Cultural Christianity exists in every culture. It takes a form appropriate to that culture so is often hard to spot by people in the culture. At points it makes culture equal to or greater than Christianity.
It's a mistake to trade one form of cultural Christianity for another, whether you trade for your own culture's or someone else's. Rather, it's necessary we spot and avoid them altogether, so we can follow The Way more fully.
It's not that culture is unimportant. It's very important. It's part of what makes us who we are and that's by God's all-knowing design. The issue is not letting culture supplant Jesus and allowing Jesus to sift our cultural selves.
The Lord's pruning is painful, but it leads to greater growth, fruit and health. The new creations we are increasingly becoming (Col. 3:9-10; Eph. 4:23-24) far exceed in glory the old man we've been rescued from. Don't trade down when Christ trades you up!
So much of "evangelical Christianity" is culturally Christianity. Much of the "Dutch church" is cultural Christianity. We find cultural Christianity in Korean churches, Roman Catholicism, and Black churches. It's everywhere really.
Satan tempts us to think we can escape nominalism simply by trading tribes, whether denominational, cultural or political tribes. Then he doubles the disappointment when we discover the same cultural Christianity in places we thought were free from it.
Let that happen a couple of times and Satan turns the blade. He tries to allure you from the Church altogether, hissing that all churches are false and Christianity a fraud. The truth is simpler: we must always distinguish cultural from vital faith.
Maybe you're disenchanted with the church. Maybe you have reason. Churches are, after all, simply communities of redeemed sinners still growing in sanctification. We shouldn't be surprised at the church's failings. We *should* be surprised that grace abounds at all!
One of our great troubles is the idolization of self--whether the individual or the group self. We need more than ever to die to self so we can live more fully to God. We need to stop pretending our cultural idols do not exist because they're keeping us from Christ's full joy.
Seems like what we need, what we have always needed, is MORE of Jesus. We need to lose ourselves in Him just as He dwells in us. We need, inside our cultural enclaves, to call our fellow brethren to come out of themselves so they may truly come to Jesus.
This will require repentance. Deep repentance. At the level of foundational identity. Repenting of whiteness. Repenting of blackness. Repenting of Asian-ness. Repenting of any identity that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.
Like all forms of repentance, it must begin with me. However much I see this problem in others, I must first get that blinding log out of my own eye. But what begins with me then must include you. My log, your speck, both must go.
Until we repent of cultural Christianity and the idolizing of self that creates it, we will not see progress in the unity and love our Savior purchased for us on the cross and in the resurrection. We will still be prodigals wallowing with swine.
A final thought: If our churches are so ensconced in culture that they make it difficult for people from outside that culture to see Jesus, hear Jesus, and follow Jesus, then our churches are anti-Great Commission communities, not churches at all. Okay. I'm done.
