Every since Dr. King declared 11:00am as the most segregated hour in America diversity has steadily become a desired value of many congregations and denominations, including my own, the CRC. I was raised in a “racial reconciliation” church of sorts. A church planted in 1960 which quickly became a place where African Americans and whites and others could worship together, break bread together and learn from each other. I am deeply, deeply grateful that this was the context in which I was brought up.
I have been an ethnic minority in every neighborhood I have ever lived within with the exception of the years I lived on campus at Calvin College. Then I was more a part of a minority enclave within the broader culture of North America. Dutch Calvinism should hardly be considered “majority culture” in most places besides areas of Western Michigan or North-west Iowa.
This background has always given me an interest in cultures. I always bristle when I hear church folks talk about “culture” with a sneer. I want to reply “which culture are you sneering about?” Cultures are like elements, molecules, compounds or chemicals floating in water. Some areas are like stagnant ponds where certain elements are present in high concentration in a fairly static way. In other places there are streams and water falls distributing these things into different places. The history of the world is a large watery echo-system.
The question of where God stands with respect to culture is easy. He created us to do culture. I was taught in my Dutch Calvinist Christian school that Genesis 1 contains “the cultural mandate” where we are commanded by God to go out into the world to create culture, participate in culture, redeem culture, renew culture. I am grateful to the likes of Richard Mouw and Tim Keller for articulating these ideas far better than I ever can.
Within this position is an assumption that the real cultures out there in the world, out there in the wild, have elements and aspects that are genuine treasures given by God to be finally harvested, renewed and glorified at the renewal of all things (Isaiah 60 via Mouw’s “When the Kings Come Marching In”. See also Tim Keller’s sermon on cultural renewal). Every culture also has aspects therefore of God-given advantage, that other cultures can benefit from and enjoy, as well as elements of rebellion and distortion of which it is captive and deficient and in need of help from other cultural groups.
Our world today is one where the waters move fast, cultures mix, isolation is broken down, and we are presented with the cultural blessings and curses of many cultures around us. Within the mix of our own cultures confronted by others and the mixtures of others. There are no “pure” cultures, all are mixtures of cultures before them. One friend told me that culture is like folding paper. Once it’s folded once, it is culture. The sheet is never unfolded.
What does this mean for churches that now embrace the value of diversity? A few observations that I think might be helpful.
1. We never were truly mono-cultural. Cultures have historical layers, ethnic layers, subculture layers, gender layers, leader layers, layers of every kind. There may be concentrations of different elements in the water, but everyplace we can find in the planet is a product of long mixings and fermentings.
2. Diversity opens up wonderful possibilities for culture sharing, growing and culture making. Cultural isolation encourages provincialisms where rebellions and corruptions can flourish and propagate. Cultural contact affords opportunities to see things in different ways, to hear new things, and to hear a word from the LORD in a revelatory way that we might not have heard before. This requires great humility which is never easy but the promise is there.
We know this, and this is part of the reason we embrace diversity, to seek it, to learn from it, to grow, to glorify God. I fear, however, sometimes we are naive about the difficulties involved in this. Instinctive to our rebellious, fallen condition is our ability to identify the sins of others while being blind to our own. This makes contact between diverse cultures explosive, and of course is the reason cultures are often in conflict. I look at you and your culture and am ready to point out its deficiencies. You are of course doing the same to me, and there we are, adversaries. We may not even be fighting over anything that is sinful or wrong, we just disagree, or maybe we are and one of us is right and the other is wrong.
Within the context of diversity, therefore, the project of discovering our own twistedness and rebellion from the interplay of cultures may also require subgroupings of mono-culture exploration. This is the role of bridge builders, people that speak our language and our culture yet who also know another. The presence of diversity triggers the inborn reflex opposing the “strange” (from the time before we were born we are attracted by what we have learned to be safe and familiar, like our mother’s voice heard already in the uterus.) When we are afraid we behave poorly and are prone to defensiveness, anger, and outright attack.
Our encounters with diversity are God ordained and will culminate in the beautiful visions of Revelation 7:9 . The process is unstoppable and we must pursue with wisdom and intentionality. What we should be cautious of is naivety. Through the process that diversity affords we can receive great things from God’s creation and redemption, but when it comes to dealing with the sins within our own cultures we should be ready for the real, hard work that redemption requires. No realizing or breaking of sin in my own life has every been anything but rock-hard painful. When communities are faced with this process for our communal sins I would expect nothing less difficult.
Leadingchurch.com 
Let's not be naive about what learning from diversity requires
Every since Dr. King declared 11:00am as the most segregated hour in America diversity has steadily become a desired value of many congregations and denominations, including my own, the CRC. I was raised in a “racial reconciliation” church of sorts. A church planted in 1960 which quickly became a place where African Americans and whites and others could worship together, break bread together and learn from each other. I am deeply, deeply grateful that this was the context in which I was brought up.
I have been an ethnic minority in every neighborhood I have ever lived within with the exception of the years I lived on campus at Calvin College. Then I was more a part of a minority enclave within the broader culture of North America. Dutch Calvinism should hardly be considered “majority culture” in most places besides areas of Western Michigan or North-west Iowa.
This background has always given me an interest in cultures. I always bristle when I hear church folks talk about “culture” with a sneer. I want to reply “which culture are you sneering about?” Cultures are like elements, molecules, compounds or chemicals floating in water. Some areas are like stagnant ponds where certain elements are present in high concentration in a fairly static way. In other places there are streams and water falls distributing these things into different places. The history of the world is a large watery echo-system.
The question of where God stands with respect to culture is easy. He created us to do culture. I was taught in my Dutch Calvinist Christian school that Genesis 1 contains “the cultural mandate” where we are commanded by God to go out into the world to create culture, participate in culture, redeem culture, renew culture. I am grateful to the likes of Richard Mouw and Tim Keller for articulating these ideas far better than I ever can.
Within this position is an assumption that the real cultures out there in the world, out there in the wild, have elements and aspects that are genuine treasures given by God to be finally harvested, renewed and glorified at the renewal of all things (Isaiah 60 via Mouw’s “When the Kings Come Marching In”. See also Tim Keller’s sermon on cultural renewal). Every culture also has aspects therefore of God-given advantage, that other cultures can benefit from and enjoy, as well as elements of rebellion and distortion of which it is captive and deficient and in need of help from other cultural groups.
Our world today is one where the waters move fast, cultures mix, isolation is broken down, and we are presented with the cultural blessings and curses of many cultures around us. Within the mix of our own cultures confronted by others and the mixtures of others. There are no “pure” cultures, all are mixtures of cultures before them. One friend told me that culture is like folding paper. Once it’s folded once, it is culture. The sheet is never unfolded.
What does this mean for churches that now embrace the value of diversity? A few observations that I think might be helpful.
1. We never were truly mono-cultural. Cultures have historical layers, ethnic layers, subculture layers, gender layers, leader layers, layers of every kind. There may be concentrations of different elements in the water, but everyplace we can find in the planet is a product of long mixings and fermentings.
2. Diversity opens up wonderful possibilities for culture sharing, growing and culture making. Cultural isolation encourages provincialisms where rebellions and corruptions can flourish and propagate. Cultural contact affords opportunities to see things in different ways, to hear new things, and to hear a word from the LORD in a revelatory way that we might not have heard before. This requires great humility which is never easy but the promise is there.
We know this, and this is part of the reason we embrace diversity, to seek it, to learn from it, to grow, to glorify God. I fear, however, sometimes we are naive about the difficulties involved in this. Instinctive to our rebellious, fallen condition is our ability to identify the sins of others while being blind to our own. This makes contact between diverse cultures explosive, and of course is the reason cultures are often in conflict. I look at you and your culture and am ready to point out its deficiencies. You are of course doing the same to me, and there we are, adversaries. We may not even be fighting over anything that is sinful or wrong, we just disagree, or maybe we are and one of us is right and the other is wrong.
Within the context of diversity, therefore, the project of discovering our own twistedness and rebellion from the interplay of cultures may also require subgroupings of mono-culture exploration. This is the role of bridge builders, people that speak our language and our culture yet who also know another. The presence of diversity triggers the inborn reflex opposing the “strange” (from the time before we were born we are attracted by what we have learned to be safe and familiar, like our mother’s voice heard already in the uterus.) When we are afraid we behave poorly and are prone to defensiveness, anger, and outright attack.
Our encounters with diversity are God ordained and will culminate in the beautiful visions of Revelation 7:9 . The process is unstoppable and we must pursue with wisdom and intentionality. What we should be cautious of is naivety. Through the process that diversity affords we can receive great things from God’s creation and redemption, but when it comes to dealing with the sins within our own cultures we should be ready for the real, hard work that redemption requires. No realizing or breaking of sin in my own life has every been anything but rock-hard painful. When communities are faced with this process for our communal sins I would expect nothing less difficult.
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Husband, Father of 5, Pastor