Christian and Cultural Beliefs

As I drove in to work today I listened to a song on the radio that struck me, as many often do. It was based on 1 Corinthians 13:2-3, “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”

If I’m being honest (and I likely shouldn’t be as forthright as I sometimes am), I have a hard time with verses like this. As I listened to the song, and as I’ve listened countless times to speakers, I’m initially taken back by statements like this before I fully connect that it’s taken directly from scripture. Once I draw the connection my mind flips over from doubt to passive acceptance, since after all, it’s the infallible Word of God so I have no right to question it.

And while the Word is infallible, I have every right to look into it and examine it against my life. If these two verses and the like were plucked out of scripture and I took the rest of the Bible, I should still draw the same conclusion. But I doubt I would.  Verses like these make me realize just how intimately the Lord knows me. He knew I needed to be told directly. He knew I wouldn’t get it from the likely hundreds of indirect ways he says it in the rest of Scripture.  He left nothing out but describes here great human power and ability, far exceeding mine, so I am left without any excuse but to believe I am and I gain NOTHING apart from loving people. That’s hard to swallow.

But looking at this made me even more aware of how my cultural christianity has invaded my God-like Christianity. My cultural side says, “Do what you can; we’re just human. Fight the fight but you need to give yourself a break and cut lose every once in a while. Jesus’ first miracle He turned water to wine, He knows how to have a good time. Give what you can to the church but don’t worry about it. Go to church when you can make it and smile at strangers. Try to repent if you do something really bad and don’t do things that would hurt other people…” My cultural christianity has no problem with really expensive lifestyles or drinking a little too much. It has no problem if I don’t actually talk about Jesus, ever, to anyone, since I am being nice and everyone in the South knows about Jesus anyway.

This is not a talk about how terrible all of the above is, even if I paint it in a negative light. I am just a person, trying to draw back the shade that is often cast by our culture onto our Christianity. It can be such a subtle difference that we don’t always recognize it. We could have grown up in it and never experienced pure belief and thereby have no authentic measure. I will spend a lifetime sifting my humanity, my culture, my familial values, my feelings and emotions to separate the wheat and the chaff. I may not ever come to the end.

One thing I do know- I have a Book accessible to me at any time that wants to be my guide. It wants to shine bright light on my life so that when any shadow comes upon it I can more distinctly separate it out.  And when I am taken aback by something like this passage before realizing it’s scripture, I pray to realize how thankful I should be that the Lord is not done working out my faith. He’s not done refining my belief system and my life so that I may be his vessel.  He’s not done teaching me that all the power in the world amounts to nothing if we do not love. And regardless of how my culture or history fights that statement, it’s true- plain and simple.