The Christian and Culture
The matter of Christian discernment regarding entertainment cannot be viewed in isolation from a larger issue. That larger issue is how the Christian and Christianity are to be related to the culture in which they exist. What the Christian decides about this will no doubt color what he or she believes about the matter of entertainment. This is an issue on which the Christian church throughout history has failed to reach a clear-cut consensus.
A helpful discussion of this is found in the book Christ and Culture by the American theologian H. Richard Niebuhr [San Francisco: Harper 1956]. Niebuhr examines how Christians over the centuries have understood the relationship between Christianity and the culture or society in which Christians must live. He concludes there are five different ways in which this relationship has been viewed.
1. The first way, Niebuhr calls Christ against culture. This viewpoint emphasizes the contrast between Christianity and the world. It calls for Christians to reject society because their “citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20), not on earth. It is impressed with New Testament passages like 1 John 2:15 (“Do not love the world or anything in the world”) and 2 Corinthians 6:17 (“Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord”). This viewpoint has had many influential defenders throughout the centuries. It has been expressed in movements that have urged Christians to withdraw from society and shun its manner of dress, art and literature, politics, educational systems and economic life as much as possible.
2. Niebuhr calls the second viewpoint Christ of Culture. This is the exact opposite of Christ against culture. Christians of this conviction have tried to eliminate all tensions between Christianity and the world. They have worked hard to accommodate Christianity and society to each other. They see God at work in the institutions of society and look for the kingdom of God to be a social reality here on earth. To them, Christ represents the best in human culture.
3. Christ above culture is what Niebuhr calls the third viewpoint. This view mixes ideas from the first two. It recognizes that there are tensions between being a Christian and being a part of society (like the first view), but it also recognizes that there are positive values in society apart from the church (like the second view). There are many ways the values of Christianity and the highest values held by society may overlap, yet there is always a distinction between them. Christ does not call for his followers to reject society nor to accept it uncritically. Rather, he stands above society or culture, affirming what is best in it but also requiring from his followers much that is in conflict with the values of any society.
4. A fourth view is Christ and culture in paradox. This is similar to No. 3, except it emphasizes more the conflict between being a Christian and being in the world, and it holds that the Christian can never escape this conflict. In fact, the Christian must live in two kingdoms, the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the world. Each has its own rules and principles. In many circumstances, the Christian must act in accordance with the principles of the kingdom of the world because there are no specifically Christian principles spelled out in the Bible to cover those circumstances (e.g., being a Christian autoworker, Christian Army colonel, Christian police officer or Christian chef). Thus, the Christian is always conscious of living with considerable tension in two worlds that are in many ways opposed to each other.
5. The fifth view is Christ transforming culture. This view emphasizes strongly the Christian doctrines of creation and incarnation. God created the world and pronounced it good (Genesis 1:31). The fact that human sin dragged it down into a fallen state must never overshadow the basic fact that the world is God’s creation and still bears the marks of the One who created it. This is underscored by the incarnation in which God actually became a part of his own creation. The world and its societies are thus not to be abolished by the coming of Christ; Christians are not called to reject society. Rather, Christ comes to transform and reclaim what is really perverted good rather than simply pure evil. According to this view, the Christian is not concerned with replacing society or culture with something altogether new but with transforming or converting every element of human culture so that it serves the good ends intended by God in creation.
Niebuhr’s examination demonstrates that each of these five ways of looking at the relationship between Christianity and the society or culture in which it exists has had devout and influential spokespersons at some time in the church’s history. Different periods of history have tended to bring one view or another to prominence. Most often, however, all five have contended with each other at the same time.
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