2020-06-29 Coffee with Chris - Culture & Christianity Part 4 of 4 Is Christianity a Counter Culture

In this episode of Coffee with Chris, the host discusses the concept of counterculture and its relation to Christianity. He explains that counterculture is a subculture that intentionally opposes the main culture. Christianity is often seen as countercultural, but the host suggests that instead of trying to force the main culture to adhere to Christian beliefs, Christians should focus on encountering culture and reaching people with their message. He emphasizes the importance of humility and serving others. The host concludes his thoughts on the topic and encourages listeners to shift their focus from being opposite of culture to engaging with it. Good morning and welcome to Coffee with Chris. So lately I have been talking about culture and Christianity and how those things work together. So today I want to talk about whether or not Christianity is a counterculture. So first let's establish what a counterculture is. So in sociology, the science of social interaction, there's the terminology subculture and counterculture. So what a subculture is considered is a culture that exists within the main culture of a culture of a nation or wherever that culture may be and that subculture is a smaller culture within that culture. So for example within a culture there might also be country music fans, okay, or really countryside people, right? So you've got Canada and then you've got more rural people and that's a subculture. Rural Canadians would be a subculture within Canada. Now a counterculture is a cultural movement, typically a form of subculture, that is intentionally and often aggressively against what the main culture is or what it stands for. So you could say that the hippie movement in the 60s was a counterculture. It wasn't typically aggressive and in a violent sense, but things like protesting and things like that that they did were countercultural. They were trying to change the way that the culture was. Another example might be even just things like goth music, you know, and things like that. Trying to be different from the main culture and trying to change the main culture. So subcultures are different from the main culture but they are not attempting to change the main culture. Whereas countercultures are both different from the main culture and trying to change the main culture to be like that counterculture. This raises the question, you know, sometimes I've heard a quote that Christianity is very countercultural and that is true. It is countercultural in certain senses, but I think the question we need to ask ourselves when we do that is, are our differences things that stand out inherently and naturally or are they things that stand out in such a way that we must enforce them upon the main culture? So my last video I mentioned how you know oftentimes we lament that if we had just had a Christian in politics that you know a Christian prime minister or Christian presidents in the world that that would solve all our problems because we would be able to make the culture adhere to the Bible. And I think sometimes in our countercultural elements we can be trying to force the culture to adhere to the Bible and that's very problematic. I'm not by any means saying that we should not be evangelizing. We should be evangelizing. But there's a difference between evangelizing and forcing someone to believe something. So what I'm getting at here is, you know, Jesus talked about being in the world but not of the world and oftentimes when we quote that verse we quote it as saying don't be a joiner of the mainstream culture. And the interesting thing is Jesus didn't say don't be of the world. He says be in the world but don't be of the world. And so he is asking us to be within our culture and to affect people within our culture. I think whether or not elements of Christianity are inherently countercultural or things that we we would push to be countercultural, I don't think we should push that counterculture. But rather than being a counterculture, rather than countering culture, I think we need to encounter culture. We need to come to culture and bless people and try and reach them. Show them how, yeah, Christianity is very different from what the world's culture is. In every culture there's going to be elements that Christianity lines up well with and that it is quite opposite to. And so whether it was Jesus in ancient Israel counter to what the sort of cultural thought for the Jews were about overthrowing Rome, that wasn't his interest. Instead he was like, give to Caesar what is Caesar. They're like, what? You want us to pay taxes? But that was counterculture to them there. But it did line up with Rome's culture there in that instance. Of course there's other things that just seem so out of this world in the way that he approached things. Forgiving sins and talking about truth. He said he was a king and everything. There was a kingdom. All these things. But really our main thing is to be encountering culture, going and meeting people. And I think we could spend so much time focused on how Christianity is different from our culture. And how the culture needs to be like us. Instead of how we need to humble ourselves and go and encounter people and wash feet. So that's my thoughts for today. I didn't write out my notes today so I was a little all over the place. But that's kind of my final thought on this four-part series of Christianity and culture. And so yeah my challenge for you today is to encounter culture rather than to spend your focus on trying to be just opposite of culture. Anyways, God bless.