Dear Friends,
Culture is like air. We breathe it without realising. Put simply, a culture is a way of thinking and acting. The truth, of course, is that most of us inhabit numerous micro-cultures (work, family, school, etc.) rather than one single culture. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify some common features. When I wrote this, I was in London at a conference for ministers. One of the speakers, David Wells, has identified four ‘moves’ in our culture which are highly significant from a Christian point of view:
• from Virtue to Values, with the result that hardly anything is right or wrong, good or evil – there are merely ‘values’ which one person may hold and another may not;
• from Character to Personality, so that what matters is not what a person is in themselves (for example, honest or not), but how they appear to others (say, likeable or not);
• from Nature to Self, where the things that we share as human beings are played down in favour of the things that make each of us unique, special and different;
• from Guilt to Shame, so that we no longer feel guilty before God for things we’ve done, – we merely feel embarrassed in front of one another.
I can see that each of these is a move away from a Christian way of seeing things, and potentially disastrous. For example, what happens if we really are guilty before God and in need of redemption and forgiveness, and instead we are offered therapy for our sense of shame? Our real need won’t be met because it hasn’t even been identified.
Chris Hobbs.
Vicar.