Clashing Cultures and Christian Theology

For a number of years I taught a course at Point (ACC at the time) titled Life and Literature of Paul. It was a fun course to teach – albeit a challenging one – and I was grateful for the opportunity to teach it. I decided that one of my personal goals would be to try and figure out “what made Paul Paul.” I still don’t think I can completely answer that question, but I’m confident I learned some things about him.

About a week ago, HarperOne published Paul: A Biography by N.T. Wright. As is always the case with his work, Wright’s biography is amazing. Some of what I think I learned in teaching that class has been confirmed by Wright’s biography. Then, I’m reading lots of stuff that makes me think “Why didn’t I think of that?”

One of the best things about the scholarship of N.T. Wright is that he actually believes in the church and its mission to the world. That means when you are reading him, even his more academic stuff, there is always a connection to the real world of trying to follow Jesus in a world that is so challenging. 

Here’s an example. He is describing the early Christian community in Antioch of Syria in the days before Barnabas goes to Tarsus to get Saul. Actually, the chapter on Antioch in the book is worth the price of the book. This is one of the best of many good comments in the chapter:

If a community like the one in Antioch was to keep its balance as a group of Jesus-followers in that world of clashing cultures, its members would need to grasp two things. On the one hand, they would have to put down roots firmly into the Jewish traditions, into the scriptures. On the other hand, they would have to think through what precisely it meant that Israel’s Messiah, the fulfillment of those same scriptures, had been crucified and raised from the dead. (page 92)

In Wright’s imaginative telling of what could have been “the story line” at that moment, Barnabas knew no one was better prepared to lead the believers in Antioch “to keep its balance” than his friend Saul. Having grown up in the sophisticated university town of Tarsus in a Pharisee family, then sent to study under the greatest Jewish teacher of the day Gamaliel, Saul of Tarsus knew the scriptures of Israel in ways beyond the average person’s greatest dreams and the experience on the Damascus Road had brought to reality that the Jewish Messiah had been crucified and raised from the dead. He could interact with the world around him – Jewish and Roman – with that information. 

Everything has changed. Wright sees this moment as a kind of birth of Christian theology, and his phrase “clashing cultures” to describe the world into which Christian theology was born sounds like it came from the front page of today’s AJC. 

All of this has me thinking. How do we do Christian theology in a world of clashing cultures? If I listen to the news – be it CNN, MSNBC, FOX, or one of the broadcast groups – I almost always think “that’s not my world.” I watched some of the Oscars Sunday evening, and I think, “that is not my world.” Every day when I read what is going on in the Georgia legislature, I’m thinking “that’s not my world.” Social media is no more convincing either. The stuff people post on social media, “Lord, have mercy. That is not my world.” When I look at much of what passes for justice in our culture, I think, "that's not my world."

 

Unfortunately some of the most offensive signs of “clashing cultures” are the things some Christians say about each other and what other Christians say about the world. What could be more of a “clashing culture” moment than Christians ignoring “the common good” around us and instead of “making disciples as we go,” we pronounce judgment on one and all – except those like us? 

The emerging church in Antioch, like would be true for hundreds of other similar kingdom outposts planted all over the Greco-Roman world in the last half of the first century, flourished not because the Roman Senate passed a law to protect them or made certain immoral behaviors illegal. They flourished not because they retreated from the world around them and built isolated fiefdoms of people already like them.

They flourished because they dove head first in to the world of Scripture and discovered a promise God made to Abraham and Sarah that all the world would be blessed through their descendants and realized that Israel’s Messiah, crucified, buried, and raised was God’s absolute assurance that the promise had been kept. With that message, they were willing to take whatever risks necessary to engage culture for the sake of the Kingdom of God. 

Christian theology might very well have been born in Antioch. The marvelous mind that God gave Saul of Tarsus, along with his training, his study of Scripture, and the presence of God’s Spirit in his life made it possible, to borrow Wright’s words, for the church “to keep its balance as a group of Jesus-followers in that world of clashing cultures.” 

Because of that kind of faith, issues of gender, geography, and group identity melted away in the glorious good news that “for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” (Galatians 3:26ff. ESV)

It is that kind of Christian theology that creates community, not individualism. It is that kind of Christian theology that is rooted in Scripture, not systems. It is that kind of Christian theology that reflects the politics of Jesus (think John Howard Yoder’s great book) not party politics.