Is there A "Church Culture" or "Christian Culture?"

" And I saw no temple in the city [New Jerusalem], for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life."

-Revelation 21:22-27 (ESV)

In continuing to study the Church, and to think about how it is composed of a very DIVERSE family, there is another aspect of this Family DIVERSITY that is related to race that we should not overlook, and that is that the Family is DIVERSE Culturally. This aspect is very important when it comes to the issue of racial reconciliation because it brings the understanding that people, including their race, are so much more that their facial structure or the color of their skin. 

What makes the race issue so difficult for so many people, is the failure to recognize that people talk, act, interact, and even worship differently than me, and that is okay. In fact, it is MORE THAN OKAY. It is good, pleasing, and acceptable for this to happen. I love that we are told that people are worshiping God in Revelation, not just from every nation, but every tribe (that is culture) and tongue (that is also culture).

We often forget that each of us is a part of our own unique culture. We are naturally blind to this reality. I remember a ski trip to Canada, when I sat on a chair lift with a gentleman from Ontario (I am from Michigan) and he said he knew I was from Michigan BECAUSE OF MY ACCENT. Now this is obvious to me now, but at that age I didn't think that I had an accent, but HE certainly had one! 

So we see everyone else as “different” because they are different than us, without realizing that simultaneously WE are “different” because we are different than them. But we do not have a call in Scripture to lay aside our own culture, but instead to have Unity in Christ. This is Unity in Diversity. We make a mistake when we think that everyone in the Church or anywhere needs to look, act, think, talk, or WORSHIP the same way (as us). We only lay aside those parts of our culture that are sinful or dishonoring to Christ. (If this were not the case, how could our musical worship be honoring to God? Isn't our music a cultural expression?)

We do not give up our race, or our language, or our personality when we follow Christ, we instead are called to imitate Christ within these and Christ is glorified through this. Every culture certainly has its blind spots, including our own, so we should be very, very hesitant to judge the way that someone acts or a group of people acts, and only looking at our culture and others through Scripture. Only God can see the world without bias, so He is the one by which we should view the world.