FAITH: Cultural (or real) Christianity
March 16, 2009 by azdean
A friend said he wondered, “how much of ‘Christianity’ in the US is primarily cultural rather coming from a heart-devotion to Jesus?”
I was intrigued by this thought. For me, much of life is culturally determined. Not just in the U.S., but in most places and in most times. Even church has its own culture. We get used to how things are done and we just follow along because that’s the easy thing to do.
It seems it is the rare person who stops and says, wait a moment, there must be more.
I am of the mind that the Bible is largely about those who weren’t contained by their culture and what it expects, but believed in more. It is about people of faith. Faith that is real. And real because they believed that God is really real.
Culture says “do this” because that’s what we expect. And we do it to fit in and avoid the scorn of people. Even in church.
Faith, on the other hand, says I’ll do this because I love Him, and because I trust in Him more than in my culture – even when that culture is based on all that is good.
To me, it comes down to which is more real. We live out our lives in our culture. It pervades our lives and thinking in ways we don’t even realize. It is the epitome of what we know to be real.
And yet there is something more real. Or, I should say, there is someone that is more real than our culture. It’s when He becomes real in our lives that things truly change. We have someone real to live for.
But it’s so easy to live for our culture instead.
If there’s anything we need to do, it is to wake up each morning and refocus on who we are living our lives for.
Who (or what) do you live for?
