Two tweets from Tim Keller got my attention. He is known for encouraging Christians with how to reach the culture they are in. The establishment of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City was both a learning ground and proving ground for cultural adaptation. In particular regarding the contextualization of the Gospel. These tweets reflect Keller’s passion for continuing to help Christians reaching our culture, and being aware of contextualization.
Here’s the first:
If you over-adapt to the culture you’re trying to reach, it means you’ve bought into that culture’s idols.
— Timothy Keller (@timkellernyc) April 18, 2018
Placed by itself, in this single tweet, it confronts excessive culture adaptation. A powerful proverb to shock out of a deadness to the dangers of letting the culture control our work as missionaries to the culture. Some of us will see this as justification for not adapting. And in that decision, not realize potential self-righteousness that was dragged into our decision.
And then came the second:
If you under-adapt to the culture you’re trying to reach, you’ve bought into the idols of the culture you’re from.
— Timothy Keller (@timkellernyc) April 18, 2018
The second proverbial jolt shakes us awake, and we realize the dangers of under thinking what we are doing. We thought our resistance to the culture was good, but now must reassess our motives to remove wrong affection. Yet, the trap lays wide open. We could take the admonition in these tweets and apply it to mean that to be an effective missionary to a tribe in South America that does not wear clothes, I must also not wear clothes. Or, it could mean we need to teach this clothless tribe to dress like westerners.
Of course it’s inappropriate to buy-into the first option. God clothed Adam and Eve after they had sinned. There was Gospel meaning in His covering of their nakedness. But, He didn’t describe the particular type of clothing He made for them, either. Beside the very clear presentation of the gospel, there might have been something else. Perhaps there is something in the need to wear clothing that transcends cultures.
As with any set of pithy tweets, or any set of proverbial pontifications, these have an affect and power beyond their clarity and brevity. Tim Keller has provided a set of “book ends” to shock Christians into being sensitive about our need to not act or dress or behave in certain ways simply because those are the ways of a culture we are comfortable with. Belonging to a culture is a powerful motivator. Being accepted by a culture – either the one we are in or have come from and the one we desire to minister to – is a powerful motivation. We need to assess those thing in our culture that we think are necessary and good before offering them to other cultures.
We are attracted to these bookend statements not because they are true, but because they appear to be true. Humans enjoy poetry because of the pacing and meter. We are drawn to music because of the rhythm and poetry embedded in them. This pair of tweets can be accepted not because they are true, but because they are musical. The literary tool is important, and Tim Keller uses it often. Any good writer will. Any good preacher can.
The danger of these two tweets is their incompleteness. They appear to be the alpha and omega of the argument on appropriate adaptation to the culture. They become the total means of assessing if we’ve gone far enough in our missional mode. We wrongly think Tim Keller has summed up the argument in these two tweets.
So, let’s pose a question:
Are there somethings that we have in the Gospel that transcend both the culture we are coming from and the culture we are ministering to? Let’s go from an extreme and work back from there. Suppose there was a culture that viewed killing other humans as acceptable. What would we use to address whether we can adapt, incorporate, or redeem that part of the foreign culture? Hopefully, you don’t struggle too long with the answer. There is a transcendent truth from God’s Word that clearly says we must reject murder in that foreign culture, and bring the sanctity of life from our culture to them (if it is part of our culture, that is). We do so not because life is sacred in our culture. But, because the sanctity of life transcends both cultures.
Are there somethings that we have in the Gospel that transcend both the culture we are coming from and the culture we are ministering to? Or, to put it another way, can we be in the world, but not of the world?
Perhaps there is another tweet that needs to follow. It might go something like this:
We can unintentionally forget that our discussions of adapting to the culture do not address the foundationally important reality of the transcendent nature of Biblical truth.
— Ronald C. Marks (@Ronaldcmarks)
Why Six Days? 