Configuring All Things to Christ
So, then, what is Christian Culture? What does it look like? Are there certain defining features that distinguish it from what passes for culture these days? And if so, how are we to recognize them?
What it is, at the deepest level, is an answer to the question raised by the Hebrew psalmist in a time of unprecedented anguish and desolation, when the People of the Promise are forced to endure exile and captivity. They have lost their land, their freedom; the temple where they worship the living God is in ruins, while they, God’s beloved children, remain utterly prostrate beneath the Babylonian boot. “There by the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion” (Psalm 137).
And as they hang their harps in sorrow upon the willows that mark the water’s edge, their captors demand of them yet another humiliation—that they should make music:
They that carried us away captive required of us a song;
and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying;
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”
To which the voice of Israel, in the words of the Jewish psalmist, replies:
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
Now, to be sure, in the context of the Old Testament, amid the unhappy circumstances of a people held captive, it is unmistakably a cry of lamentation, of heartrending sorrow. A people in bondage are very likely to be candidates for despair. But since the coming of Christ, the Glory of the Lord, who brought eternity into time, grace into nature, Heaven into history, the world is no longer strange or menacing.
It has become, instead, a place of redeemed actuality, a setting made radiant by the presence of the One who vanquished all the darkness. The world has become a wedding, a sacrament, confected for the sanctification of men. And everywhere you turn, there stands the sign of our s
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
