Cultural Christianity

- Every culture has some values that conform to biblical values.

- Every culture has some values that do not conform to biblical values.

- Every Christian’s behavior will be influenced by his/her own culture’s values in addition

to biblical values. Therefore, we should expect to find different practices among

Christians of different cultures.

This is solid logic, and it begs some reflection:

How much of your Christian practice is biblically commanded, and how much of it is cultural

Christianity?

Let’s look at a few examples.

Perhaps you think it’s your Christian duty to be prompt for meetings and appointments. Good

news! – It’s not. There is nothing in the Bible that says it is. Time efficiency is a Western

cultural value that we sometimes spiritualize into thinking ‘Christians should be time-efficient.’

We should respect others and respect our commitments, but sometimes those very biblical values

make other things more important than showing up to a meeting on time – especially if everyone

else in your culture is more relaxed about when things start.

Another example of time efficiency is scheduling prayer times. Do I think it’s great to be

disciplined and diligent in prayer? Absolutely! Does the Bible anywhere say to schedule our

prayer times? Absolutely not. We should pray often, even expectantly and persistently, but the

organization of time is simply a Western cultural value (1 Thess. 5:17; Luke 11:9; Luke 18:1-3).

Christmas is my favorite holiday. Do you know where the Bible says to celebrate Christmas? It

doesn’t. I still love Christmas and plan on celebrating it the rest of my life, but I also need to

realize that celebrating Christmas is cultural. When I encounter Christians who don’t celebrate

Christmas as a result of their culture, that does not make them any less Christian than me. In fact,

if I condemn them for their supposed lack of piety, I only show myself to be unbiblical.

These examples come from a worksheet that I had to fill out for class. I encourage you to

download the worksheet and fill it out yourself.

I am grateful to Cindy Blood, Second Language and Culture Acquisition, for inspiring this post

(but the specific interpretations are my own).