Where Does Culture Come From?

As we stare at the end of our great culture, this, maybe more than any other, is the fundamental societal question of our time.

75. Where Does Culture Come From?

The man with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a man is not subject to any man’s judgment, for,

“Who has known the mind of the Lord
    so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ.

Today there is much talk about culture. Culture wars. The destruction of our culture for political gain. The preservation of our culture. The life cycle of a culture. What is “western” culture? When did it start and what makes it unique? Can our culture be preserved? What is culture? I have no illusions that I am going to answer all of these questions. Lengthy treatises have been written on the subject. But there is one question in this tangled knot about which I have some thoughts: where does culture come from, and how is it generated? It is not as easy a question as one might think to answer. That the word “culture” comes from the Latin meaning to cultivate or to grow does help some, but what are you growing and how do you grow it? It has been noted that at the heart of every civilization or society there is great religious impulse or idea. But that does not seem to really help either. Religion can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, even when they claim the same religious banner. And what is the difference between religion and ideology? Is ideology a form of religious belief? Can it truly replace the role of religion in society? And for that matter, what does it mean that we are in a culture war?

One of the ways that this question is framed today, is the contrast between tradition and progress. There are those who would look to value and treasure the past as a source of strength. History. Ritual. The stories of great men. Our ancestors. The institutions that we have built. The places where we are rooted. The symbols which are emblematic of who we are. All of it together form a ground, a basis for our society. Then, on the other hand, there are those who see all of this and think of something that is stifling and confining. These traditions are what hold us back. They look forward to the horizon and see a better future. They are willing to cut ties with tradition, with the structures and institutions of today, to reform them, renew them, break them down, or even sweep them away in order to reach that better future.

Traditionalists are correct in noting that over the long span of known history most communities, most societies, most cultures which endure over time tend to be biased towards the conservative. In order to get really good at something, to thrive, you have to build an identity, know who you are and have confidence in this thing that you are. You have to do something really well. You have to be something solid, fixed, something that everyone can grasp intuitively. Even traditionalists will acknowledge, though, that every society must be able to grapple with crisis that emerge. They have to adapt to meet the new challenges that confront the people. Typically, in a healthy society, these changes are made and then they are integrated into the fabric of the nation over a period of time, becoming a stable part of their identity. There is not constant change. This back and forth represents a kind of paradox of societies. You can see the same dynamic at work in institutions as well. You must do something well. You must be something. You must hoe a deep furrow. You must stay in your lane. At the same time, you have to be able to switch gears as necessary. If you can’t change you will die out. But if you are constantly changing, you never become good at anything and you are likely not going to succeed. There is this tension. We might call it a paradox. But the bias, the foundation, has always been towards the conservative.

Western culture, beginning with at least the rise of the merchant class in Europe and then the New World, made a push to tip that balance away from tradition, towards restless change. The old system of nobility which governed society was dismantled and pushed aside. The central, unifying position, power and place of the church in the lives of people was fundamentally altered and fragmented and pushed into the realm of private satisfaction. This even developed into a kind of mantra: semper reformanda, always reforming. This is expressed by the business slogan: “creative destruction.” We must tear down what is old, worn out, or simply not maximally productive so that we can build what is “new and improved.” The whole idea of human progress is built on this idea. We must be pushing the boundaries of knowledge. We must be pressing for the horizons. Exploring. Conquering. We must always be pursuing what is new and innovative. That which is “new and improved” is inherently better than that which is “tried and true.” Morally we see this at play in the idea of “breaking down barriers.”

It has been noted elsewhere that liberalism and progressivism are essentially entropic in nature. Entropy is the move from order to disorder. It involves the breakdown of what is, usually resulting in the release of energy. Entropy means decay. Our modern society is built on the idea of breaking down the traditions of the past, the barriers set up to maintain things like morality. But this process of “creative destruction,” is the intentional demolition of the beliefs, traditions, institutions, morality, stories, heroes that were established and built up by those who came before us, turning them into fuel, thus releasing energy. This energy has been the primary force which has powered the west. Think of the heat that is generated when you burn wood, or gasoline, or the energy that gets released during atomic fission. It is a tremendous amount of energy. Explosive amounts of energy. But what is left when the fuel is consumed? You have ashes. Air pollution. Perhaps a huge crater and deadly radiation. For the last few hundred years we have been throwing logs on the fire. Those logs are running out. We look around, see the ashes, the crater, the radiation.

There are those who seek to pull a few logs from the fire, to preserve them. They want to rescue the traditions, the institutions, the rituals, the beliefs, the morals and use these fragments of what is left to build something. But I remain unconvinced that this is possible, in part because traditions on their own are insufficient. They can lose their meaning and devolve into formalism. They no longer live. Eventually they can become absurd in their performance. There is no going back. This is the sad thing, as there is much which is beautiful and worth treasuring, but on their own, the traditions of the past lack what is necessary to sustain or even re-birth a culture.

Let me give you a quick example. You know when you go through the checkout line at the grocery store, and there are those large items that are too big, too heavy, to bulky to fit in grocery bags? A case of pop. Laundry detergent. Bags of potatoes. What do they do with them when you go through the checkout? They put a sticker on them to mark them as paid. All of the rest of the items because they are in grocery bags, people will assume they are paid for. But what happens when stores stop giving you bags? Where I live, it is now more or less verboten for stores to give out plastic grocery bags. If you are like me, someone who forgets to bring into the store their green grocery bins, all of my groceries just go back into the cart as they were after they are scanned.

So, now I have something like fifty loose items of groceries in my cart. But what still happens? The checkout person dutifully puts “paid” stickers on the same large items in my cart. But only the large items. Not the other fifty or so loose items in my cart. Just the large items. What is there to tell anyone what is paid for and unpaid for? Why not sticker them all? Tradition dictates that the stickers only go on the large items. In a bagless checkout, there is no point in putting stickers on any of the items, but yet the checkout clerks continue to maintain the traditions even though there is no point and the original reason is now almost forgotten. But the tradition remains. We must put “paid” stickers on the large items. In a now bagless culture, do we celebrate the stickers as part of the “trad” lifestyle and criticize those stores that discontinue the sticker tradition as undermining the culture of our society? Of course not, that too would be absurd.

A lot of tradition is like this. As much as we value traditions and the good things of the past, we are often treasuring things or doing things even though they no longer make sense to us. They lack meaning. They are not really alive for us. Their spirit is not alive all around us. We often wish that it were the case. But the same spirit that informed their lives, their deeds, their symbols, their stories is no longer really the same spirit that informs our lives today. I think a lot of us are hoping that they will inspire our deeds today, that we can live into the archetypes they embodied, but they are just not alive for us. Sometimes the doing of them becomes a burden to us. We fall into a kind of dead formalism. We become like the sales clerk nonsensically putting stickers on large items in the checkout line. So why not throw those logs onto the fire? It could even be argued that new traditions will emerge out of the old. But because they are the derivative products of the burning of older traditions, every new tradition that emerges out of the consumption of the older traditions will never have the same power that the older traditions did when they were fully alive and made sense.

This is really who we are and what we have become. We are a consumer society. Everything in our society is potentially the source material for a product or service that can then be sold to the consumer. Everything can be broken down and sold as a product, whether from large appliances to the rituals of our day-to-day life. Every celebration, every special event has its products, it time savers, its planners. Everything can be turned into a product for consumption, whether it is weddings, Christmas, or the family picnic. Even your Christian worship is turned into a product to be consumed. So how do we become a society of genuine producers again? We truly are caught in a dilemma. Neither the traditions themselves on their own, nor their destruction and/or commodification can provide an enduring generative foundation for the long-term vibrancy and health of a community or society. So where does culture come from? What is the power that makes us a truly generative people over the long term?

This is a tough question. If you have been reading here for any length of time, you probably know somewhat were this is going to go. Where are the last embers of something generative in our society? That is correct, to the place where it all begins, the Christian faith. There are many on the right who resist a religious vision for the right, specifically a Christian one. It is suffocating and moralistic. Can’t we still have some fun? Christians have already had their chance and dropped the ball. And, as much as they know that they and Christians are on the side, the places where all the energy are, well, frankly, that group is mostly downscale hicks. Pentecostals. They just don’t seem very “sophisticated.” Not ready for the main stage. Not academically rigorous for the most part.

I am open to hearing an argument for a culturally generative non-Christian right. But I just don’t see it. The core of every society is a living religious vision that binds the people together and gives them a sense of who they are and why they do what they do. All law is downstream from morality and all morality is downstream from religion. Rational morality and law has been tried, and, as Alasdair MacIntyre so thoroughly demonstrated, it has been a disaster. So where do we turn?

In this regard, I am of the belief that Christianity is uniquely positioned to re-generate and renew itself periodically. The Christian faith, from its inception, saw itself as the intentional formation of a new people. The church was to become the people of God, bound together under the Kingship of Christ. The process of formation begins with conversion, the twin movement of repentance and faith, followed by an intentional inculturation period called “discipleship” in which one is brought out of one’s old way of living, one’s old stories, one’s old symbols, one’s old ways of thinking, one’s old allegiances and devotions — one is expected to commit a kind of narrative suicide — to then be brought into a new way of living, new stories, new symbols, new patterns of thought, new allegiances and devotions. But it is more than this. One of the core pieces of the Christian faith is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit who fills a number of roles, one of which is to connect people to the heart and mind of God. Why is this important?

The Christian faith is more than a set of ideas. It is more than an institution. It is more than a way of life. It is more than a community. The Christian faith is, at its heart, about overcoming the fundamental alienation between God and mankind. It is about once again walking with our Creator in the cool of the garden in complete fullness and openness, without fear or shame. Christ’s death and resurrection paved the way for this to happen, but it is the task of the Spirit to effect this in the lives of believers. Again, why is this important?

To answer this, let’s turn to chapter 2 of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church. It is an interesting passage in that it brings together a number of different threads:

⁶ We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. ⁷ No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. ⁸ None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. ⁹ However, as it is written:

“What no eye has seen,
    what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
    the things God has prepared for those who love him—

¹⁰ these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. ¹¹ For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. ¹² What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. ¹³ This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. ¹⁴ The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. ¹⁵ The man with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a man is not subject to any man’s judgment, ¹⁶ for,

“Who has known the mind of the Lord
    so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ.

First of all we note the connection between “wisdom” and the work of the Spirit. We have talked about this before on this blog, and it is one of the core ideas of this project. We often encounter situations in which the answer cannot be known in advance, cannot be planned out in the policy manual or flowcharted neatly to the correct response. In these moments it is “wisdom” that allows one to grasp the right response in the moment. We have talked about living before God, ascending the mount, meeting God on the road and so forth. Within the heart and mind of God is this secret wisdom. The second thing we note is that it is the role of the Spirit to peer into the heart of the Father and then to communicate that to believers.

Many are leery of this. But this is a foundational promise of Jesus to his disciples. We do not need to be afraid of the intermediate time between Jesus’ ascension and his second coming because we will have the Spirit, the Counselor, who will teach us all things and give us the words we need. People worry that it will be abused. “The Lord told me…” is an easy thing to say, to use to bully or manipulate people into doing what you want. It is also easy for people to be deceived. But it is vital for the long term health of the community that it is indwelt with the Spirit of God. This dovetails into something that Carl Schmitt calls the “miracle of law.” There are those moments, those situations, those crisis, which cannot be accounted for ahead of time in law or policy. This is the essence of what wisdom is all about.

We are talking about something, in terms of our experience, that is set within the finite bounds of community, tradition and the prior teachings and revelations of God. But even within this context, faithful to the written Word of God, in harmony with the living tradition of faith and the discernment of the community — and to this extent, where does the wisdom of discernment come? — that there are those moments that need a decision, a judgement, they need wisdom. Again, the example of Solomon and the two prostitutes and their fight over the baby comes to mind. Here is a situation which breaks the policy manual and the rule. But where does the right decision come from? It is “generated” by the wisdom of God as expressed through people. There is no way around this. There is no set of controls or guardrails that you can place around the presence of God to completely ward off deception or misuse by people who are still affected by sin. Discernment is one of those practices and skills that needs to remain honed, robust and in the forefront of the community of believers.

But what I am talking about here is not necessarily the kind of millennia defining revelations. Abraham on the mountain with Isaac. Moses on Sinai. Elijah on Mount Carmel. Paul on the road to Damascus. Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. This is why “wisdom” is a much better way of thinking about it than “a word from the Lord.” This is not to say that the Lord cannot speak in this way. But when confined and restrained to roles and offices like the elder or even the king, there is a formality or a restraint that these movements of God are bound and ordered. A person is recognized as speaking with the wisdom of God. We might say, to use more modern language, that they participate, to a greater or lesser degree, in the archetype of revelation. That archetype is perhaps the deepest and most powerful in the creation. It was at work when God said, “Let there be light.” This is what we are talking about. This is what is meant when Paul proclaims to us: “The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to any man’s judgment.” It is the “miracle of law” at work.

In terms of wisdom and law — doing the right thing in the moment, making the right judgment, when properly situated within the Word of God, the community of believers and the full tradition of faith — there is both a “bounded” and “unbounded” aspect to this. It is like the king who is both under the law and at the same time outside or above the law. Today we are coming to rediscover the wisdom of a man being “anointed” to such a position and responsible to God. Given the brokenness of our current system and the crisis of authority which we face, we can see in these old ways something good. The argument I want to make here is that this same dynamic extends itself across the whole community, in music, art, architecture, even the use of the skills of men in making goods, their vocations. The stories of scripture and tradition can live for us because we are given the same Spirit and as such the same archetypes and symbols can be just as active for us. Because of the Spirit we are able to live into the stories and have them breathe new life into us. Our life once again becomes a sacred space, indwelt with the presence of God.

For the last few hundred years we have embraced the power of reason and machines, but their power is running out. They dehumanize us. We live confined within a vast technical construction, maintained and reinforced by propaganda. Even our thoughts are no longer our own. Everything is commodified, turned into a product and consumed. The human is turned into machine processes that dispossess us of the joy of simply doing things for ourselves. We sense the emptiness of so much of life around us. Things are used, then recycled, and recycled again. Stories are made to conform to political and ideological concerns. They are warped, bent and twisted.

If we look to an Augustinian understanding of the nature of evil, we know that evil in and of itself has no being of its own, it must twist and corrupt what is good. Unless something flows out of the source of all that is good, God himself, it must then draw on what exists, using it as fuel for creativity. In this sense, unless a people’s culture draws on the same source as “Let there be light,” it will be derivative, and to one degree or another, entropic. This is why any movement that does not have as its intent to draw close to God, to wait upon God in the upper room in prayer, is going to fall short.

One more quick story from Mark 8:

¹⁴ The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. ¹⁵ “Be careful,” Jesus warned them. “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.”

¹⁶ They discussed this with one another and said, “It is because we have no bread.”

¹⁷ Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? ¹⁸ Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? ¹⁹ When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”

“Twelve,” they replied.

²⁰ “And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”

They answered, “Seven.”

²¹ He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

In the modern technological society, one of our primary values is “results.” We do what works. If someone has a solution that fixes some problem, then it must be good because it works. But Jesus is making the argument is that results are secondary to the source, the origin of the solution. Anyone can bake bread and make a nice fluffy loaf. You can have a bustling community, a successful organization, or even a world spanning empire, but in God’s eyes they are empty. What matters is the yeast. What enabled a loaf of bread to feed 5,000 or seven loaves to feed 4,000, with more leftovers than there was bread to begin with? The power of God. This is true generative power. There is more left over than when they began. Where can you look today in our world and see more left over after the fact? We are about expending resources to turn them into wealth and power. Jesus tells us not to be deceived by the fluffy loaf. If it is not powered by God, by the same power as “Let there be light,” then you are looking in the wrong places. God wants our communities, our society to be like the feeding of the 5,000 and the 4,000, where there is more left over after we are done having our fill than when we began. But this can only come with a fundamental reorientation of our lives. Repent and believe. Make disciples. The basics.

I say this because we are nearing the end of a great culture. The great fluffy loaf of bread that is the west is running out. No matter your politics, when push comes to shove, you need to be able to answer this fundamental question: where does a living culture come from? What is the great religious impulse that grows our society? Does it have the power to endure over the long term? You can run a long time on derivative sources, spending the capital stored by others who went before you, but in the end, they run out. When push comes to shove, the only source that matters is the source of being itself, God the Creator, present among his people through the work of his Spirit.