A reaction to, The Culturally Savvy Christian, by Dick Staub.
Dick Staub does a great service to us in several ways with this piece of work. Not only does he layout the cultural agenda of our day (in a Thesaurus-like manner), he attacks it with spiritual fervor and gives the weaponry needed. Boy can this man write! For a 200 page book, Staub weighs in with an impressive bibliography at seventeen pages.
I was inspired to do a Christmas sermon series based on his “Ten Truths You Need to Know About God’s Presence”. He pulls lyrics straight from the ever beloved Christmas hymn, “Joy To The World” and teaches its theology as his main points. This is something I wonder if Pastors could get back to doing with not just the hymns but praise songs in general—an explaining of what we sing and why we sing it. Couple that with how we can sing it best and it is poised for great joy!
Several of his introductory quote pull-outs left me several times putting the book down to sip and ponder. I can’t speak highly enough about this resource. “Theology has to stop explaining the world and start transforming it” (Chapter 5). In the chapter prior Staub recites the theology through the Joy To The World hymn. Cross-referencing these two chapters with Forming the Faith, Teaching the Faithful and you are lead to think Staub followed their formational pattern on purpose. He explains Jesus’ spiritual practices for us to have our minds transformed: Four Private Disciplines, Four Public Disciplines, Four Communal Disciplines. When chapter six begins with, “Deep wellness results from allowing God’s presence to transform us…” I penciled in, “How?” Staub answers by explaining C. S. Lewis’ Four Loves. HE continues by sharing three roles Lewis used in communicating God’s love to the culture: countering culture, creating culture, and communicating within it. He expands these three roles into our taking positions as Ambassadors, Aliens and Artists. The rest of the book is given to Staub’s development of these three titles in a section called “Skilled”.
When it comes to culture, Christians can choose to react by either fighting it (combating), avoiding it (cocooning), or assimilating it (conforming) (p146). Staub gives a fourth option as “selective acculturation” –the biblical mandate to be in the world but not of the world. I had an answer given to me on page 149. I had a long line of responses on my facebook page when I posted a note there about our own reaction to culture. Staub comments, “Culturally savvy Christians don’t set out to be counter-cultural; such cultural distinctness happens as a natural by-product of faithfulness to the spirit and rule of God’s kingdom.” My stance was that we don’t aim to be counter-cultural—we simply are as we seek to be obedient to God.
“The first challenge faced by Daniel, a Jewish believer exiled in Babylon, was an attack on his allegiance to God. An edict was signed that made it illegal to pray to anyone but the king…” I actually had guessed at what it was going to be and it was not the prayer scene that came to mind. The first challenge I believe had to do with consumption (as many others had to deal with in Scripture, viz. Adam’s apple, Noah’s nip, Esau’s stewed out of a birthright, Israel’s general idolatry). “Today, temptations tailored to our vulnerabilities are presented via the sights and sounds of entertainment media…I begin to think we should each carry a canary into darkened movie theaters. If the canary starts to gasp and keel over, we should run for our lives” (p155). This is the role of discerning our culture.
I already alluded to Staub’s patterning after Forming the Faith model of education. Here is another three he states to go along with the previous, “We are savvy about story we are in…we are serious about our pursuit of God…we are countercultural like aliens, practicing our skills of discernment and selective acculturation in the world…” (p159). Staub reminds me of looking at my culture as a missionary or even anthropologist when he writes, “discovery is the process of approaching a piece of work with the aim of observing and documenting…we compare and contrast without judgment…take field notes and then evaluate them later” (p165). In the following paragraph he lays out over a dozen examples of how this is done. “Art evokes at a macro level, but it is built at the micro level; discovery skills allow us to observe and investigate both. Staub goes on to pull on the Apostle Paul’s methods in Athens—a common referred to text.
Staub makes several bold statements like, “I believe that cultural enrichers from the arts are the best hope for transforming today’s popular culture” (179). But always comes back with his support for the boldness, “How might a deeper faith and a better understanding of the artist’s calling enable thoughtful, creative artists of deep faith to enrich culture? Few subjects are more important.” “A theology of art takes creation as seriously as redemption.” Staub ends his ‘gospel’ with his own commission, “Go into all the world and create a richer culture.”
Dick Staub does a great service to us in several ways with this piece of work. Not only does he layout the cultural agenda of our day (in a Thesaurus-like manner), he attacks it with spiritual fervor and gives the weaponry needed. Boy can this man write! For a 200 page book, Staub weighs in with an impressive bibliography at seventeen pages.
I was inspired to do a Christmas sermon series based on his “Ten Truths You Need to Know About God’s Presence”. He pulls lyrics straight from the ever beloved Christmas hymn, “Joy To The World” and teaches its theology as his main points. This is something I wonder if Pastors could get back to doing with not just the hymns but praise songs in general—an explaining of what we sing and why we sing it. Couple that with how we can sing it best and it is poised for great joy!
Several of his introductory quote pull-outs left me several times putting the book down to sip and ponder. I can’t speak highly enough about this resource. “Theology has to stop explaining the world and start transforming it” (Chapter 5). In the chapter prior Staub recites the theology through the Joy To The World hymn. Cross-referencing these two chapters with Forming the Faith, Teaching the Faithful and you are lead to think Staub followed their formational pattern on purpose. He explains Jesus’ spiritual practices for us to have our minds transformed: Four Private Disciplines, Four Public Disciplines, Four Communal Disciplines. When chapter six begins with, “Deep wellness results from allowing God’s presence to transform us…” I penciled in, “How?” Staub answers by explaining C. S. Lewis’ Four Loves. HE continues by sharing three roles Lewis used in communicating God’s love to the culture: countering culture, creating culture, and communicating within it. He expands these three roles into our taking positions as Ambassadors, Aliens and Artists. The rest of the book is given to Staub’s development of these three titles in a section called “Skilled”.
When it comes to culture, Christians can choose to react by either fighting it (combating), avoiding it (cocooning), or assimilating it (conforming) (p146). Staub gives a fourth option as “selective acculturation” –the biblical mandate to be in the world but not of the world. I had an answer given to me on page 149. I had a long line of responses on my facebook page when I posted a note there about our own reaction to culture. Staub comments, “Culturally savvy Christians don’t set out to be counter-cultural; such cultural distinctness happens as a natural by-product of faithfulness to the spirit and rule of God’s kingdom.” My stance was that we don’t aim to be counter-cultural—we simply are as we seek to be obedient to God.
“The first challenge faced by Daniel, a Jewish believer exiled in Babylon, was an attack on his allegiance to God. An edict was signed that made it illegal to pray to anyone but the king…” I actually had guessed at what it was going to be and it was not the prayer scene that came to mind. The first challenge I believe had to do with consumption (as many others had to deal with in Scripture, viz. Adam’s apple, Noah’s nip, Esau’s stewed out of a birthright, Israel’s general idolatry). “Today, temptations tailored to our vulnerabilities are presented via the sights and sounds of entertainment media…I begin to think we should each carry a canary into darkened movie theaters. If the canary starts to gasp and keel over, we should run for our lives” (p155). This is the role of discerning our culture.
I already alluded to Staub’s patterning after Forming the Faith model of education. Here is another three he states to go along with the previous, “We are savvy about story we are in…we are serious about our pursuit of God…we are countercultural like aliens, practicing our skills of discernment and selective acculturation in the world…” (p159). Staub reminds me of looking at my culture as a missionary or even anthropologist when he writes, “discovery is the process of approaching a piece of work with the aim of observing and documenting…we compare and contrast without judgment…take field notes and then evaluate them later” (p165). In the following paragraph he lays out over a dozen examples of how this is done. “Art evokes at a macro level, but it is built at the micro level; discovery skills allow us to observe and investigate both. Staub goes on to pull on the Apostle Paul’s methods in Athens—a common referred to text.
Staub makes several bold statements like, “I believe that cultural enrichers from the arts are the best hope for transforming today’s popular culture” (179). But always comes back with his support for the boldness, “How might a deeper faith and a better understanding of the artist’s calling enable thoughtful, creative artists of deep faith to enrich culture? Few subjects are more important.” “A theology of art takes creation as seriously as redemption.” Staub ends his ‘gospel’ with his own commission, “Go into all the world and create a richer culture.”