. My tradition was part of the women's rights movement -- but the one in the mid-1800s when the question was whether women might vote and have fundamental rights that all but the most extreme assume today.

My old friend Kerry Kind used to sharply contrast that 1800s movement from the modern feminist movement of the 1950s and thereafter. I wasn't sure I completely saw the difference, but I could see what he was trying to do. He was basically saying, "The modern feminist movement might be worldly, but the one we were a part of wasn't." 

In my mind, the fundamental equality of women with men is a core New Testament principle. It is a natural implication of the Day of Pentecost, captured in the fact that sons and daughters would now prophesy (Acts 2:17). Of course, women prophesy in the Old Testament as well (Judg. 4:4). In Christ, women are restored from Eve's sin and thus in Christ there is not "male and female" (Gal. 3:28).

It all makes sense because women are also created in the image of God. In 2 Kings 22:13-15, the prophetess Huldah is a higher spiritual authority than the high priest himself. In Acts 18:26, Priscilla teaches and disciples Apollos at Ephesus. In Romans 16:1, Phoebe is a deacon. In Romans 16:7, Junia may actually be referred to as an apostle. 

For all these reasons, there are strong biblical grounds to believe that women can minister to men on any level. The Holy Spirit is the great equalizer. And, to be frank, there are no logical or universal experiential reasons that make any sense against it.

But there are some "clobber verses" that are used to argue for the contrary position. A clobber verse is a verse that a herd member slaps down and says, "Bam! You can't do that because of this verse." As you might expect, I think the motivations often have little to do with Scripture. They are "prooftexts" that are used to say, "My group is right and you are wrong." They are tools the elephant rider uses to justify where the elephant wants to go. They take a complex issue and say, "You don't have to think because I have this verse."

22. 1 Timothy 2:12 is the strongest of these verses. But I think it will be more helpful to look at how the household codes of Colossians 3:18-4:1; Ephesians 5:21-6:9; and 1 Peter 2:18-3:7 might play out in our faith. I have often heard individuals present an argument like the following:

1. Husbands are the "heads" of their wives, the authority over them.
2. If a wife were a lead pastor, that would make her an authority over her husband in the congregation.
3. Therefore, a wife cannot be a senior pastor.

This all makes perfectly logical sense. What's the problem, Ken? The problem is that the Bible never thinks this way. Deborah is married in Judges 4:4, yet she is the highest political authority in the land. Her husband is mentioned, but there is no sense that his existence inhibits her function as a prophetess at all. Similarly, Huldah is married in 2 Kings 22:14. But her husband has nothing to do with her spiritual authority. He is not consulted. She is.

The bottom line is that the argument above, as logical as it seems, is not biblical. Indeed, 1 Corinthians 11 is a balancing act between giving proper respect to a woman's husband -- by veiling her hair in worship -- and her speaking to or for God in a worship setting by praying or prophesying in worship. The headship of her husband and her exercise of spiritual authority (cf. 1 Cor. 11:10) are two completely distinct questions.

Now I'm going to give some logic of my own:

1. The use of the husband-headship framework was not distinctly Christian. In fact, it is right there in Aristotle 400 years before Paul used it. [27]
2. What was distinctive about New Testament thinking on this issue was movement toward equal value and the authority of women under the power of the Holy Spirit.
3. Therefore, husband-headship language in Scripture is part of the incarnation of the gospel into the cultural context of Paul (and Peter's) churches. It is not a core dimension of biblical revelation.
4. Therefore, in a context today where we can live out the ideal more fully, God's perfect will is for us to play out the full equality and participation of women in ministry and the home.

Let me spell out the consequences of what I'm saying here. I am saying that in fact it is the complementarian -- the person who insists that the woman is equal but fits in a distinct box (or jail) of God's creation -- who is inserting inappropriate culture into the gospel. It is the same culture that was inserted into the gospel in Paul's later days, but it was cultural then too. [28] He or she has mistaken fallen patriarchal culture for the fundamental nature of the kingdom. As Jesus says in Mark 12:25 -- women are not "given" in marriage in the kingdom. They are fully equal. And if we can move closer to the kingdom now here on earth, why wouldn't we?

23. I would like to argue that much rhetoric about Christians caving into culture often comes from groups who do not realize how much they have been assimilated into a culture. However, it is not a secular culture. It is a traditional Christian culture. The Gospel analogy is the Pharisees of Mark 7 who could not tell the difference between the traditions of their elders and the core values of the Old Testament. In the same way, many Christians may be riding the wave of a cultural understanding without knowing it. 

What makes this hard to see is because the Christians they are accusing may seem to align more with the world on a specific issue. Take the issue of women in ministry and leadership. The world says yes. The Wesleyan (my church) says yes. The conservative Christian says no. See. It looks like the Wesleyan has assimilated to a worldly position.

But let's flash back 150 years. The Wesleyan says, "Slavery is an offense to the gospel." The Princeton Calvinist says, "You just don't want to obey the Bible. Colossians tells slaves to obey their masters. You are just assimilating to the cultural values of the North and fighting against what God has taught in Scripture."

However, both sides used biblical passages to support their positions. The one that the Princeton Calvinists used was one relating to first century social order. It was a "precept" or a specific instruction in a particular time and place. The Christian abolitionists, on the other hand, were referring to a timeless value or principle -- the fact that all humans are created in God's image and are loved by him without partiality (Acts 10:34). 

The abolitionists weren't wanting to disobey God. They were trying to play out the core values of Scripture in the American context. It only seemed like they were fighting the Bible because of the antebellum (Christian) culture of the South. Both sides were ensconced in different cultures. One looked to timeless principles to apply Scripture differently in a different time. The other looked to time-bound precepts to resist the more fundamental principles of Scripture. I would argue the same dynamic is happening once again today with regard to women.

Today, there may be individuals who have the right values but faulty ideas. And there may be indivdiduals today who have the right ideas but the wrong values. It is not a sin to have a faulty understanding. It is a sin to play out faulty values. It is better to be right in your heart and wrong in your head than to be right in your head and wrong in your heart.

24. God is love, 1 John 4:7-8 say. I have received varied push back on the way I play out this fundamental truth about God's nature. "You're forgetting the other side, Ken," someone might say... "the part where he blows people away." No doubt I have been accused of absorbing "moral therapeutic deism" from the culture.

But I take the claim in Scripture that God is love seriously. I have chickens. I care for those chickens. I protect those chickens. I rescue those chickens. I try to modify the behavior of those chickens (i.e., discipline them). I'm not a permissive "parent" to them except that I want the best of chicken life for them within reason.

I'm a better chicken god than the god of many Christians is toward the world. Either God is love or he isn't. I abhor the attempt of some to redefine love into something it isn't. "Love is whatever God does by definition," they might say. "So if God fries someone, that's loving." Hogwash. On the human plane, love meant to be disposed to act in the best interests of others. And that's what it meant to say that God is love in the Bible.

Any idea a Christian might have that works contrary to love is a compromising of the gospel. It doesn't matter if you can find a prooftext in the Bible. Either God is love or he isn't.

Christ the transformer of culture...

[26] Christian Smith, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, Oxford University, 2009.

[27] Aristotle, Politics 1253b.

[28] I believe we can see a movement on this question in Paul's writings for practical reasons. In Galatians, he gives the radical position of equality in Galatians 3:28. But the elevation of women created such problems in the social structures of the day that he walks a tight rope. 1 Corinthians 11 is a brilliant balancing act between the authority of women and the sexual/household tensions of men and women being together in close quarters. 1 Timothy is in full order-making mode. 

But we don't have these problems today. We can play out Galatians and Acts! How ironic it would be if we insisted instead on what Paul calls the "weak and beggarly" aspects of earthly culture while rejecting the heavenly trajectory (cf. Gal. 4:9; Col. 2:8)!