culture on Authority

God built into the creation a variety of cultural spheres, such as the family, economics, politics, art, and intellectual inquiry. Each of these spheres has its own proper "business" and nee...

A Western upbringing tends to stress questioning authority, which is always asking why, why, why.

Most secularists are too politically savvy to attack religion directly or to debunk it as false. So what do they do? They consign religion to the value sphere—which takes it out of the realm of true a...

Many in the church have turned their back on serious study, and have embraced an anti-intellectualism which refuses to learn anything from scholarship at all lest it corrupt their pure faith. It is ti...

The challenge each of these faced in their deconstruction—and what we may face—is walking the tightrope between becoming our own person and honoring our past. In The Homeless Mind , sociologist P...

A major stumbling block for many earnest seekers is the compelling evidence throughout history that terrible things have been done in the name of religion. This applies to virtually all faiths at some...

Preaching Commentary A Notoriously Difficult Passage This passage includes one of the most iconic and quotable of Jesus’s interactions with his contemporary opponents. Jesus deftly steps out of a t...

A Notoriously Difficult Passage This passage includes one of the most iconic and quotable of Jesus’s interactions with his contemporary opponents. Jesus deftly steps out of a trap set for him by the ...

Jesus is understood in the light of the assumptions which control our culture.  When “reason” is invoked as a parallel or supplementary authority to “Scripture” and “tradition,” what is happening is t...

Edward T. Hall likened the effects of culture to an iceberg. Some aspects of a culture are overt, in clear view above the waterline, so to speak. But most are hidden deep below the surface, forming th...

Preaching Commentary Dissolving the Divisions The Psalms divide—we would call it an over-simplification—the earth’s inhabitants into “Israel” and “the nations” (the earth). Psalm 98, quite interest...

Will Christians turn once again toward an approach that imposes its will on the rest of society? By doing so we would betray our founder, who resisted a temptation to authority over “all the kingdoms ...

The great danger is to always single out some aspect of God’s good creation and identify it, rather than the alien intrusion of sin, as the villain. Such an error conceives of the good-evil dichotomy ...

You don’t need to look far today to notice that personal identity is a do-it-yourself project. A gym near where I live advertises itself with the slogan: “Be Fit. Be Well. Be You.” A new apartment com...

Editors Note: This is perhaps less a review as a jumping off part to articulate some thoughts I developed while reading The Minority Experience. For a full review of the title, a cursory google search...

Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation.

In a culture, the most important things usually go without being said. We Westerners don’t talk all the time about being individualists or about the importance of efficiency or why we prefer youth ove...

The overriding reason why we should take other people's cultures seriously is because God has taken ours seriously.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger...

In modern Western culture we place a high value on work, which is fine, but one of the philosophical assumptions that can come with such values is that we assume that we own what we earn or buy. From ...

When the Church tries to embody the rule of God in the forms of earthly power it may achieve that power, but it is no longer a sign of the kingdom.

Culture consists of concepts, values, and assumptions about life that guide behavior and are widely shared by people. . . . [These] are transmitted generation to generation, rarely with explicit instr...

Ancient Lens What's the historical context? Dissolving the Divisions Generally speaking, the Psalms divide the people of the earth into two groups: “Israel” and “the nations.” Psalm 98 surpr...

All culture, whatever significance it may have, just as all education, civilization, development, is absolutely powerless to renew the inner man.

Customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish.

The problem is not recognizing the importance of the individual. The problem is the glorification of the individual. When the individual self is glorified over the greater good of the community, right...

The Rule of Benedict is a document that has ordered the life of Benedictine monks for 1500 years. That remarkable document, written by Saint Benedict of Nursia, instructs the monks in how they are to ...

Richard Attenborough’s movie Gandhi has a scene set in South Africa where the young Indian lawyer and a white clergyman are walking together on a boardwalk, contrary to South African law at the time. ...

Historically the West has tended to throw its chief emphasis upon doing and the East upon being. . . . Were human nature perfect there would be no discrepancy between being and doing. The unfallen man...

To reach people we must appreciate and adapt to their culture, but we must also challenge and confront it. This is based on the biblical teaching that all cultures have God's grace and natural rev...