Contents · Explore the 16 sections
- Culture Can Preserve the Shape After Life Has Gone
- Culture Gives Us Something Easier Than Christ
- Culture Produces Imitation
- Culture Rewards Conformity
- Culture Can Inhibit Spiritual Growth
- Culture Can Destroy Spiritual Curiosity
- Culture Can Turn Revelation Into Vocabulary
- Culture Can Become a Substitute Mediator
- Culture Can Prevent the Body From Functioning
- Culture Protects Itself
- Does Christian Culture Frustrate Christ’s Return?
- Perhaps We Are Waiting for the Wrong Thing
- The Answer Is Not Another Reformation of Forms
- Christ Must Remain the Center
- The Great Liberation
- The Final Question
Christian culture may be one of the most subtle obstacles to the fullness of Christ because it rarely looks like an enemy.
It looks Christian.
It speaks Christian language. It quotes Scripture. It sings Christian songs. It builds churches, publishes books, conducts conferences, trains workers, teaches doctrine, develops ministries, establishes traditions, and produces generations of people who know precisely how Christians are expected to behave.
And therein lies its danger.
The great enemy of spiritual reality is not always something obviously sinful. Sometimes it is something religious that has learned to survive without the reality that originally produced it.
Christian culture begins innocently enough.
Someone encounters Christ.
That encounter produces something.
Perhaps Christians begin meeting in homes because they love one another and cannot stay apart. Perhaps someone writes a hymn because ordinary language cannot contain what he has experienced. Perhaps believers develop a particular way of praying because prayer has become spontaneous communion with God. Perhaps an unusually gifted servant discovers language capable of explaining something believers have experienced but could not articulate.
Everything is alive at the beginning.
Then something happens.
The experience becomes a practice.
The practice becomes a tradition.
The tradition becomes an expectation.
The expectation becomes a standard.
The standard becomes an identity.
And eventually the identity becomes something people defend.
What began with Christ can therefore end with the preservation of something Christ once produced.
The river has moved on, but people remain beside the old riverbed insisting that because water once flowed there, everyone must remain there forever.
That is the tragedy of Christian culture.
Culture Can Preserve the Shape After Life Has Gone
Every genuine spiritual movement faces this danger.
The first generation discovers something.
The second generation organizes it.
The third generation inherits it.
The fourth generation defends it.
Eventually people may become experts in describing an experience they themselves have never had.
They know the vocabulary.
They know the books.
They know the history.
They know the songs.
They know the proper interpretation.
They know which teachers are trustworthy.
They know how meetings should operate.
They know what a mature Christian should sound like.
They know when to say Amen.
They know how to pray publicly.
They know what subjects are safe and what questions cause discomfort.
They know the culture.
And because they know the culture, they may assume they know Christ.
That assumption is spiritually dangerous.
A person can become completely adapted to Christianity without being deeply transformed by Christ.
Christian culture therefore creates the possibility of something terrifying:
Christianity without immediate dependence upon Christ.
The machinery can continue operating.
Meetings continue.
Sermons continue.
Conferences continue.
Bible studies continue.
Training continues.
Organizations continue.
Publications continue.
Songs continue.
Programs continue.
Everything continues.
And Christ Himself can quietly become peripheral to the system carrying His name.
Culture Gives Us Something Easier Than Christ
Christ cannot be controlled.
Culture can.
Christ is living. Culture is repeatable.
Christ may interrupt us. Culture gives us schedules.
Christ may lead one believer differently from another. Culture standardizes them.
Christ requires dependence. Culture provides instructions.
Christ requires discernment. Culture provides rules.
Christ transforms us inwardly through Zoe, His own divine life already given to us. As we abide in Him, that life works within us; transformation is its fruit, not another achievement we must produce. Culture can provide recognizable behavior without that inward reality.
Christ requires faith. Culture provides certainty.
Christ requires relationship. Culture provides membership.
Christ requires reality. Culture provides appearance.
That is why religious culture is so attractive.
It gives human beings a way of possessing Christianity without continually confronting the terrifying freedom of the living God.
Instead of asking,
“What is Christ doing?”
we ask,
“What are we supposed to do?”
Instead of asking,
“What is the Spirit saying?”
we ask,
“How have we always done this?”
Instead of asking,
“Where is the life?”
we ask,
“Was the procedure followed correctly?”
The replacement can be almost invisible.
Eventually people stop expecting Christ to initiate anything unexpected.
Christianity becomes predictable.
And perhaps predictability is one of the clearest signs that culture has begun replacing life.
Culture Produces Imitation
One of Christian culture’s most destructive effects is imitation.
A young believer enters a Christian environment and begins observing everyone around him.
He quickly learns.
This is how Christians speak.
This is how Christians pray.
These are the approved words.
These are the approved books.
These are the approved teachers.
These are the approved opinions.
This is what enthusiasm looks like.
This is what spirituality sounds like.
This is how leadership behaves.
This is how disagreement is handled.
This is what questions may be asked.
This is what questions should never be asked.
Perhaps nobody explicitly teaches these things.
They don’t need to.
Culture teaches through reinforcement.
Approval teaches.
Disapproval teaches.
Silence teaches.
Recognition teaches.
Exclusion teaches.
Soon the believer begins adapting.
The tragedy is that adaptation can easily be mistaken for transformation.
But Christ did not come merely to improve human behavior.
The New Testament speaks of something enormously greater:
new creation.
Paul writes:
“Neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.” (Galatians 6:15)
That statement is devastating to religious culture.
Circumcision possessed enormous biblical history. God Himself had commanded it. Yet Paul could say that something once commanded by God was not the ultimate issue.
Why?
Because something greater had arrived.
Christ.
New creation.
Divine life entering human beings.
The shadow could not be allowed to compete with the substance.
Culture Rewards Conformity
Every culture develops mechanisms for rewarding conformity.
Christian culture is no exception.
The person who speaks correctly is trusted.
The person who behaves correctly is considered mature.
The person who repeats accepted teachings is considered safe.
The person who challenges assumptions may be considered dangerous.
This creates an enormous problem.
The community gradually selects for conformity rather than revelation.
The safest people rise.
The predictable people gain influence.
The people who understand the institution survive.
Meanwhile the disruptive voices may disappear.
Yet Scripture is filled with disruptive voices.
The prophets were disruptive.
John the Baptist was disruptive.
Jesus was profoundly disruptive.
Paul repeatedly disrupted established religious expectations.
The Spirit seems remarkably unconcerned with preserving human comfort.
Christian culture, however, frequently becomes extraordinarily concerned with it.
Once an institution becomes large enough, preservation quietly becomes one of its primary objectives.
Then something fundamental changes.
Originally the organization existed to serve life.
Eventually life is expected to serve the organization.
People exist to maintain meetings.
Members exist to support programs.
Workers exist to sustain ministries.
Believers exist to preserve traditions.
The institution becomes the center of gravity.
Christ remains in the vocabulary while the system increasingly becomes the practical reality.
Culture Can Inhibit Spiritual Growth
Culture also puts ceilings over believers.
A person can only grow so far within a culture before genuine growth begins threatening the assumptions of that culture.
This is because genuine spiritual growth produces freedom.
The believer begins discovering Christ directly.
He begins seeing things for himself.
He begins distinguishing Christ from the things surrounding Christ.
He becomes less dependent upon external reinforcement.
He may discover that something he once considered essential was merely helpful.
Something he considered divine may have been cultural.
Something he considered permanent may have been temporary.
Something he considered universally Christian may simply have been the practice of his particular community.
This can be frightening to religious systems.
A genuinely mature believer becomes increasingly difficult to control because his allegiance moves deeper.
He does not necessarily become rebellious.
Quite the opposite.
He becomes governed by something deeper than institutional approval.
He becomes governed by Christ.
Culture Can Destroy Spiritual Curiosity
Christian culture can also teach believers not to ask questions.
Every culture contains invisible boundaries.
Eventually members know where they are.
Questions within the boundaries are encouraged.
Questions concerning the boundaries themselves are dangerous.
But revelation frequently begins with questions.
What if we misunderstood this?
What if this practice has completed its usefulness?
What if our interpretation is incomplete?
What if something we inherited from previous generations was appropriate for them but has become an obstacle for us?
What if God wants something we have never seen?
What if Christ is larger than our theology?
What if the Spirit intends to lead us somewhere our founders never went?
Those questions should not terrify Christians.
They should excite us.
Because if Christ is inexhaustible, then discovering Him can never be completed by one generation.
No ministry exhausts Christ.
No theologian exhausts Christ.
No movement exhausts Christ.
No church tradition exhausts Christ.
No interpretation exhausts Christ.
No vocabulary exhausts Christ.
The moment Christians begin believing that their particular expression has captured the whole, discovery stops.
And when discovery stops, preservation begins.
Culture Can Turn Revelation Into Vocabulary
Words are particularly dangerous.
A spiritual insight eventually acquires terminology.
The terminology becomes familiar.
Familiarity creates the illusion of possession.
We learn the word and assume we possess the reality.
We say:
abiding.
life.
Spirit.
Body.
kingdom.
cross.
resurrection.
fellowship.
oneness.
transformation.
Christ.
But knowing the vocabulary of fire does not make us burn.
A person can spend fifty years talking about life while becoming increasingly lifeless.
He can speak endlessly about transformation without changing.
He can defend fellowship while becoming incapable of genuine fellowship.
He can preach oneness while maintaining systems that divide believers.
He can teach freedom while controlling people.
He can talk about Christ while being fascinated primarily with teachings about Christ.
Words become extraordinarily dangerous when they allow us to believe we possess realities we merely understand conceptually.
Culture Can Become a Substitute Mediator
The New Testament presents Christ Himself as the mediator between God and humanity. (1 Timothy 2:5)
Yet religious culture continually inserts secondary mediators.
The believer begins thinking:
I need the meeting.
I need the minister.
I need the teacher.
I need the book.
I need the conference.
I need the method.
I need the approved interpretation.
I need the institution.
Any of those things may help.
But none is Christ.
The moment something designed to lead us to Christ becomes something we cannot imagine living without, we should examine it carefully.
John the Baptist understood this.
His entire ministry existed to point beyond itself.
“He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30)
That should be written over every Christian ministry.
Every ministry should ultimately make believers less dependent upon the ministry and more dependent upon Christ.
Every teacher should desire students who eventually see beyond the teacher.
Every elder should desire believers who increasingly hear Christ themselves.
Every Christian institution should hold its own existence lightly.
Otherwise servants become mediators.
And mediators become masters.
Culture Can Prevent the Body From Functioning
Another terrible consequence of Christian culture is passivity.
Religious systems frequently create specialists.
A small number speak.
Everyone else listens.
A small number teach.
Everyone else receives.
A small number lead.
Everyone else follows.
A small number discern.
Everyone else trusts their discernment.
Yet Paul’s picture of the Body is radically organic.
Every member functions. (1 Corinthians 12:7, 18–27; Ephesians 4:16)
Every member contributes.
Every member possesses Christ.
Every member matters.
The church is not fundamentally an audience surrounding gifted Christians.
It is Christ distributed among His people.
Christian culture can unintentionally reverse this.
Instead of developing functioning members, it develops excellent spectators.
People attend.
People listen.
People agree.
People consume.
Then they go home.
The Body remains largely dormant.
And we call the gathering successful because the meeting was impressive.
But perhaps heaven measures success differently.
Perhaps the question is not how impressive the ministry was.
Perhaps the question is:
How much Christ became expressed through His people?
Culture Protects Itself
Eventually Christian culture develops self-preservation instincts.
This is where things become particularly serious.
Once buildings, salaries, publishing systems, educational institutions, reputations, ministries, leadership structures, conferences and organizational identities exist, enormous pressure develops to preserve them.
Nobody needs to be consciously corrupt.
The structure itself creates incentives.
Questions become threatening.
Change becomes expensive.
Experimentation becomes dangerous.
Failure becomes embarrassing.
Institutional reputation becomes important.
And gradually the question changes.
It is no longer simply:
“What does Christ want?”
There is another question operating beneath it:
“What will happen to everything we have built?”
That question has killed many spiritual movements.
Because resurrection requires death.
And institutions generally dislike dying.
Does Christian Culture Frustrate Christ’s Return?
Here we must speak carefully.
No human institution can ultimately defeat God’s purpose or prevent Christ from returning if God has appointed the time. Christianity does not possess veto power over the sovereign purpose of God.
But the New Testament does connect the culmination of God’s purpose with the preparation of a people.
Revelation speaks of the Bride making herself ready. (Revelation 19:7)
Paul speaks of the church growing “to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:13)
Peter even uses the remarkable expression “waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God.” (2 Peter 3:12)
Whatever theological interpretation we give these passages, they certainly do not present Christians as passive spectators waiting for God to finish history while nothing happens within them.
God is producing something.
A people.
A Body.
A Bride.
A corporate expression of His Son.
And this is precisely where Christian culture can become an obstruction.
If God’s purpose is merely to produce religious organizations, Christianity has been enormously successful.
We have organizations.
If His purpose is to produce meetings, we have millions.
If His purpose is to produce sermons, humanity has accumulated billions of them.
If His purpose is to produce theological information, Christian civilization possesses more information than any generation in history.
If His purpose is to produce Christian activity, enormous activity already exists.
But what if God’s objective is something entirely different?
What if God’s purpose is Christ reproduced in human beings?
Then our measurements become almost useless.
The question becomes:
How much Christ?
How much transformation?
How much genuine love?
How much freedom?
How much divine life?
How much reality?
How much of the corporate humanity described by Paul has actually appeared?
Then Christian culture becomes dangerous whenever it allows us to substitute activity for transformation.
We can remain enormously busy while the Bride remains immature.
Perhaps We Are Waiting for the Wrong Thing
Christians frequently speak about waiting for Christ’s return.
But Revelation gives us another picture:
the Bride prepares herself.
Perhaps therefore the deeper question is not merely:
“When will Christ return?”
Perhaps we should also ask:
What is Christ waiting for?
Again, this should not become a mathematical theory that human achievement controls God’s prophetic calendar.
But it should disturb our passivity.
Suppose Christ desires a people who genuinely embody His life.
Then every religious substitute becomes serious.
Every tradition that suppresses life matters.
Every hierarchy that prevents members from functioning matters.
Every culture that rewards imitation matters.
Every institution that fears revelation matters.
Every vocabulary that substitutes terminology for experience matters.
Every ministry that creates dependency matters.
Every practice that replaces immediate relationship with Christ matters.
Because these things may delay maturity even if they cannot overturn God’s sovereignty.
We may therefore spend our lives waiting for Christ while participating in systems that resist precisely the kind of people Christ is producing.
That possibility should terrify us.
The Answer Is Not Another Reformation of Forms
Yet we must be careful.
The solution to Christian culture is not creating a new Christian culture.
History demonstrates how easily this happens.
Someone discovers that church buildings have become institutional.
So believers begin meeting in homes.
Soon:
home meetings become the culture.
Someone discovers professional clergy has become dominant.
They emphasize every-member functioning.
Soon:
every-member functioning becomes the culture.
Someone discovers formal prayer has become dead.
They emphasize spontaneous prayer.
Soon:
spontaneous prayer becomes the culture.
Someone discovers traditional vocabulary has become stale.
They develop new vocabulary.
Soon:
the new vocabulary becomes the culture.
This cycle can continue indefinitely.
Reform becomes tradition.
Revolution becomes institution.
Discovery becomes doctrine.
Freedom becomes methodology.
Life becomes practice.
And practice becomes law.
Therefore the answer cannot merely be better forms.
The answer must be deeper.
Christ Must Remain the Center
The church must continually be willing to lose everything except Christ.
That is the safeguard.
Forms can change.
Vocabulary can change.
Meeting structures can change.
Leadership structures can change.
Music can change.
Methods can change.
Organizations can disappear.
Ministries can end.
Traditions can die.
But Christ remains.
Perhaps this is one meaning of Paul’s extraordinary declaration:
“For to me to live is Christ.” (Philippians 1:21)
Not Christianity.
Not ministry.
Not theology.
Not meetings.
Not movements.
Not tradition.
Not even Paul’s own apostolic work.
Christ.
Everything else was negotiable.
Christ was not.
The Great Liberation
What would happen if Christians became willing to distinguish Christ from Christian culture?
Something frightening would happen.
And something magnificent.
People would become free.
Free to question.
Free to discover.
Free to fail.
Free to experiment.
Free to gather differently.
Free to stop doing things that no longer contain life.
Free to abandon vocabulary that no longer communicates reality.
Free to recognize Christ outside their own traditions.
Free to receive believers who do not resemble them.
Free to follow the Spirit into territory their predecessors never explored.
Free even to discover that some cherished practices were scaffolding rather than the building itself.
And perhaps most importantly:
free to know Christ directly.
That freedom would not destroy the church.
It might finally reveal it.
Because beneath centuries of Christian civilization, theological systems, denominations, movements, organizations, traditions and religious habits stands something astonishingly simple:
Christ living in human beings.
That was the mystery.
“Christ in you.” (Colossians 1:27)
Not Christianity around you.
Not religion imposed upon you.
Not Christian culture governing you.
Christ in you.
The Final Question
Christian culture is therefore most dangerous when it succeeds.
When it becomes comfortable.
When everybody knows the rules.
When everybody knows what will happen next.
When questions disappear.
When meetings become predictable.
When leadership becomes permanent.
When vocabulary becomes standardized.
When methods become sacred.
When yesterday’s revelation becomes today’s requirement.
When preserving the movement becomes more important than pursuing Christ.
At that moment Christianity may appear extremely strong while spiritually becoming extraordinarily fragile.
Because the whole structure may depend upon maintaining something Christ never promised to maintain.
Christ did not say:
“I will build your tradition.”
He did not say:
“I will build your denomination.”
He did not say:
“I will build your ministry.”
He did not say:
“I will build your movement.”
He said:
“I will build my church.” (Matthew 16:18)
Perhaps the great work before Christians is therefore not constructing more Christianity.
Perhaps it is removing everything that prevents Christ from possessing His people completely.
The church does not need another layer of Christian culture.
It needs Christ.
Christ without imitation.
Christ without institutional necessity.
Christ without compulsory vocabulary.
Christ without cultural barriers.
Christ without human ownership.
Christ without the machinery we imagine He cannot live without.
Christ in ordinary human beings.
Christ expressed through every member.
Christ as life rather than merely doctrine.
Christ as present reality rather than merely historical founder.
Christ as Head rather than honorary figurehead.
Christ filling His Body until what exists on earth corresponds to the One who already fills the heavens.
Then the question concerning His return acquires an entirely different character.
Instead of merely looking upward and asking,
“Lord, when are You coming?”
perhaps the church must also allow Him to ask us:
“When will you finally let Me live?”
Perhaps the greatest obstacle is not that Christ is reluctant to return.
Perhaps we have been extraordinarily reluctant to disappear.
And perhaps the final preparation of the church will involve exactly that:
less Christianity,
less machinery,
less imitation,
less preservation,
less culture,
less us—
and increasingly,
overwhelmingly,
unmistakably,
Christ.
