CULTURE.

Ways of thinking, speaking and behaving differ between the businessmans’ club and the manual labourers’ culture. Culture varies between church denominational groups, financial groups (socio economic groups), age and sex defined groups and those within different geographical areas and time frames. Culture in one part of the world may well be different from another culture not only in the same place , but in previous generations.

Culture and personality.

Culture is related to the personality of a group (family, church, neighbourhood, country) which has various behavioural (and ritual) expressions. Personality is to do with issues of an internal sense of safety, worth, identity, control, centredness and coping. It is expressed through the ways they person perceives and understands the outside world and also the ways the person then behaves and relates. The same is the case with culture, but when applied to a group such as with friends, a marriage, family, small group, church or workplace. The behaviour of cultures is expressed in rituals and rules of living (which all denominations have even the most informal ones).

• Some cultures are safer than others.
• Some cultures have higher levels of a sense of worth, value and trust within the community than others. The more urban culture and the more anonymous one becomes, the more this sense of care disappears.
• Culture also refers to the way one group would define its identity, separate from another. The social rules (for example to do with power and proximity or who is close to who) differ from one culture to another. Family structure differs between cultures.
• Some cultures are more controlling than others, which may be more phlegmatic and laid back. Just think of the difference in cultures between the urban and rural settings. City culture clearly differs from rural villages in terms of pace and intensity of life.
• The western culture is more self centred and individualistic, and the eastern culture emphasises the extended family and spirituality.
• The way one culture copes with stress and grief differs from another. Some cultures are better at being able to cope with suffering, underneath the water level. The Western culture is very poor at understanding about and coping with suffering and strives at all costs (as seen through advertising) to live above the water level. The rise Budhism in the Western world may have something to do with this need to understand suffering better, as sadly the Christian church in the west has all too often taken on the "instant analgesic", "Jesus bless me now and I will serve you " culture and philosophy. Yes, even God's blessing can become self centred! If God does not bless me, or answer my prayers, then, I will either leave Him, or let my Christianity slide into a quiet state of despair. Our experience then becomes central over God's reality.

Culture and Christian wholeness.

Culture needs to be placed in the top right-hand quadrant. So culture needs to be

• God centred. Any person or church can be as it were, " culture-centric" where culture and rituals take place over God. Biblical Christianity is not

• western, but can be expressed through the western culture, as through any. This can be seen not only in eastern cultural expressions in marriage ceremonies actually go against a Biblical approach, but also where Christianity has been so westernised that the two are seen to be the same. Christianity is not just characterised as being "male" centred (gender related), but also, from a cultural perspective, as being "white" and "caucasian". Jesus was not white. He was not a westerner! In the context of missions, there is a release from the need to convert other individuals, families or groups to a western culture. The focus becomes Christ, more than culture. (This focus on Christ being above the host culture is essential if one is to stay away from syncretism - where there is a mixture of the host religion and Christianity.)
• denominational, but can be expressed through a particular denominational culture. Every group needs to submit its culture to become Christ centred. This includes looking at what is purely cultural , for example within a denomination, and submitting that to the love, light and lordship of Jesus.

• be healthy and positive, rather than to become negative and destructive. We look back on many cultures and tut tut at some of the "primitive" and destructive approaches cultures may have had. We frown in disgust (rightly) at the way unwanted Roman babies would be taken after they were born and killed, only to be doing it ourselves much more extensively to abortion. Now the baby’s not being wanted, is defined before it comes into the world instead of after. The most dangerous time in life is probably in the womb.

Post-modernity, is a positive culture which can be self-centred. The spiritual life in our own individual individual, family or church culture, can be dominated by the western cultures and philosophies without being aware of it. Post modernism is having a major impact on the world, and on the church. This philosophy particularly affects culture in highlighting the importance of the reality and truth of individual experience over and above what is right and wrong. Right and wrong have disappeared.

• Truth is individually defined. (Nevertheless, a good aspect of this is that people are being more honest and open about their own "realities".)
• Individual experience is good. It is critical that our Christian faith reaches right throughout all of our circles through our thoughts and feelings to our behaviour and out into our social lives in order to become an experience which we ourselves can own.

However, individual experience can get to the point where in various parts of the church, where it is considered to be the ultimate truth and the goal. In these situations, the emphasis on Biblical teaching may be minimised, and taken over by an over emphasis on experiential emphasis. The importance of having a "good time" (a good experience) at church once owned devotions become the determining factor of whether to do these or not.

Summary of the circles

• We are made up of a number of parts. One way of looking at the person (and a family, as well as a church) is to consider the parts in order to understand the whole. While it helps to dissect them out from each other, in reality, these parts are not contained in nice and neat circles. They interact and blur with each other.
• All of our parts are important, for God made them. One part or circle is not of more value than another part. Paul, when talking about the church uses the metaphor of the body (his most preferred example for the church), and encapsulates some of his thoughts. "The body is a unit that has made up of many parts; and though it all its parts are many they form one body. So it is with Christ" ( 1Cor 12:12). He goes on to say how to all parts are of equal importance.
• Across these circles, three different and yet related brushes are passed. We have seen two; gender and culture. The third, age or development is still to come. (It will make more sense later on.) As we start to see the circles and colours, we can start to really see the whole. We will be more able to ask, It is not easy to be able to ask safely our friends, family and those in our small groups, "How are you?", "Where are you at?", “What is that like for you?".

So, what are these circles which make up Christian wholeness? We will later have a closer glance at them, from the inside, out: spirit, personality, mind, physical and social.