Creation, Culture Making, & Corrupting Cultural Goods
God is creator. He alone creates ex nihilo, out of nothing. Yet, he bestowed upon his creation the uncanny ability, a communicable attribute, as it were, to create as well. Man creates, not ex nihilo, but from existing matter. This does not diminish our ability to create, but it does attest to the fact that our abilities to make culture, as remarkable as they seem, are derivative.
In other words, God creates the river and its tributaries, we make canals. God creates grapes, we make wine. Scripture testifies that we were created as a "good" to make and cultivate cultural "goods" (Gen. 1:26-31). However, after the fall, our tendency has been to corrupt the very cultural goods we make. Sin pervades, not only all parts of our mortal being, but all things comprehensively and exhaustively. Even the echoes of Eden do not ring loud enough for us to cease from our corrupting ways. Take the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11 as an example.
"Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar" (Gen. 11:1-3).
There's nothing inherently evil there, nothing overtly sinful. But then we come to verse four “Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” Nothing was initially wrong with having one language, settling at Shinar, making bricks and burning them thoroughly, and having brick for stone and bitumen for mortar.
These people were doing what God created them to do–make culture. They became city builders. Essentially, they were no different than Adam was in the garden temple of Eden. This is culture making at its best. But their endeavor went from "culture making" to "culture corrupting." They had sinfully resolved to make a name for themselves. This is what we do, and our track record proves that.
In some form or fashion, we corrupt every cultural good. We find unique ways to corrupt money, food, sex, etc. Just look at what we've done with social media. Social media is a cultural good, but we've corrupted it in a variety of ways.
"A British survey of almost nine hundred 16- to 24-year-olds found that 80 percent had used either a smart phone or a website for some form of sexual contact. The same percentage said that it was easier to be promiscuous online than off; 53 percent had used Web cams for cybersex, and a third of these had cybersex with strangers."
I get that stats are stats, but what happens when those stats hit close to home? I'll never forget reading the sad story of Amanda Todd, who was the third most Googled person in the world in 2012. The 15-year-old Canadian cheerleader and aspiring singer, who would post her singing videos on YouTube, suffered years of online abuse. What was the cause of the abuse? When Todd was in seventh grade, she was convinced by an unidentified man on Facebook to expose herself via webcam. She acquiesced, and the man tormented her via social media for years.
Author Michael Harris noted that Todd attended "three schools in the space of a year in an effort to avoid the ensuing harassment from peers. She was beaten by a gang of young girls (while others stood by and recorded the scene on their phones). And, eventually, Todd became so paranoid and anxious that she could not leave her home. She first attempted to kill herself by drinking from a bottle of bleach, which was unsuccessful and led to more of the online bullying that drove her to that action in the first place. Then…Todd posted a video on her YouTube channel, unpacking her troubled story. This time she wasn’t singing someone else’s song. But describing for viewers (in a broken way, for she suffered from a language-based learning disability) her own suffering. Naturally, this opened her again to the attacks of faceless online “commenters.” She turned, against all reason except perhaps that of an addict, to the very thing that made her suffer so. She turned to an online broadcast technology."
What was the end result of all the online bullying and waves of ridicule? Suicide. Amanda Todd took her own life. The story is unsettling and unfortunate, and so much can be said about it. But let me conclude with this: wisdom and stewardship is needed when engaging and using any cultural good because the effects of sin are as potent today as they were then at Babel.
More on this next week.
In other words, God creates the river and its tributaries, we make canals. God creates grapes, we make wine. Scripture testifies that we were created as a "good" to make and cultivate cultural "goods" (Gen. 1:26-31). However, after the fall, our tendency has been to corrupt the very cultural goods we make. Sin pervades, not only all parts of our mortal being, but all things comprehensively and exhaustively. Even the echoes of Eden do not ring loud enough for us to cease from our corrupting ways. Take the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11 as an example.
"Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar" (Gen. 11:1-3).
There's nothing inherently evil there, nothing overtly sinful. But then we come to verse four “Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” Nothing was initially wrong with having one language, settling at Shinar, making bricks and burning them thoroughly, and having brick for stone and bitumen for mortar.
These people were doing what God created them to do–make culture. They became city builders. Essentially, they were no different than Adam was in the garden temple of Eden. This is culture making at its best. But their endeavor went from "culture making" to "culture corrupting." They had sinfully resolved to make a name for themselves. This is what we do, and our track record proves that.
In some form or fashion, we corrupt every cultural good. We find unique ways to corrupt money, food, sex, etc. Just look at what we've done with social media. Social media is a cultural good, but we've corrupted it in a variety of ways.
"A British survey of almost nine hundred 16- to 24-year-olds found that 80 percent had used either a smart phone or a website for some form of sexual contact. The same percentage said that it was easier to be promiscuous online than off; 53 percent had used Web cams for cybersex, and a third of these had cybersex with strangers."
I get that stats are stats, but what happens when those stats hit close to home? I'll never forget reading the sad story of Amanda Todd, who was the third most Googled person in the world in 2012. The 15-year-old Canadian cheerleader and aspiring singer, who would post her singing videos on YouTube, suffered years of online abuse. What was the cause of the abuse? When Todd was in seventh grade, she was convinced by an unidentified man on Facebook to expose herself via webcam. She acquiesced, and the man tormented her via social media for years.
Author Michael Harris noted that Todd attended "three schools in the space of a year in an effort to avoid the ensuing harassment from peers. She was beaten by a gang of young girls (while others stood by and recorded the scene on their phones). And, eventually, Todd became so paranoid and anxious that she could not leave her home. She first attempted to kill herself by drinking from a bottle of bleach, which was unsuccessful and led to more of the online bullying that drove her to that action in the first place. Then…Todd posted a video on her YouTube channel, unpacking her troubled story. This time she wasn’t singing someone else’s song. But describing for viewers (in a broken way, for she suffered from a language-based learning disability) her own suffering. Naturally, this opened her again to the attacks of faceless online “commenters.” She turned, against all reason except perhaps that of an addict, to the very thing that made her suffer so. She turned to an online broadcast technology."
What was the end result of all the online bullying and waves of ridicule? Suicide. Amanda Todd took her own life. The story is unsettling and unfortunate, and so much can be said about it. But let me conclude with this: wisdom and stewardship is needed when engaging and using any cultural good because the effects of sin are as potent today as they were then at Babel.
More on this next week.
Rev. Mike Hernandez serves as the senior pastor of Crossroads Presbyterian Church. He is a graduate of Trinity International University (B.A.), Knox Theological Seminary (M.Div.), and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) at Reformed Theological Seminary Orlando.
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