These are notes from a Ken Myers lecture I recently attended. A very similar lecture is available on this page, first lecture at the top. (here is a direct link to the zipped mp3). I found it a very helpful and informative way of looking and thinking about culture.

I’ll start off with this quote: “Cultures are more like ecosystems then encyclopedias. They’re not a collection of static, inert, and abstract components that can be switched out. Cultures are more like organisms then mechanisms.“  Because of this we cannot understand a single part (song or movie) without understanding how that specific artifact relates to the whole and to broader movements and moods.  Ken Myers suggest the following parts or members of this ecosystem:

1. Artifacts:
-Material Things, or groups of things
-Specific books or TV Shows (Harry Potter or Lost)
-Clothing, buildings, food etc.
Artifacts can be produced by:

2. Institutions:
-Specific Newspapers but also communications media
-Texas A&M University but also the general institution of higher education
Institutions encourage certain:

3. Practices:
-Both formal and informal
-Graduations and Superbowl parties
-Vacations and shopping
-Can be thought of as liturgies
Practices shape and are shaped by:

4. Beliefs:
-Knowledge, Ideas, creeds etc
(Sometimes we protestants tend to focus only on this)
Beliefs are influenced by:

5. Sensibilities (or moods)
Cultures tend to have dominant moods or sensibilities:
-Russian Melancholy
-Yankee ingenuity
-Southern Charm
These can make certain ideas (beliefs) more or less plausible
Moods are conveyed by artifacts and institutions
Our sensibilities encourage certain:

6. Deep Assumptions:
-”An intuitive sense of the way things are.”
-a kind of Meta-Belief
-How we lean into life (how do we posture ourselves to our creator?)
-Deeper then Beliefs (#4)
Sometimes these can contradict our beliefs

From Ron Paul’s The Revolution: A Manifesto:

Excessive government spending has done more than just put us in debt.  Charles Murray offers us a useful thought experiment that illustrates the welfare state’s enervating effects on our communities and our character.  Imagine that all the programs that constituted the federal “safety net” were all of a sudden abolished, and for whatever reason could not be revived.  And pretend also that the states chose not to replace them with programs of their own, which they almost certainly would.  The questions Murray wants us to focus on are these: How would you respond?  Would you be more or less likely to volunteer at a food bank?  Would you be more or less likely to volunteer at a literacy center?  If you were a lawyer or physician, would you be more or less likely to offer pro bono services?

We would all answer yes to these questions, wouldn’t we?  But then we need to ask ourselves: why aren’t we doing these things already?  And the answer is that we have bought into the soul-killing logic of the welfare state: somebody else is doing it for me.  I don’t need to give of myself, since a few scribbles on a tax form fulfill my responsibility toward my fellow man.  Do our responsibilities as human beings really extend no farther than this?

We’ve all heard that bad company corrupts our good character - that is, the company we keep affects we who are and how we act. I think this is true, although certainly not an excuse to avoid spending time with sinners (as Jesus taught us by example).

Today though, I’ve been thinking about how “bad culture” can affect our good character. For example, if we willingly surround ourselves by the culture and thinking of the world, then perhaps that will rub off on us. This is hard for me because I find the closed-mindedness and “circle-the-wagons” mentality of Christians frustrating. This frustration, in turn, leads me to venture deeper into the thinking of the world then perhaps many of my brothers and sisters in Christ dare go. Is this dangerous or bad for me? Sometimes I think it is…but I’m still trying to figure it out.

A good example of this is music. I like to think that the music I listen to doesn’t affect me, but maybe I’m just being arrogant and haughty while in reality surrounding myself with music and lyrics that prominently display and idolize evil is bad for me? How far does my Christian liberty extend?

The way Jesus goes about loving and saving the world are personal: nothing abstract. noting impersonal. Incarnate, flesh and blood, relational, particular, local.The ways employed by our North American culture are conspicuously impersonal: programs, organizations, techniques. general guidelines, information detached from place. In matters of ways and means, the vocabulary of numbers is preferred over names, ideologies crowd out ideas, the gray fog of abstraction absorbs the sharp particularities of the recognizable face on the familiar street.

My concern is provoked by the observation that so many who understand themselves to be followers of Jesus, without hesitation, and apparently without thinking, embrace the ways and means of the culture as they go about their daily living “in Jesus’ name.”

-Eugene Peterson in The Jesus Way:a conversation on the ways that Jesus is the way

This is not primarily a political blog, and though politics is one of my great passions, I’m trying hard to stay away from a large amount of political discourse on a website devoted to all things Christian (of course, politics falls under the realm of Christian-thought).

I’ve been recently reading Ron Paul’s new book, The Revolution: A Manifesto and really been enjoying it. For those who don’t know, Dr. Paul is a Republican candidate for the Presidential nomination; which, of course, is fairly unattainable at this point. He is a staunch “old school” Republican and values such things as: individual liberty, small and decentralized government, a foreign policy of non-intervention, and drastic cuts to federal spending so as to produce a budget surplus rather than budget deficit every year.

Last night while reading I came across a few brief words on the topic of abortion. Dr. Paul is opposed to the federal government mandating laws on abortion and believes such decisions should be made at the local and state level.

One of the most contentious issues in our public life over the past three and a half decades has been abortion. As a physician, and in particular as an obstetrician who has delivered over 4,000 babies, I have always had a special interest in the subject of abortion…

…I have heard the arguments in favor of abortion many times, and they have always disturbed me deeply.  A popular academic argument for abortion demands that we think of the child in the womb as a “parasite” that the woman has the right to expel from her body.  But the same argument justifies outright infanticide, since it applies just as well to an infant outside the womb: newborns require even more attention and care, and in that sense are even more “parasitic.”

If we can be so callous as to refer to a growing child in a mother’s womb as a parasite, I fear for our country’s future all the more.  Whether it is war or abortion, we conceal the reality of violent acts through linguistic contrivances meant to devalue human lives we find inconvenient.  Dead civilians become “collateral damage,” are ignored altogether, or are rationalized away on the Leninist grounds that to make an omelet you have to break some eggs. (The apostle Paul, on the other hand, condemned the idea that we should do evil that good may come.)  People ask an expectant mother how her baby is doing.  They do not ask her how her fetus is doing, or her blob of tissue, or her parasite.  But that is what her baby becomes as soon as the child is declared to be unwanted.  In both cases, we try to make human life into something less than human, simply according to our will.

This seems related to Andrew’s last post about the friend he brought to church. Something in her mental picture of what ‘religious’ people were like didn’t jive with the the welcoming, warm straightforwardness of the people she met there. Perhaps she thought being religious meant an austere, ascetic denial of the pleasures of life. These people enjoyed one another and themselves, they weren’t cold and disinterested, thus in her mind, they didn’t seem religious.

Can you enjoy yourself and die to self at the same time?
Why should we delight in material things if it’s all gonna burn?
Should we celebrate being human if we are going to become angle-like spirits when we die and go to heaven?

This seems to be part of the mentality of a lot of Christians and the way Christianity is often perceived from the outside. Bioethicist Nigel Cameron offers a thoughtful engagement with this outlook in his 1988 book Are Christians Human?

I quote from the introduction:

Are Christians human? This seems a rather facetious question to ask. I ask it in order to draw attention to a striking omission in our thinking about the Christian life. For there are many influences at work in the church today who seem to imply that the right answer to it is no. Their idea of what it means to be a Christian requires us to rise above not simply sin, but human nature itself. The motive is commendable: to help us be more spiritual. But it is a fundamental mistake to believe that spirituality lies in a denial of humanity. The problem is that our human nature has been effected by sin, and we find it hard to imagine what it would be like to be human and yet sinless. Yet, there is a human life which has been lived like that; and we must let the human life of Jesus govern our imagination set the goals for our Christian living.”

Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting notes, quotes, and questions from this book, and I’m looking forward to discussion, so please comment.

The eight chapters of the book are as follows:

1. The Challenge of the Incarnation
2. Was Jesus Human?
3. Faith and the Mind
4. Guidance and the Will
5. Emotion and the Heart
6. Life in the Flesh
7. A Cloud of Witnesses
8. God’s Human Face

If you are interested you can buy an mp3 audiobook of Are Christians Human? from Mars Hill Audio for just 11$ (that’s what I have, it’s about 4 hours) or you can buy an actual book used on amazon (it’s currently out of print).

I’ll close with another quote by Cameron on the Christian Life :

The Christian life is the story of the renewal and affirmation of the image of God in us. In his son Jesus, God himself was not ashamed to become our brother man. Let us in our turn not be ashamed to be the men and the women he has called us to be.”

Mars Hill Audio is a bi-monthly audio journal which, as described on it’s website

“is committed to assisting Christians who desire to move from thoughtless consumption of contemporary culture to a vantage point of thoughtful engagement. We believe that fulfilling the commands to love God and neighbor requires that we pay careful attention to the neighborhood: that is, every sphere of human life where God is either glorified or despised, where neighbors are either edified or undermined.”

While I don’t yet subscribe, I regularly borrow the tapes or CDs from a pastor of mine and occasionally buy MP3s from their MP3 store. In each issue the editor interviews various authors and thinkers on politics, music, art, economics, theology, etc. I find it relentlessly engaging.

I recently bought an audio book produced by Mars Hill Audio titled ‘Are Christians Human?‘ by Nigel Cameron. I’ve already listened to it once, and over the next few weeks I’ll be blogging through it here.

For more info on Mars Hill Audio, you can check out their about page, sample the journal here by downloading free mp3s or checkout their free podcast.

Here is another quote from the site:

“Therefore, living as disciples of Christ pertains not just to prayer, evangelism, and Bible study, but also our enjoyment of literature and music, our use of tools and machines, our eating and drinking, our views on government and economics, and so on.“