An Appealing Vision: Part 1

The old debate concerning Christ & Culture continues to burn afresh today. I am planning on writing a three-part series briefly describing the Christian meta-narrative along with an appealing vision for Christian cultural involvement. The way in which Christians understand their role in the various cultures within society greatly affects the way in which they live. Likewise, the concept of a Christian worldview has helped me personally understand the Christian meta-narrative better and in turn, understand my role within God's plan of redemption in Christ. When I use the term "Christian worldview," I am referring to the overarching framework from which an all-encompassing vision of reality is developed. The meta-narrative of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and restoration helps frame the entire corpus of Scripture within these simple terms.

Creation: In Genesis 1:26-28, the author described what's been termed the "cultural mandate". This mandate provided a few basic roles for humanity. It included things like taking dominion of the animal kingdom, procreation of humans, and subduing the earth. Likewise, Genesis 2:15 described the God-ordained (and good...) vocational calling to work the ground through God-honoring stewardship and cultivation.

The important thing to note at this point is that I am describing a pre-fallen world. All work at this point was God-ordained and therefore "sacred." There was no such thing as "sin," or a "sacred/secular" divide in a pre-fallen world. All things were good in the sight of God and willingly submitted to his Lordship. This is a valuable concept in the discussion of humanity's role and involvement within modern-day culture. God did not tell humanity to avoid the culture which he had created. In fact, man was to steward and cultivate that which God had created. He was mandated to be involved in the development of creation and culture. Moreover, God's created order in an unfallen state was good. It's what came after God's good creation fell and sinned when things became bad, and ultimately, God would be rejected for the all-important yet non-Christian religion of "selfism".... I will briefly describe the second aspect of the Christian meta-narrative in Part 2 of this series.

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