Heavenly Culture Vs. My Own Culture

This Bible school is really making me think.  The closer it gets to finishing, the more I see that God is unlike anything this world has ever seen or thought of.  I think that all the cultures of this world have sought the divine.  The idea that there are no gods at all was a ridiculous thought until recently.  Cultures are always trying to figure out the heavenly culture, so that they can either copy it or become a part of it.  The Greeks thought that they could become like the gods by becoming wise and growing in wisdom.  They figured that they would reach a turning point in their lives because of the amount of knowledge that they possessed.  With that knowledge they would be transformed into a being like the gods. This is what drove them.

            When Christianity came along, many of the Greek-thinking believers were of the same mindset. They figured the more they knew, the more they would become like God. They figured that the more they did, the higher level of salvation they would achieve. There were many other things that people believed, but what they all did was add their own understanding to what heavenly culture truly is.

            I don’t have the correct understanding of what Heavenly culture is.  I know that today’s church doesn’t either.  But here is what I do know: Mankind, since the beginning, has been searching for an understanding of the divine.  We have been searching for immortality.  We have been searching for power.  We are always searching.  All this searching is limited to what we believe or are accustomed to.  For instance, our current belief of what Heavenly culture is, is influenced by our culture of today. We add things to our Christianity because we are used to them, because they are in our culture and we perceive them as right, as truth.  These beliefs of right and wrong are so ingrained in us that we don’t even hesitate to second guess them. For example, a friend of mine from Cambodia said that the word “please” is reserved for beggars on the street. So when Cambodians ask for something, they don’t say please. Canadians, on the other hand, are taught that saying “please” is to be polite and if one doesn’t then he or she is considered rude. Is either culture wrong? Not in their own context.

            Well, no culture has it perfect. All cultures get it wrong sometimes. Canadian culture, Mexican culture, and Church culture.  All cultures get it wrong at times. So what does this have to do with the Heavenly culture? Well, the more I study the Bible, the more I realize that Heavenly culture is like nothing else on earth. It is like no other culture on earth. It is the supreme of the supreme and the only way that we are truly going to gain an understanding, to live out the Heavenly culture, is to seek God.  We need to become more like Him and less like ourselves and what our own cultures say about us. It’s just like what John the Baptist said.  As Christians, we basically give up the rights to our culture for the sake of the Heavenly culture. We said that we would become like the Heavenly culture instead of our own. It’s like becoming a citizen of a different country and renouncing the citizenship of a previous country. When becoming Christians we became a citizen of the Heavenly Kingdom, which has a Heavenly culture and we said that we would become like that Heavenly culture. But we often continue to go around letting our own cultures influence our Christianity when it should be our Christianity influencing our cultures.

            This makes me think about what I am letting influence my Christianity. Things that aren’t a part of the Heavenly culture, but things that I don’t even realize are wrong. So the call, the challenge, is to become more a part of the Heavenly culture. More of God and less of me and my culture.