“When it comes to cultural creativity, innocence is not a virtue. The more each of us knows about our cultural domain, the more likely we are to create something new and worthwhile.”
-From Culture Making, by Any Crouch
As I have been reading Culture Making, this thought has popped up a few times. The idea that we should root ourselves in the various traditions and skills of the culture around us is an idea that I am somewhat sympathetic to since it encourages us to be excellent in our given fields. As I read, however, I have trouble thinking up biblical support for this point. If anything, arguments to the contrary are ready at hand: what of Paul’s condemnation of the excellencies of this world in 1 Cor 1 and 2? What of God’s demand that the people of Israel absolutely destroy all aspects of Canaanite culture? And yet, what of Augustine’s point that it was not that scriptures that taught him the language by which he can read the scriptures? Where do we draw the line between continuity and discontinuity with the world around us?
“The ways by which the truth of the gospel comes home to the heart and conscience of this or that person are always mysterious.  They cannot be programs and they cannot be calculated. But where a community is living in alert faithfulness, they happen.”
From The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin.
I can just hear Billy’s voice as I read this, urging us to hold the line.  It appears sometimes that there is no one being saved, that we must do something, start some program, trick a few people in.  But there is hope and encouragement in this: “where a community is living in alert faithfulness, they happen.”
“One can always travel hopefully if there is a reliable track and good ground for believing that it leads to the destination. The track on which we walk is one that disappears from sight before it reaches the destination. We may have a vision of the peak we are aiming for, but we do not see the track all the way to it. It goes down into the dark valley of death, and we, with all our works, go that way. We can go forward with confidence because  Jesus has gone that way before us and has come back from the deep valley. If he is himself the track, we can go forward confidently even when the future is hidden.”
From The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, by Lesslie Newbigin.
“The sort of analytical, psychological,  sociological, or neurological knowledge of the working of another person’s mind is not in any way a step toward the knowing of another person which we experience in love and friendship. By itself, it could only lead us away from such knowledge. That truly personal knowledge only becomes a possibility when I abandon the sovereign claim of autonomous reason, the claim to know the other person without that person’s self-communication in speech and act and gesture;  when I am ready to stop my investigations and listen, to be addressed, to be called in question, to be summoned to an adventure of trust. Natural theology, in other words, is in no way a step on the way toward the theology which takes God’s self-revelation as its starting point. It is more likely, in fact, to lead in the opposite direction.”
From The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, by Lesslie Newbigin.
I have always felt a certain discomfort when I am part of some theological conversations. It is as though all the people in these discussions are talking about God is great detail as though he were not in the room. Imagine a whole family sitting around the dinner table, talking for hours about exactly what kind of food their father would like to eat, all the while ignoring the father sitting quietly by at the head of the table.
A parable recasts a problem into a new relational light. We become stuck with one interpretation of life, thinking that perhaps God is unjust. When we see the situation from afar with finger puppets instead of ourselves, however, the relational principles become clear. David clearly understood the crime commited in Nathan’s story. Having the ears to hear the parable involves the next and much more difficult step: realizing where the relational principle of the parable touches our own guilt. We are the people who beat the kings servants, hide our single mina and refuse the invitation to the wedding. The pharisees were the pharisees precisely because they knew for certain that the point of the parable was leveled at everyone but them.
