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

Since early in my life, I’ve been a member of the PCA and have attended PCA churches.  There’s many things that I really love about the PCA and their style of worship.  I am thankful for the gospel-centered focus that every PCA church I’ve attended has had (which, unfortunately, is often neglected in favor of “relevance” and “accessibility” by many mainstream churches today).  While there is a large amount of diversity within PCA churches, they tend to be generally more liturgical, formal, and theological.  So, this is, of course, the form of worship that I feel most comfortable and at home with.  Of the three PCA churches I’ve attended in my life, I think that each one has been progressively slightly more formal than the previous.  When I say formal I’m talking about things like; use of responsive readings, hymns vs. contemporary music, style of preaching, church architecture, etc.

This most recent Sunday I was invited by some good friends to visit their church with them and share lunch together afterwords.  I enjoyed attending a small, local Bible church with them on Sunday morning.  The music was contemporary, the setting was informal and small, they had a multimedia presentation, drums, guitar, the whole bit.  I loved it.

I think that part of why I enjoyed the service so much was because it was so different from what I’ve had previously.  I know that my heart is sinful and so can become dead to any form of worship given long enough exposure to it.  I have no doubt that after participating in this style of worship for any length of time I would become lazy and apathetic in my worship, and that a highly structured, liturgical, formal service would likely be a balm to my soul.

Following the service I was talking with my friends over lunch about worship and the church.  I was only half joking when I said I wished that I could attend a church where they radically altered their style of worship every six months!  I’m not sure where my wife and I will end up attending church (and I must wait for her to return home from international travel before we make any kind of decision anyway), but wherever we go, we will be part of the body of Christ and enjoy fellowship with believers, and that’s an amazing thing!

And I’m sorry that I’m getting on your case
But true friends, they stab you in the face

I thought it was pretty clever.  In all seriousness though, the point (I suppose) is that people who actually care about you tell it to you straight.

Major life changes - my wife and I have just finished moving cross-country.  I’ve been busy packing, driving, unpacking, and job hunting.  I think I’m pretty close to securing some exciting employment, but I’ll hold off on saying anything until it’s certain.  Thankfully my wife’s job is already lined up, so we’re not necessarily worried, but I will definitely breathe easier when I’m officially employed as well.  My dad helped me drive all of our stuff across the country, and I really appreciated his help and getting to spend some time with him.

So…all that to say, it’s been a very busy past month.  I’ve got a couple of exciting ideas bouncing around for the site and hopefully we’ll be seeing much more activity here in the coming weeks.

Now then, in regard to laziness.  Let me share a story to begin with.

I really love soccer.  It’s probably not my favorite sport but it’s close.  I’m not really that good at soccer, nor do I follow it closely - but I love playing and watching it.  A few years back I had the opportunity to play soccer on a cool Sunday night with a really diverse, really interesting group of college international students.  I think we probably had at least six or seven different languages represented in our game.  We had students from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latina America, and of course, North America - it was great!

Since I was one of the weaker players, I hung back and played defense.  I was playing pretty decently - making a few good passes here, making some poor passes there.  Now then - in comes the opposing team’s offense, barreling hard down my side of the field.  I attack (too aggressive), miss, and the ball rolls past me.  Frustrated, I started to get up slowly, seeing the play already past me and thinking I didn’t have anything else to contribute.  As I’m rising to my feet, one of my team-mates, a large Eastern European man, runs past me shouting in a thick (Russian maybe?) accent, “Get up!  Keep going!”  He wasn’t angry, nor dissapointed even in my sloppy play - he was just so into the game and he was encouraging me to get back into it too.

Ok…so that’s sort of a random story, but for some reason this memory is sharp, crisp, and clear in my mind.  Often times when I am discouraged by my failure this memory serves to comfort me and reminds me of the Gospel.  We fail and fall down, and are hesitant to rise for fear of failure again, but there is Jesus yelling at us, “Get up!  Keep going!”

So - am I little dissapointed in my ability to contribute to this blog regularly?  Absolutely.  Am I going to quit?  Nope.  Stick around - good things coming.

Revelation 21:1-6

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.  And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”  And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”  And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.”  Then He said to me, “It is done.  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.  I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost.”

How then did Calvin teach us to regard the world in which
we live? We should be attentive spectators in the theater of
God’s glory, who seek to recognize the actor on the stage by
means of the powers revealed in his actions. We should
contemplate and meditate on the world as the living image of
God, in which the invisible God renders himself somewhat
visible, so that the powers we behold, feel, and enjoy in this
image might lead us by anagoge to the God representing
himself to us in this image. We should be ravished with
amazement and astonishment at the beauty of the fabric of the
universe, which reveals the goodness of God to us and sweetly
allures us to seek God.”

-Randall C. Zaclunan in the article:
The Universe as the Living Image of God: Calvin’s Doctrine of Creation Reconsidered

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?

Here is a lengthy, but good, section from the chapter entitled, When Winning Is Losing:

My competitiveness reached its peak one day in my twenty-sixth year.  I was flying door-gunner on a helicopter in Vietnam, and we were on a search-and-destroy mission.  Suddenly the ground beneath us came alive with enemy fire.  The intense battle that followed demanded the ultimate in combat strategy, skill, and commitment.  The stakes were never higher and victory was never more exhilarating.  I accepted with pride a medal for heroism in aerial combat.

It was only later, while still in Vietnam, that I began to understand the implications of my competitiveness.  As I flew back from another “successful” mission, I realized that the emotions I experienced were the same I once felt while wrestling or debating.  They were more intense because the stakes were higher, but they were unmistakably the same emotions.  I was taking human life and feeling the thrill of victory.  This thrill was inversely proportional to the agony of defeat — in this case death and maiming.

I began to suspect there was something wrong with a system in which my winning was built upon the defeat of another human being.  When I returned to the United States I was unable to put this new insight behind me.  I began working with disadvantaged people who were losers in a competitive economy.  I saw young men, broken men, crippled by too many years of defeat…And although I felt unpatriotic for thinking such thoughts, I wondered if all was well with an economic system where winning meant defeating another human being.  Could it be that among human beings cooperation was a better way than competition?

I pray that one day God will bring in a new order in which human beings will rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.  Perhaps on that day we will refuse the gains made at the expense of others and our success will be measured by the quality of our servanthood to humanity.

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