Positive attitudes, Beatitudes and Discipleship in Modern Culture

Spent last night with the folk at Newton Mearns Baptist Church, doing one of the talks in their Spring Break series on the Gospel and Culture. The talk was the second in the series, and the theme was "Positive Attitudes to Culture".

Decided to talk about how Christian attitudes, rooted in the Be(atitudes) lead to a positive critique of some of the worst excesses of current cultural experience. Peacemaking in a confrontational culture; mercy in a ruthless culture; meeknes in an ego drenched culture; justice in a systemically unequal culture. But not only critique – the Beatitudes point towards alternative dispositions of character that enhance rather than diminish human life. Meekness, righteous actions, peacemaking and mercy import significant moral and social responsibility into cultural expressions, and so characterise the attitudes and practices of those who claim to follow Jesus, that they constitute a transformative expression of the Church's mission.

Passion for peacemaking expresses the Gospel value of reconciliation; it is evidenced in discipleship practices such as forgiveness, welcome and hospitality, and is exemplified in the lived practice and experience of people like Desmond Tutu. Thus positive Be(attitudes) rooted in gospel values and expressed in discipleship practices becomes a process of salt and light interacting with their cultural context. Likewise hunger for righteousness, commitment to mercy and the disposition of meekness.

Seemed to work and led to some good discussion on the timelessness of human nature's capacity to turn creativity, social exchange, economic activity, moral norms and other cultural expressions either towards human flourishing or towards human diminishment. Sin is as imaginative and banal as it ever was; likewise, goodness and humanising creativity. What seems unarguable is the rapidly increasing pace of cultural change, and the exponential development of technology as an ambivalent nexus of social forces within which we now have to live our lives – as witnessing communities to a life that is cruciform in shape and resurrection oriented towards hope.

Much to ponder.