Culture and Christianity

How cultural is your Christianity? Or, at least, if you reject Christianity, how cultural is the version of Christianity you have rejected?

As a worldwide, universal faith that has withstood the test of time, Christianity has of course found different forms of expression in different cultures, as well as different forms of expression within the same cultures as they have changed over time.

So, in many ways, the Christianity in America today isn’t your grandfather’s religion.

I was talking with Francisco, a graduate student who has done a lot of thinking about the Catholic faith he has grown up in. And unlike some of his friends who grew up with the same church background, his faith and beliefs have come to resemble the Western European Catholic culture of the medieval era rather than that of the 21st century.

What has changed? Francisco told of the impact that reading Dante’s "Inferno", the classic of Western literature which describes the different levels of punishment of hell, had on his understanding of both life after death and God’s very nature. It describes in grotesque detail the various forms of torture meted out for various types of sins, and its popularity in comparison to Dante’s other works such as “Paradiso”, a description of heaven, reveals a macabre fascination with suffering, torture and death during medieval times.

I believe this is the caricature of hell and the devil that modern critics have in mind when they mock Christianity, which is easy to do with today’s sensibilities about a loving and tolerant God and a focus on prosperity, safety, and comfort in heaven, if not already being experience in this life.

Why such a difference in the Christianity of western culture over the generations?

As I believe we are seeing within our own generation, cultures change, and along with it the impact of culture on all the institutions of society, including religion and politics. Whole libraries could be filled with books about the changes in western culture from the middle ages until now, and Francisco and I just surmised about a few of the reasons why.

The point I’d like to make here, though, is that just as the focus on death and suffering might have reached an extreme during the middle ages, I wonder if a focus on love and comfort might not be reaching an extreme during our times?

Where can we find the truth between these cultural extremes?

God’s truth often serves to provide balance between man’s exaggerations, and I don’t think we will necessarily find that balance in Dante’s Inferno, Paradiso, or any of today’s popular Christian bestsellers.

I believe God’s truth is found in a prayerful and careful reading of God’s word, the Bible, and we will do well to make reading it a part of our daily disciplines. “Listen to advice and accept instruction, that you may gain wisdom in the future. Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.” (Proverbs 19)