The relationship of the church to culture has long been debated among church leaders and social researchers, with little real consensus. One thing is clear, however: In far too many cases, the relationship of many churches with the culture has steadily shifted from infatuation and intimidation to out-and-out captivity, a situation that always results in loss for the church.
To be captured by culture is to be held by a fickle master who insists that all the church is and does be filtered through demographics, social trends and shifting belief systems. This is always culture’s demand, even if filtering requires silencing the church’s prophetic voice, redefining sinful acts in more palatable terms, and compromising biblical truth for coexistence.
Cultural captivity requires the church to be more committed to the bottom line of public perception, numbers and revenue than to the baseline of “you shall have no other gods before Me.” Sadly, what began as a means to gain understanding for ministry through cultural knowledge has become, for many churches, captivity to a new lord whose ultimate demand is unchallenged servitude.
The real shame with being captured and driven by culture is that culture is the enemy’s tool of choice for calling into question and demeaning the integrity of the church’s true Lord: Jesus Christ. And given the way many contemporary believers seem willing to accept with little reservation what Satan through culture says about Jesus but will readily question what the Bible says about Him, there can be little question that the trend to captivity is a real and present danger to the church. Satan knows that if he can subvert the integrity of the church’s Lord, he will sabotage the work of the church by stymieing the growth of those within the church and their redemptive work outside it. For this purpose, Satan is hard at work, using popular culture as his means to capture the hearts and minds of believers.
Notice how popular culture works to re-image the biblical portrayal of Jesus for the sake of cultural sensitivity and broader moral inclusion. The model for this more socially tolerant Jesus completely bypasses Scripture, relying instead on design specifications dictated by the prevailing culture. The result is a redesign of the Jesus of Scripture based on characteristics judged by general society as being less offensive, less sin-specific, and morally ambiguous.
Culture wants the church to believe that if Jesus is made more like the world, then the world will want to be more like Jesus. There are, however, a couple of glaring flaws with this idea. First, if Jesus is remade to think, believe and act like the world, then the essential and very real differences between Christ and the world are lost. Consequently, there will be no real distinction between Jesus and the world, leaving no substantial difference between Christ and the existing belief systems or lifestyle patterns of society. While this may be a comforting outcome for a culture desiring to overlook and justify its sinfulness, it emasculates the Gospel and completely undermines the mission of the church.
Second, redefining Jesus for cultural purposes requires the church to give far too much weight and attention to cultural appraisals and criticisms of the authentic Jesus of Scripture. The problem with giving too much attention to the demands of culture is that doing so yields little to nothing in the way of truth. The fact is, if you recreate Jesus solely on the basis of the counsel of the world, you will rarely if ever arrive at the Gospel, the heart and soul of who Jesus is. The church must never forget this undeniable fact: If you miss the Gospel, you miss the real Jesus — and if you miss the real Jesus, you miss everything.
It is time the church faced the hard truth that the world’s cultures have always been at odds with Jesus. Negativity toward Jesus has been entrenched in the cultural mindset since He first set foot on earth as a man. The Jews responded to Jesus with ostracism, the Romans with persecution, and the Greeks with arrogance. And in the 21st century nothing has changed. Today the church is called to face up to and deal with this rejection — head on and without apology — and then move forward, spending far more time being biblically different within the surrounding world and much less time worrying about the critical whims of the prevailing culture. It is high time the church stopped focusing so much on being “culture driven” and started focusing on the awful consequences to humanity if it acquiesces to cultural captivity and says nothing while Jesus is morphed into an image more in keeping with public design.
It is imperative for churches to know who they actually serve as master: culture or Jesus. To do this, churches should ask themselves some tough questions, and then answer them honestly. For example, is your church preoccupied with the fear of being viewed by the surrounding world as less than intelligently connected with cultural trends and thus irrelevant, out of step, or outdated? Does your church seek to offer the world a Jesus who is not just loving and forgiving, but is at the same time socially tolerant in ways that are more in line with the spirit and mentality of the culture? Do appeals to cultural data largely trump time spent in Scripture and prayer when making decisions regarding purpose, direction and ministry? Does your church spend a great deal of time shaping its message and ministry so as not to offend by challenging the lifestyle patterns of the surrounding culture? If the answers to these questions and others like them are yes, there is reason for concern.
In and of itself, culture is not evil. The enemy, however, has chosen to use it as a tool to accomplish his purposes — purposes that include the denial of Christ and His Gospel and captivating the hearts and minds of people, even God’s people. While it is true that the church is called to captivity, that captivity is exclusively to Jesus Christ. The church must never allow itself to be captivated by another master.
— Gerald Roe is professor and department director for intercultural studies and missions at North Greenville University.