Who Is This God of All Cultures?

God, n. 1. A three-letter word representing a proclivity for controversy, conflict, vagueness, and doubt.

This is not an official definition, but I wonder if it could be. 

As for doubt, some say there is no “god,” or they do not know whether there is a “god.” If true, why do so many moderns and post-moderns cling tenaciously to an allegedly outmoded, unscientific, and fictitious concept? (That’s meant to be a rhetorical question at this point.)

Many, if not most, use the word “god” in some vague way. The word becomes a bucket into which to drop ideas, desires, and fears. In this way, the concept of “god” becomes a projection of who we are, what we think, or what we desire. In essence, it is creating a god in our own image.

In the ancient world, people believed their “god” was the deity of their territory. So, the Philistines had Dagon as their chief “god”; Canaanites and Phoenicians shared Baal, Asherah, Astarte, and others; Egypt had their pantheon of “gods”; and so forth. Even today, people continue this mistaken idea, thinking, for example, that Christ and Christianity are the religion of the West, whereas Buddhism or Hinduism is the religion of the East.

The word “god” is used to mean so many different, contradictory, and mutually exclusive things. Too often, these clashes of meaning become flashpoints for controversy and conflict.

Two questions I want to address briefly in this post are:

What or who is God?

What does God have to do with culture? 
 

What or Who is God?

Some believe that God is not engaged or even interested in culture and whatever else goes on here on this planet. My title is a spoiler for those people. God is intensely interested and engaged in life on Earth. However, the title leaves open who this God is.

Right off, I’ll restate the question as “Who is God?” The perspective or vantage point of the Bible is my declared presupposition. From that perspective, “god” is not a ‘what’ but a ‘Who,’ so I will spell it with a capital “G.” 

I want to specify what I mean by “god.” This definition may not eliminate controversy or conflict, but it should do away with vagueness.

Eugene Peterson cuts through vagueness in answering, “Who is God?” He writes that

the term ‘Jesus’ is useful as it gathers all the diffused vagueness into a tight, clear, light-filled focus.[1]

In short, God self-disclosed himself as Jesus Christ (John 1:1-18; Hebrews 1:1-2). Any valid understanding of the One True God must be consistent with His self-revelation as Jesus of Nazareth. (See the blog and podcast series “Who is Jesus?”) 

What does God have to do with culture?

God, who has self-disclosed himself as Jesus Christ, is the One True God. He is the Creator, and He is sovereign. As such, all creation and all cultures are subject to Him. 

Some may imagine God through the lens of Deism. Deism is one of those vague notions of a god that set things in motion and left, like someone who made a watch, wound it up, and walked away. This concept is inconsistent with God self-revealed as Jesus Christ. 

God is not only transcendent (i.e., surpassing all); He is also immanent. The immanence of God means His “presence and activity with nature, human nature, and history” (Millard Erickson). God is neither distant from nor uninvolved with His creation. This is evident in the incarnation—God becoming a human and entering time, space, and culture. 

Jesus Christ is the ultimate and perfect intersection of what it means to be faithful to God and relevant to culture. In Contextualization in the New Testament, Dean Flemming states: 

The incarnation of Jesus serves as a key paradigm for a contextualized mission and theology. The New Testament declares that the eternal Word of God was enfleshed in Jesus of Nazareth (Jn 1:14). Through his incarnation, Jesus explained or “exegeted” (exēgēsato) the Father to us. Jesus was no Melchizedek figure, someone cut off from any cultural past (Heb 7:3). Rather, he embraced the human context in all of its “scandalous particularity”—as a male Palestinian Jew, “born of a woman, born under the law” (Gal 4:4)—in a specific time and place. He was thoroughly immersed in his Jewish culture; he participated in its celebrations and traditions; he spoke Aramaic with a Galilean accent; he had distinctive physical features and personality traits. As Charles Kraft reflects, “God in Jesus became so much a part of a specific human context that many never even recognized that he had come from somewhere else.”[2]

That is why I have featured the cover of Don Richardson’s book Eternity in Their Hearts [3], which I commend for your reading. God rolled up his sleeves, got dirt under his fingernails, and was (and continues to be) directly involved in all His Creation and its cultures—and his name is Jesus!  

How is this important?

The point is that the One True God, self-disclosed as Jesus Christ, is the God of all cultures! 

Although the setting into which Jesus was born had been divinely prepared for millennia, I propose that Jesus Christ could have entered and immersed Himself in any culture—in any time and place—and have been faithful to God and relevant to that culture. Every follower of Jesus is immersed in a culture and indwelt by the Spirit of Christ. Therefore, each person who is ‘in Christ’ is not only called but also empowered to be faithful to God and relevant in their own particular culture—no matter where or when they live. 

Here is an observation that flows from this realization:

No culture is impervious to this God who came as Jesus Christ; God is at work in every culture.

That means He is ready, willing, and able to engage with every human being no matter where, when, or how they live.

Expanding on the absolutes of our humanity

Let me expand on the three absolutes from the previous post.

1. Every human being is “image of God.” The One True God revealed as Jesus Christ is the “God of the image.” No matter our culture, we are all ‘wired’ for this God. 

2. Every human, as “image of God,” is distorted by sin. At various points in our lives, we are aware of this distortion.

The apostle Paul writes about Jewish people knowing of this distortion because the standards of God’s righteousness had been communicated to them in clear, unmistakable terms. Paul continues to write about non-Jewish people (people like you and me), who “show the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them” (Romans 2:15). 

God’s standard of righteousness is “written on our hearts”; “our conscience” bears witness; “our conflicting thoughts” accuse or excuse us.” As distorted images of God, we all know God’s standard—what is right and what is wrong from his perspective—it is naturally embedded in each of us (Romans 2:12-16). 

3. Every human knows intuitively that life is not what it could be—there is something more. This is not quite hope, but it points toward hope. Instinctively, we yearn for this God who is “light” (1 John 1:5), “love” (4:8), and “life” (5:20).

In summary 

The One True God revealed as Jesus Christ:

(1) is the One in whose image all of us have been made; 

(2) has engraved his law on all of our hearts despite the distortion of sin; and

(3) is the One for whom we all yearn.

This God revealed as Jesus Christ is ready, willing, and able to provide each of us with life that is life indeed. Here is a link to a booklet that was helpful to me and might help you also: “Four Spiritual Laws.”

Feel free to send me your comments and questions using this link.

FORWARD TO the next post in this series

BACK TO 3 Things Common to All People

Notes:

[1] Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 31.
[2] Dean Flemming, Contextualization in the New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005), 20
[3] Don Richardson, Eternity in Their Hearts (Minneapolis, MI: Bethany House, 2006).

Photo credit: cover of Don Richardson, Eternity in Their Hearts (Minneapolis, MI: Bethany House, 2006).