“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?

“What seems to have happened in our culture is a falling apart, a  disconnection between the subjective and the objective poles. We have  on the one hand the ideal, or shall I call it the illusion, of a kind of  objectivity which is not possible, of a kind of knowledge of what we call  the “facts” which involves no personal commitment, no risk of being  wrong, something which we have merely to accept without question;  and on the other hand a range of beliefs which are purely subjective,  which are, as we say, “true for me,” are “what I feel,” but which are a  matter of personal and private choice. To suggest that these latter beliefs  ought to be accepted as true for all is to be guilty of the unforgivable  sin-dogmatism.”

From The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin

“The curiosity which is always seeking to discover   more seems to be one of the necessary conditions of life. But seeking   is only serious if the seeker is following some clue, has some intuition   of what it is that he seeks, and is willing to commit himself or herself  to following that clue, that intuition. Merely wandering around in a clueless   twilight is not seeking. The relativism which is not willing to speak  about truth but only about “what is true for me” is an evasion of the serious   business of living. It is the mark of a tragic loss of nerve in our  contemporary culture. It is a preliminary symptom of death.”

From The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin.

“The first anthropological axiom of the Evil One is not All men are evil, but All men are the same; and his second — Men do not act, they only behave.”

From Auden’s The Infernal Science, via Alan Jacob’s tumbler