Creating Culture

 
 

At this moment in history we stand midst of the age of creativity.  Advances in technology and science and the ease of exchanging information have combined to shrink our world and reframe human, creative potential. That potential married to Truth and an understanding of the eternal can be extraordinarily redemptive. The same potential void of truth will threaten the future of mankind.


My friend Mako Fujimura talks about the importance of creating into the void: Assembling/creating the world that ought to be and launching it into vast blast craters left by the explosion of the fall; creating something beautiful in the space of sin and destruction. Such intrepid assertions reflect the Truth of God’s design and help mankind anticipate the city of God that will appear when history comes full circle and God restores us to life as He has always intended it.


The gravity of this world tempts us to be content with patching and painting over the desolate craters in the attempt to make sense of the chaos and debris. This method of cultural reformation is too often ineffective. Arrogant perspectives forced on people only alienates and distances.


The call for the Christ follower is to create something so real, so authentic and so beautiful that it can’t be overlooked or denied. It’s a call to love, not to judge, to invite, not to condemn, to hope, not to despair. Creating culture a call to boldly create something new and beautiful that reveals the hope of redemption.


Jesus shows us what it means to create into the void here in Luke chapter 5:


Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"

Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

They said to him, "John's disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking."

Jesus answered, "Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast."

He told them this parable: "No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.

    Luke 5:29-38

In Revelation 21 God paints the ultimate picture of hope as we anticipate the world to come:

I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He
will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!"


    Revelation 21:3-5


The world is aching for redemption. It’s craters echo with loneliness, betrayal, shame and despair.


Lets join God in the work of making everything new. Create boldly into the void and captivate the world with incomparable beauty.


— John Farkas

 

What does it mean to create culture?