All right, team, shall we give it a go?
Well, we're continuing on our series on creation,
! and we will be taking up the topic of a theology of culture,
some reflections toward a theology of culture.
It has often been observed that the Bible begins in a garden
and ends in a city.
And that arc from Eden's garden to the heavenly city
involves a storyline of creation, fall, and redemption.
But it also involves the progression of culture.
And while the redemption theme is the one that receives most prominent attention,
in theological reflection at least,
the cultural motif is also deserving of attention.
Heman Bavinck, the Dutch theologian, goes so far as to say
culture, in its broadest sense,
is the purpose for which God created man after his image.
What is the cultural mandate that comes to us in creation?
And what is the cultural calling that it summons us to?
That's the subject of our investigation this morning.
Our cultural mandate, its origin, its nature, its complication,
and perhaps, if time favors us, a glance at its destiny.
As Bavinck observes, our cultural mandate comes in the context of our being fashioned in God's image.
So Genesis 2.27, we've heard this before.
So God created mankind in his own image and said to them,
Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion.
We might say that our being fashioned in the image of God
enables the fulfillment of our unique calling.
It is our qualification for our commission.
Now, the image of God is not entirely a translucent concept.
There's a longstanding and continuing debate over what precisely it is to be in the image of God.
And Nick has illuminated that from every conceivable angle,
so I won't spend more time on it, or much more time on it.
The historical and cultural background from Moses' day
helpfully illuminates the meaning of image.
You see, across the ancient Near East,
kings, emperors, and potentates would erect images of themselves
throughout their lands to represent their dominion.
And these images were representations of the potentate's authority.
In making us God's images,
He is saying, in effect,
I give you authority to represent me in my world.
And we do so by exercising dominion in the world,
which reflects God's values, purposes, nature, and character.
In other words, kingdom values.
Another contextual clue to the meaning of image of God
arises when we appropriately ask,
how is God set forth in this narrative?
If mankind is patterned on God,
how is God portrayed?
What image of God is conveyed
in the context of the creation narrative?
Well, what we see in the opening chapter of Genesis
is God as creator exercising breathtaking creativity.
He speaks into existence,
sun, moon, stars, land, and sea,
a veritable tropical profusion of life forms,
both plant and animal,
oaks, art of arcs, whales and snails,
the peacock, the platypus.
It's a stunning and delightful effervescence of creativity.
That is the image we are given of God.
But you'll remember also that God is portrayed as ordering.
Genesis 1 gives us a sequence of his ordering acts.
He divides.
First, he divides order from chaos.
The earth was initially formless and void.
Then he divides light from darkness,
heaven from earth, land from sea.
It seems he is ordering a suitable environment
for the things created so they can flourish.
Heaven for stars, sun and moon,
land for plants and animals,
sky for the denizens of the air,
the sea creatures for those that swarm in the water,
the sea for creatures that swarm in the water.
So here we have an image of God as orderer,
as cultivator of the environment,
separating, setting bounds, and sustaining it.
So we see God as creative cultivator.
And we humans, fashioned in his image,
are to image him precisely in that.
We are to be creative cultivators.
And notice the concrete, explicit task that God gives to Adam.
It reflects this very imaging of God.
He gives Adam the task of naming the animals.
Every beast in the field and every bird of heaven,
God brought before Adam to see what he would name them.
Make up any name, Adam.
Something suitable and fitting to this particular animal.
What will you call it?
So Adam images God in exercising his creativity here.
And I love that phrase in verse 19.
There's almost kind of a wonder and surprise in it, is there not?
And whatever the man called the living creature,
that was its name.
God lets Adam's creativity stand.
God had really given Adam dominion.
The sovereign creator, the really creative one,
did not critique, improve, or reverse Adam's creative adventure.
Does God come back to Adam?
Oh, Adam, hold on, hold on, steady on.
Do you really think that's a good name, Adam?
Does that really penetrate the essence of this animal?
Wouldn't this be better, Adam?
Well, come to think of it, I guess so, God.
Why don't you name the next one until I get the hang of it?
You're better at this, God.
No.
Whatever the man called it,
that was its name.
The creator seeds creative dominion to mankind.
Here.
You do it.
It's hard to avert sharing a little bit of Moses's wonder here.
It's remarkable.
God also gives Adam the concrete task of cultivating and tending the garden.
God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
From the foregoing description of Eden,
you get the impression that God had fashioned a very special place.
Now, do you tend to hand off your most special things to someone else,
for someone else, especially a junior partner to handle?
As I occasionally heard our girls, our three girls, when they were growing up,
Hey, can I borrow that belt you got from Italy?
Oh, no, not that one.
That's special.
Can you imagine Adam's reaction to God's commission?
A God?
Are you sure this is a good idea?
I mean, this garden is a very special place.
Are you sure that you shouldn't be the one to take care of it in case anything goes wrong?
I mean, after all, it was a pretty intricate place with a plant department, an animal department, water department, gem department.
No, Adam, you take care of it.
You keep it thriving.
You make it continue to flourish.
You be my cultivator.
You do it as my image.
Well, what did that involve?
Well, what did God, in an exemplary way, do with it?
It says, God planted a garden in Eden and made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.
Adam, I have given you something beautiful, pleasant to the sight, and useful, good for food.
You cultivate those things.
Preserve and bring out the beauty and usefulness of what I have given you in this garden.
And notice, even in Eden, it seems like there was entropy.
At least it required Adam's intervention to sustain its beauty and functionality.
He needed to invest to do it.
Here's a question.
Were there weeds in Eden?
I think there were.
For isn't a weed no more than a plant in the wrong place?
And surely, eventually, there must have been.
Don't you think sycamore seeds and shoots sprang up in the wrong place?
Too dense right under the sycamore tree?
Or do you think that the beavers didn't damn the pishon?
These concrete tasks God gave to Adam help us to exegete his commission to Adam and Eve.
And through them to us.
Their posterity.
Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and exercise dominion.
So rightly, we recognize that this be fruitful and multiply involves procreation.
Certainly that.
But, from what we've understood from this context, be fruitful and multiply involves not simply procreation, but creation and cultivation.
That's how we image God.
As Adam with the animals, we bring our creativity to bear on his world that God has given us.
We fashion things.
Not perhaps entirely ex nihilo, out of nothing at all, but, to use Tolkien's term, as sub-creators.
We sub-create things that are beautiful and useful.
We are to spin things, like Adam's animal names, out of our creative imagination.
Stories and snow angels, sonnets and skyscrapers, deploying the raw material that God has given us.
Eyes that see and savor proportions.
Vocal chords that render sounds as songs.
Fingers that move a paintbrush or work a crane.
This creational commission has been rightly called a cultural commission, for it calls us to make something of the world.
Homo faber, man and woman, as maker of cultural artifacts.
Or perhaps better, homo ludens, from the Latin ludus, which has the delightful semantic range of both school, where we seriously work, and play.
For is not to create both to work and play?
I'm trying to catch something of the note of exuberant joy of God's, oh, good, good, good, very good.
Work and play mingled together.
It's wonderful.
And how else could it be but to combine them, as there's always both a seriousness and a mirth when we are doing what we were created to do.
Now, our culture tends to valorize this creative aspect of image bearing.
We tend to laud and lionize creative types, don't we?
Artists, not administrators, tend to capture our imaginations.
We prize innovation over conservation, though conservation is coming into its own lately, and rightly so.
For, remember, we also and equally image God in cultivation as we do creativity.
Keeping a garden beautiful and functional requires a lot of nurture and cultivation.
And so it is with the world that God has given us.
Think of families, forests, highways, water supplies, snow removal, research libraries, traffic signals.
I mean, things threaten to slip into the primordial chaos over which God's Spirit first brooded.
I mean, just look at your desk or your lawn or even your sock drawer.
I mean, you'd think we could get dominion over our sock drawer, but it's challenging.
The chaos just seems to breed.
We image God as we keep chaos at bay from slowly and surely encroaching on our ordered environment.
Neither were Adam and Eve simply to kind of hold up an Eden, holding back the onslaught.
Is it the Alamo or something?
They were to advance, to push the ordered beauty of Eden out into the world.
Their multiplying fruitfulness, their creative cultivation was to fill the earth.
What expansive horizons for our calling to image God.
There's a lot out there for Adam and Eve and their offspring to creatively encounter.
Unless deaf to this music, there should be something here of the feeling like a kid in a candy store.
Don't you feel it?
As a start, they just got to jump on naming the beasts of the field, zoology, and the birds of the air, ornithrology.
But what about the fish?
The monsters of the deep, marine biology.
Surely they need creative suitable names too.
Adam's posterity will need first creatively to invent, I guess, like the snorkel and the underwater iPad to get that done.
And what about the stars?
God names them all.
We've named a few, but only a few.
How gloriously expansive is this calling?
Cultivate.
That is, bring out the potential, the latent beauty and blessing.
Expose and expound it for our wonder and worship.
Draw out and multiply the fruitfulness of the earth.
And indeed, exercise our own creative and cultivating fruitfulness in the process.
Map words on realities.
Accurately and artfully.
That's one of my favorite parts.
This is what it means to subdue.
Now, the term may sound violently extractive, but actually, it is to take some portion of God's creation and to master it in the sense of order it,
that it is to image God's creation and to master it in the universe.
That it is to image God.
The physicist discovering and delighting in the laws of motion, which govern the universe, and then putting them into creative usefulness in the game of billiards or landing on Mars.
Notice how to image God is to exhibit a nature expressed in an activity.
It's being at work.
It's not just an endowment, but an exercise of that endowment in dominion.
And we may represent him as his image because we resemble him.
Just as the large images of the ancient Near East depicted Aserbanipal or Amenhotep,
we image him as we display his communicable attributes.
We love mercy and do justly.
We show grace and truth, etc.
Now, in this calling to be image bearers,
although we all have this generic calling in common,
we will each fulfill it in a unique way.
Clearly, God delights in variety,
and he has fashioned us, each of us, uniquely as snowflakes when it comes to image bearing.
Sure, we all have a sense of justice.
And an impulse to compassion.
We all are creative cultivators.
But we have those bits in different relations and proportions.
Some tend to the creative side.
There's Jeff over there.
Others to the cultivation pole.
Probably point to a few there.
I'm looking at Susan.
Who knows?
Some could kind of be happy ladling out soup in shelters, in homeless shelters, all evening.
Just happy to do that.
Compassion oriented.
Others, you know, we're ladling out soup for a while,
but pretty soon we kind of drop the ladle and we're stepping back and we're scratching our head.
And we're thinking, why is this line so interminably long?
What are the structures in society that make this an issue?
And how could we get it?
What if we were to Jimmy?
There we go.
There's someone who's maybe justice oriented.
Some compassion, some justice oriented.
And this helps us to account for our individually adapted callings as image bearers.
And ideally, this calling will reflect our passions, our gifts, our sensibilities, our judgments, our skills, our delights.
What particularly do you notice acutely?
Love, relish, discern.
Those will be clues that will kind of elbow you in the direction of your calling.
Once at the Louvre, standing in front of the Mona Lisa with a friend,
to my wonder, my friend remarked, observing the painting,
look at how that frame is grooved.
I hadn't even noticed the Mona Lisa was in a frame.
And I just thought, wow.
I was staring at the face, trying to make sense of the mercurial smile that's there on the Mona Lisa.
What expression is this?
One of the guards seemed to relish my awe and excitement at viewing the art,
evidenced by his slightly raised mustache, just betokening a bit of a smile.
Wow.
The other guard, there are always two in each room there in the Louvre,
the other guard seemed to care more that I not lean in too close to the canvas.
With subtlety and grace, he cleared his throat just to catch my attention.
And with a graceful, only just perceptible motion of his hand,
restored me to the proper distance and reestablished the carefully cultivated environment for the Mona Lisa.
How delightfully variegated is our image-bearing agency?
Just, people are a wonder to see how the image got.
It's just a wonder.
Well, thus far in our exploration of our calling as image-bearers,
we've been entirely positive about our expressions of creativity and cultivation.
But, our divinely given culture-making capacity is subject to a contaminating influence.
Sin.
In Genesis 3-7, we see the first pair of image-bearers creatively stitching together fig leaves to fashion garments.
But notice how they are deploying their talents evasively,
to conceal, just as they will deploy the trees of the garden to hide themselves from God.
The contamination of sin to our creativity.
The reflection, that is the image of God, gets refracted.
From those very first fig leaves, cultural creativity gets entwined with sin.
And notice how language itself is also stained, deployed for evasion, to conceal truth,
to distract from it, rather than to voice truth.
Oh, Lord, it was the woman who you gave me.
So, let's briefly consider the contamination of capacity for creative cultivation.
If we just look at one episode that's illuminating,
the Tower of Babel stands as emblematic of the powers and perversion,
both the powers and the perversion of our culture-making.
I'm not going to take time to read it because it's a pretty familiar story.
If you have your Bibles and you're eager to look on, it's in Genesis 11, right at the beginning, 1 through 9.
But, I won't say notice, if you don't have the text, but remember.
Remember the animating motives for this great cultural endeavor.
Not to glorify God by representing Him.
Indeed, they rebelliously repudiate His directive to fill the earth.
They rather are motivated by their pride, let us make a name for ourselves,
and fear, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.
On the surface, the story reads like a human Promethean reaching
met by the peak of a challenged divine rival on first surface.
Behold, they are one people, and they all have one language,
and this is only the beginning of what they will do.
And nothing that they propose to do will be impossible for them.
Let us then go down and confuse their language.
Is this just divine pique at being challenged?
No.
More insight suggests we better understand the episode as exhibiting
simultaneous absurdity and gravity.
It's Derek Kidner's phrase, marvelous phrase.
Simultaneous absurdity and gravity.
As to absurdity, while they aspire to have their tower reach to the heavens,
God has to come down in order to see it.
Is there something down there?
I don't know.
I see a new speck.
It's akin to the absurdity of trying to hide from God behind a tree.
We've already done this before.
Absurd.
And as to gravity, the phrases, this is only the beginning,
and nothing impossible, strike an ominous note.
God interferes with the execution of this cultural enterprise,
not so much nor even only from its hubristic spirit,
but chiefly from fidelity to his promise
that the sinful development of humanity would not again issue
in a repeated catastrophe on the scale of the flood.
If this was to be averted,
the progress of sin had to be checked.
If the whole of humanity had remained concentrated,
the power of sin would have likewise remained united
and doubtless soon again reached stupendous proportions.
It is a powerful testimony to the puissance of our cultural powers as image bearers
and the capacity of sin to co-opt those powers
that God had to break up the unity of the race
to retard the potential for evil, sorrow, and loss.
As many a teacher has discovered,
these three boys better not sit next to each other in the class
or something really bad is going to happen.
You just divide it, you know, divide and conquer that way.
Artfully, the builders' words are subtly laden with indications
of their cultural powers gone awry.
So there's this wonderful Hebrew scholar, Robert Alter,
and he observes that the words for, in Hebrew,
for make bricks and for stone and build for ourselves
all contain the sequential consonants of n-bo-ol,
which spell mixed up or babble
and evoke the words in Hebrew folly, flood, folly, flood.
It's marvelous, marvelous piece.
Clearly, there's a good way to be like God.
Reflect him, reflect him.
And there is a bad way to be like God,
to seek to replace him as center.
And it is no literary accident
that the passage has a chiastic or palistrophic form
where it all kind of parallel meets in the middle,
which is double-struck.
And right in the middle structure,
there is the word God,
who is to be the hinge of all things
that we try to displace.
It's a wonderful passage.
So, sin is a contaminant to our cultural projects.
It twists them away from their God-glorifying purpose.
Thus, every cultural artifact
will be ever only an alloyed good.
Like its human fashioner,
it will be an amalgam reflecting both
the image of God and the stain of sin.
Now, this awareness should make
the biblically thoughtful Christian
a penetrating and nuanced critic of culture.
She will recognize some goodness
in every cultural artifact,
for it will somewhere reflect the image of God,
inevitably.
Her assessment can therefore never be wholly negative.
For all sin's corrupting power,
it is not, sin is not omnipotent.
It's not omnipotent.
And can only deface,
never efface,
the image-bearing good.
Never completely.
Neither can her cultural evaluation
ever be an unqualified affirmation,
for sin's virus is always present
in human artifice.
There clings iniquity,
even to the holiest of our offerings.
So we should be really, really good cultural critics.
Always something to affirm.
Always something to challenge and interrogate.
Well, we began our reflections
with the observation
that the biblical story begins in a garden
and ends in a city.
So let's conclude our investigation
with a glance to the end.
Revelation 21 and 22
depicts the new heavens and the new earth
as Eden-like,
this wonderful triple hyphenation,
a garden city temple,
actually extending over the whole earth
with the glory of the Lord
covering the whole earth
even as the waters cover the sea.
Wow.
Seems so final and consummate.
So, does that mean
the mandate to be fruitful and multiply
and fill the earth
will have been fulfilled?
Completed?
Does our image-bearing commission
stop there
with the advent of the new heavens
and the new earth?
Will our cultural efforts
and offerings
have no place
in the everlasting, glorious future?
Well,
there are tantalizing suggestions
that it will not be so.
Consider Christ's parable of the talents
in Matthew 25.
The stewards are to take the resources
given them by the master
and multiply them.
Make them fruitful.
Two of the three stewards
invest the resources well
and do faithfully multiply them.
But with what
is their faithful stewardship
rewarded
when the master returns?
An eternal cruise?
A recliner?
No.
More
to be fruitful
and multiply with.
An augmented
sphere of stewardship
in the resurrection life.
You have been faithful
in little.
I will put you
over much.
And the somewhat parallel parable
in Luke 19
expresses it
rule over ten cities
to the faithful.
Rule over ten cities.
It would seem
we continue
to fulfill
our creation commission
to exercise dominion.
And I love that phrase
enter into the joy
of your master.
What
is the joy
of the master?
It's doubtless
deep
and diverse.
But in this context
it would seem
to be
his joy
in what he
expressed
as
well done.
That is
the fruitful
multiplying
of his resources.
That's the master's joy.
It brings
divine delight.
And we
enter into
that joy
as we
continue
fruitfully
to multiply
the much
we are given
to work with
in the eschatological
kingdom
as we
creatively
cultivate
our ten
or five
or however
many cities
over which
we are to
exercise
dominion.
So
it would
appear
the cultural
commission
given in the
garden
still
defines
our calling
even in
the glorious
future.
It would
seem
the opening
up
of everlasting
horizons
will not be
the cessation
of our cultural
task
rather it's
continuation
and indeed
amplification.
And does
this not make
sense?
For the task
is
and ever
shall be
manifestly
incomplete
for the potential
of what God
has fashioned
seems
endless.
us.
1,120
musical works
is a lot
of realized
creative
potential
but did
not Bach
have yet
more music
to make?
Could not
notes be
arranged
in still
more
extraordinary
ways?
And did
not Rembrandt
have more
art in
him?
Milton
more poetry?
Pelé
more goals?
I'm sure
you're convinced
that that's
true.
So
perhaps
it should
come as
less of a
surprise
that in
John's
description
of the
eschatological
New Jerusalem
works
of culture
are streaming
into its
ever-open
gates.
You remember
the phrase?
The kings
of the earth
will bring
their glory
into it.
The glory
and honor
of the
nations.
Revelation
21.
What are
these
national
glories
or treasures
the kings
of the
earth
will bring
to the
holy city,
the end
time temple?
The seer's
description is
drawn from
Isaiah's
vision of
God's
promised
future
found in
Isaiah 60.
It's a
wonderful
vision.
We can
linger only a
moment to
make a few
observations
particularly
germane to
our theme.
The opening
language of
Isaiah 60
parallels the
genesis
creation.
Out of
thick
darkness
light
arises.
This evokes
new creation.
In verse
3, the
nations are
represented by
kings as
bringing their
wealth.
The wealth
of nations
has a
familiar ring
if you read
economics.
That is,
their choicest
treasures.
Camels of
Midian,
golden
frankincense
from Sheba,
flocks from
Kadar.
If this,
this would
be a
period
parallel to
our, say,
chocolates and
watches from
Switzerland,
BMWs and
Mercedes from
Germany,
pasta and
gelato from
Italy, etc.,
etc.
Use your
imagination.
I don't know.
all these
cultural
treasures
shall,
quote,
beautify
my
beautiful
house.
That is,
adorn the
new Jerusalem.
And
notice,
laden with
these ethnic
offerings are,
if we had
the text,
the ships
of Tarshish.
Ah,
bringing these
treasures to
the city of
the Lord are
the ships of
Tarshish.
Now, this is
an intriguing
reference,
as the
ships of
Tarshish,
were renowned
as large
vessels,
capable of
transporting
massive loads
great distances.
They were
the pride
and glory
of their
pagan
possessors.
Isaiah
describes them
in chapter
2 as
beautiful
craft,
but proud
and lofty
and lifted
up.
Thus,
the Lord of
hosts is,
quote,
against all
the ships
of Tarshish.
Psalm 48
repeats this
condemnation.
The Lord
will shatter
the ships
of Tarshish.
Again in
Isaiah 23,
judgment
awaits you,
so wail,
O ships
of Tarshish.
So,
how do we
reconcile this
seemingly
conflicting
assessment of
the ships
of Tarshish?
If they
are to be
destroyed
for their
pridefulness,
how is it
that they
show up
in the
New Jerusalem
as instruments
of service?
Could it
be
that the
judgment
that they
must pass
through
is not
an
annihilating
judgment,
but a
purifying
one?
As Richard
Maul asks,
could the
breaking
of the
ships
of Tarshish
be more
like the
breaking
of a
horse
rather than
the breaking
of a
vase?
It is
not that
the ships
as such
will be
destroyed,
simply
their
former
function.
In the
New Jerusalem,
they're no
more the
means of
pride and
rebellion,
as they
served
Jonah,
for example,
and fleeing
the Lord.
No,
no.
Vessels
of mutiny
become
vessels
of ministry.
Clearly,
many cultural
artifacts function
idolatrously
and give
expression to
our rebellion.
Like the
Tower of
Babel,
they are
proud and
lofty,
things in
their present
context,
but they
may be,
nonetheless,
good and
beautiful things
worthy of
preservation.
the vaulting
arch.
Surely,
it will
be preserved.
It's an
architectural
masterpiece,
but it
must first
be stripped
of its
vaunting
pride,
or its
use in
pagan
temple or
brothel or
sweatshop.
These
cultural
goods
must be
brought
low,
but this
need not
mean their
utter destruction.
salvation.
Their horizon
may be
transformation.
In our
present fallen
context,
our cultural
artifacts are
intertwined with
sin.
They are
sin-alloyed
glory,
contaminated
goodness.
But it would
appear from
Isaiah's vision
that God
has a purpose
to reclaim
them.
He will
reclaim
what humans
have used
to rebel.
What we
have found
in this
earth and
fashion and
fabricated
idolatrously
and rebelliously,
God will
not give
up for,
as Psalm
24 states,
the earth
is the
Lord's
and the
fullness
thereof.
What we
were to
fill the
earth with,
creational
commission,
that very
fullness is
his,
it's God's.
He will
transform it
and so
reclaim it
like the
ships of
Tarshish.
Is this
the universal
pattern?
Will it be
so with all
of our
sin-stained
productions
that they
will be
reclaimed?
Well, it
seems there
is another
pattern which
might be
inferred from
another of
Isaiah's
descriptions,
drawn from
one of his
more famous
visions of
God's glorious
future
consummated
kingdom.
Isaiah 2,
you recall,
it says,
the Lord
will beat
swords into
plowshares
and spears
into pruning
forks,
pruning
hooks.
It seems
some cultural
artifacts will
have their
very
identities
changed,
not simply
their
instrumentalities.
So their
identities
will need
to change.
Ships
may remain
ships,
only put
to God's
glorifying
use.
They are
recommissioned,
we might
say.
But swords
and spears
must become
something else
to serve
God's glory.
But even
here,
they do
not become
refuse,
but are
repurposed.
God
seems
not even
to give
up the
raw material
of his
created hand.
God
recycles.
God
recycles.
It would
seem
our creator
is also
redeemer
in a
very
expansive
sense.
and that
he is
committed
to a
grand
restoration
project.
Redemption
does not
simply involve
the souls
of his
people,
but their
resurrection,
a bodily
existence.
1 Corinthians 15
is clear on
this.
But redemption
must also
involve this
material,
earth.
After all,
where would
these bodily
resurrected
beings thrive
except upon
a physical
earth?
the meek
shall inherit
the earth,
Jesus tells
us in the
Sermon on
the Mount.
Romans 8
gives us a
moving description
of all
creation groaning
for the day
of redemption
when it will
come to be
set free
from its
bondage to
corruption,
to attain a
share in the
freedom and
glory of the
redeemed
humanity.
So once we
rid ourselves
of any
residual
contaminant of
Gnosticism,
which has often
and recently
affected the
church, that
is the
exaltation of
spirit over
a denigrated
physical, why
it scarcely
seems right that
it could be
otherwise, once
we understand
that.
How odd
for our
sovereign God
to utterly
abandon the
earth, the
work of his
hands, handing
it all over to
his enemy
Satan, splitting
the spoils.
He'll all
take the
souls, you
have the
rest.
No!
No, there's a
wider truth, a
wonderfully wider
truth to what we
sing at Christmas.
He comes to
make his
blessings flow
far as the
curse is
found.
So, summing
up, we might
formulate our
findings thus.
As with
creation, so
with culture.
God does not
abandon the
work of his
hands, creation,
neither does
he abandon the
works of our
hands, his
image bearers'
hands, culture.
New creation, the
new heavens and
earth will be a
place of culture.
nature, it
will bear the
ornaments of the
labors of his
image bearers.
Our cultural
mandate, our
image bearing
mission shall
carry over into
eternity to our
great relish and
his too, the joy of
the master.
nature.
So, what is our
response?
Our creator king on
his return will
transform and
purify culture from
the alloyed
amalgam that it
now is.
Do we simply
await his
coming and pray
Maranatha, even
so come Lord
Jesus?
No.
We do not
simply wait,
but neither do
we ourselves
accomplish this
transformation.
We cannot
simply move from
Christ
will transform
culture to
Christians
transform culture.
We cannot
build the
heavenly city.
Hebrews tells
us its
builder and
maker is God.
It comes down
from heaven.
But, if we
neither merely
await this
transformation,
nor can
accomplish it,
we can
anticipate it.
Live now as
citizens of that
city to come,
reflecting its
values and
purposes and
creative,
cultivating joy,
having the
assurance that
as we so
live and
labor, it
will not be
in vain.
Not be for
nothing.
The fruit of
such labors will
have their
place in the
glorious future.
Therefore,
writes the
apostle, be
steadfast,
immovable,
always abounding
in the work of
the Lord,
knowing that in
the Lord your
labor is not
in vain.
without this
hope, a
pall is cast
over our
labors.
As Bertrand
Russell,
the atheist,
writes,
all the
labors of
the ages,
all the
devotion,
all the
inspiration,
all the
noonday
brightness of
human genius
are destined
to extinction.
And the
whole temple
of man's
achievement must
inevitably be
buried beneath
the debris of
a universe
in ruins.
Now,
there's a
sanguine
vision.
No,
your labor
is not
in vain
in the
Lord.
We may
not be
able to
build the
heavenly
city,
but we
may build
for it,
and we
shall build
in it,
with the
purified,
creative,
cultivating
image of
God,
of which we
are now
the stewards.
And if
our efforts
seem so
frail and
fragile,
distorted and
disappointing,
pathetic and
paltry,
let us seek
that purifying
spirit who
is himself a
part of that
future kingdom
and can
empower us to
anticipate it
in our lives
and labors.
Oh,
Lord,
lend permanence
to the work
of our hands.
Let me stop
there and
open it up
for any
questions or
comments.
By the
way,
I have an
appendix that
I will email
to people,
or we'll figure
out a way
to get,
where I
take a
couple of
the most
challenging
passages of
scripture that
seem to
suggest,
no,
the whole
thing is
going to
burn,
and give
a careful
exegesis of
those,
but that's an
appendix to
this.
Much to your
relief,
I'm not going
into that
now.
Yes?
Well,
I'm not,
I don't know how metaphoric you intend me to understand that.
Presumably somewhat metaphoric because there's not going to be another flood to do that.
But if indeed the ark stands as type for the means of rescue when God's judgment comes,
yes, in one sense, God has built that apparatus in terms of the sacrifice of his son,
who is the ark, there is only shelter from judgment in him, Christ the ark,
and we are to be, the scripture says, his witnesses.
So what we do is like Noah's preaching,
we direct people to the only salvation that is in Christ, the ark,
that alone will float above the waters of judgment.
So in that sense, that would be the case,
and that very much displays much of our calling to be his witness bearers and ambassadors.
He makes his appeal through us, it says in 2 Corinthians 5, 20, 21-ish.
Yeah, yeah, Jeff.
Could you, first of all, thank you.
Oh, you're welcome.
Thank you for the fire hose.
That was amazing.
Could you give us a, John, one-minute riff on the culture of wars
and what you just presented and how we might have a posture for it?
Excellent.
Yes, yes, yes.
So one of the things about the culture of wars,
it seems like for the Christians,
much of our reaction to looking out of our compound and saying,
oh my goodness, looks like the world's going to hell in a handbasket.
You know, cats are dating dogs,
all kinds of crazy things are happening out there.
So we respond in fear.
Oh no, I've got three daughters.
They're growing up in this world.
And we respond in anger.
Hey, this is not what we once had in terms of our influence over society.
We didn't lose it.
Someone probably took it from us,
and it's probably those nasty people out there.
So the whole thing sets us up to cast our neighbors as not only our opponents,
but enemies.
Hence the word culture war.
And to ratchet up the stakes so highly,
because if we sadly think we have so much of our lot in this world,
the stakes will be so high,
we will engage in some sort of gladiatorial contest where winner takes all.
When we have frustrated by our failure to persuade,
we just go and we use political means to try to wrench things around in our direction.
In contrast, I think that the way that we can make our testimony more vivid
is everybody's trying to figure out what is a meaningful life.
What's the life worth living?
And if we can create in the Christian community
something that has a fragrance of Christ and allure of life,
something that is vibrant and creative and wonderful,
I think people are looking to think,
oh, that looks like a life worth living.
So I think that the creative arts,
in a way to comprehensively display,
this is a life that's oriented toward kingdom values,
and this is the one that is most affirming of humanity as rightly discerned,
that's a critical part of our witness bearing.
And I think that beauty is often the easiest portal for an unbeliever to encounter.
And even the art, I mean, one of the marvelous things that art does is it's so captivating
that it arrests us in our manic lives,
and we pause and we ask and we look and we try to attend,
and maybe we feel a little bit of transcendence,
and that opens up a new set of questions.
Because in every piece of beauty,
that's just a little shard off the block that is God, the origin.
You know, that's the little drop of water where Christ is the ocean.
So if we can get people to attend to beauty and to feel a stirring of beauty,
to catch something of the melody of a song they haven't yet heard,
to use Lewis's line,
or to catch the fragrance of a flower they haven't yet found,
I think art is absolutely phenomenally enhancing and critical.
in our witness bearing.
And it again, it looks at our neighbors not as enemies,
but those who are lost, who are seeking to win in love.
It's not love.
Everything is love each other.
That's so much.
Pretty fundamental.
Yeah, I think so too.
I think so too.
You know how about music, art, music, classical, you know music.
Yeah.
Everything from that.
Yes.
You know, so laugh loudly for the laugh and laugh.
It's very hard.
I am.
In general, everyone.
That's right.
All right, team.
I think, unless there's one more question,
we probably should vacate.
We want to,
if a couple of you could help with the reordering of the room,
that would be great.
thank you
if anybody is interested in the
appendix on those
texts of scripture
that often are invoked to challenge this
vision just fire me a text
and I'll send it to you with the
text of this if you want
thank you team
oh you're welcome
yeah
thank you
oh