Culture Making

Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling

Andy Crouch

IVP 2008

273 Pages.

On the morning of my birthday while we were having our daily coffee time, Jennie handed this book to me. It was a gift from Joy McCarnan. I had told Jennie I was going to take the day easy so I ended up reading all day. I read this book that day from kiver to kiver. 

Tim Keller gave it a glowly endorsement. He said it is "one of the few books taking the discussion about Christianity and culture to a new level." I had never heard of the book, but it certainly did take me and my thoughts about Christianity and culture to another level. I found it to be fascinating. 

Almost all Christian books on culture take Niebuhr's classic five categories and build off of that, but Andy Crouch seems to have a little bit of a different take. Christians in America fall into the extremes of being culture consumers or culture condemners. Crouch suggests another way: we should realize that God has always been at work in history making culture. It takes a long, long time, but Christians who have understood their place have taken everything that they do (the arts, the trades, academics, etc) and have committed themselves to being the best that they can be in whatever their calling for the sake of making culture.

His definition of culture is instructive: “Culture is what we make of the world – we start not with a blank slate but with all the richly encultured world that previous generations have handed to us” (Crouch 73).

We are who we are and we really can't divorce ourselves from our pasts. This is particularly applicable to discussions of matters like fundamentalism, our traditions, witnessing to people from different backgrounds, and so forth. 

All culture making requires a choice, conscious or unconscious, to take our place in a cultural tradition. We cannot make culture without culture. And this means that creation begins with cultivation- taking care of the good things that culture has already handed on to us. The first responsibility of culture makers is not to make something new but to become fluent in the cultural tradition to which we are responsible. Before we can be culture makers, we must be culture keepers (Crouch 74). Later on he says, culture making requires culture maturity.

I think that this is relevant to the craziness of American evangelicals to consume our culture without any effort of becoming the artists themselves. Crouch is realistic, though. Theologically realistic. Near the end of the book he warns that anyone who thinks they can change the world doesn't understand sin. But he thinks we ought to have a long term vision. This, of course, suggests a post-millennarian worldview, but before we reject it we ought to learn from it. William Carey and Jonathan Edwards both had a long term vision to make the world a better place, to be culture makers. We have benefitted from their zeal. 

I don't think we have to buy into a postmillennialism to benefit from the emphasis of this book . Crouch said that anything that has had a huge impact on the world, no matter how sudden, had a LONG history behind it. Making a difference takes time. Therefore, it takes humility. 

A good read.

Heaven On Earth

Title: Heaven on Earth
Author: Thomas Brooks
Publisher: Banner of Truth, 1996
Pages: 320
Begun: January 21, 2009
Completed: May 2, 2009

First published in 1654, Heaven on Earth is a treatise on Christian assurance. Brooks explores in great depth the roots, essence, and fruit of assurance within a genuine child of God. Brooks' contemporary Joseph Caryl summed up Brooks' treatise quite well: "All saints shall enjoy heaven when they leave this earth; some saints enjoy heaven while they are here on earth. That saints might enjoy two heavens is the project of this book."

As difficult as it is to review a treatise with some deep theology, it will suffice to extract some provoking thoughts from the pen of Brooks. Consider some thoughts about how God uses suffering to strengthen a believer's faith and to give him assurance of His love:

"Suffering times are times wherein the Lord is pleased to give His people some sense of His favour. When they are in sufferings for righteousness' sake, for the gospel's sake, then usually God causes His face to shine upon them. Now they shall hear best news from heaven when they hear worst from earth. God loves to smile most upon His people when the world frowns most. When the world puts its iron chains upon their legs, then God puts His golden chains about their necks; when the world puts a bitter cup into their hands, then God drops some of His honey, some of His goodness and sweetness into it." (65)

"The suffering siant may be assaulted, but not vanquished; he may be troubled, but can never be conquered; he may lose his head, but he cannot lose his crown, which the righteous Lord hath prepared and laid up for him.....The Lord causes His goodness to pass before His people, and His face to shine upon His people in times of suffering.....for the praise of His own grace, and for the glory of His own name." (69)

The last half of Brooks' treatise is a detailed analysis of "the eight special things that accompany salvation:"

1. Knowledge
2. Faith
3. Repentance
4. Obedience
5. Love
6. Prayer
7. Perseverance
8. Hope

Of knowledge, Brooks writes,

"Divine knowlege fills a man full of spiritual activity; it will make a man work as if he would be saved by his works, and yet it will make a man believe that he is saved only upon the account of free grace." (178)

"Notional knowledge may make a man excellent at praising the glorious and worthy acts and virtues of Christ; but that transforming knowledge that accompanies salvation, will cause a man divinely to imitate the glorious acts and virtues of Christ." (179)

A difficult read, but an extremely rewarding one!