Unashamed Culture: Connecting Our Faith and CreativityНамуна

Day 4: Jesus as the example

Yesterday, we looked at God’s blueprint for culture. Today, we will look to Jesus as the perfect example of making culture. Where Adam and Eve fell short by desiring to define good and evil on their own terms, Jesus prioritized obedience to God the Father’s plans. By taking on human form, Jesus embedded himself into a specific cultural context and leveraged his relationship with God to create a powerful new culture. Through his life, we see what it means to redemptively create culture.

There are many examples of Jesus interacting with the culture of his time. We see Jesus attending weddings, joining theological discussions, and participating in Jewish customs and rituals of worship toward God. By doing this, Jesus worked within the confines of his time. He embraced the limitations of the culture God gave him. In other words, he cultivated his culture. 

Not only do we see Jesus participating in the cultural rituals that came before him, but He also operated within those traditions to transform them and make something altogether new. The most dramatic example of this is seen when Jesus transforms the Roman tradition of crucifixion. By embracing the cross, Jesus transformed a cultural symbol of domination and horror into a universal symbol of hope and love through his death, burial, and resurrection. 

What we learn from Jesus’ life is a pattern of humility that embraces the limitations God provides, while partnering with God in obedience to regeneration and new possibility within those limitations.

God gave Adam and Eve a garden to cultivate and their disobedience brought a curse. Conversely, God gave Jesus a culture to cultivate and his active obedience created the possibility of a new life and a new culture in the Kingdom of God. 

By following Jesus’ example of obedient cultivation and creation, we can effectively use our creativity to transform the cultures God gives to us. We can honor God by creating things that correct misconceptions about God’s order. We can also leverage God’s revelation to make new cultural goods that glorify him and bring peace to the world.

Meditate on the following scriptures (5 min): “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” (Philippians 2:5-7)

Read Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:21-26) (10 mins) 

Reflect on the following: 

1. What are some cultural spheres God has placed you in? How well does your life reflect Jesus’ example of humility in cultivating and creating new things within the limitations of culture God has given you?
2. When is the last time you leaned into your relationship with God to offer something new to your culture? Many of us fall into the trap of only participating in our culture or simplifying copying the patterns of our cultures in our lifestyle and the things we make. If you find yourself in the place pray this prayer: “God, I repent of the ways I have neglected your call to cultivate and create within the cultural spheres of my life. Please empower me through your Holy Spirit and show me how to live like Jesus and be a blessing to others through the things I create.”