Of worms, birds, and the Bible

Always remember, a bird’s eye view is way different from a worm’s eye view, when in fact, they’re looking at the exact same thing.- Paula Peralejo

Worms have a tough life. They are the furthest thing from strong, long-lived, or attractive. Their niche is a crap pile, a robin's beak, a fishing hook, or in the case of Mark 9:44, Hell, where the worm never dies. Worms are a metaphor for low-life humans. And their perspective--the worm's eye view-- is decried as too minuscule to be of much use (that's assuming that worms even have eyes). 

Yet from the point of development of a faith-infused worldview, we all start off as worms. We are products of a particular upbringing, set of friends, sub-culture, and culture that to the largest extent makes us what we are. We learn enduring norms, values, and perspectives at a very young age, and typically make adjustments only to the extent that we want to stay in, or move to, another societal niche. It's probably fair to say that we are immersed in our culture. And normally, we like it like that.

Hence my reference to humans as worms-- not to all those negative aspects of worms mentioned above, but strictly to their perspective. If we are immersed in culture, we have a hard time taking an arm's-length look at it--a bird's eye view as it were--and assessing its goals, values, and norms from an objective perspective.

I preached on this issue shortly before departing our home of 35 years--Abbotsford BC--for Ontari-ari-ario in 2015. Here are some excerpts and how I arrive at the issue of worldview.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’m convinced that we Christians are so deeply immersed in our culture that a large part of the potential impact of biblical teaching for living is lost on us, not because we don’t take the teaching seriously, but because we tend to filter the teaching through our culture, rather than filtering our culture through the Scriptures. This can distort, at times, the meaning of the teaching, and more often its applicability to cultural issues that confront us.

There are two important questions here that I want to explore with you:

1    What do I mean about being deeply immersed in our culture?

2    If my premise is correct, what resources are available to Christians to address the challenge of cultural suffocation?

A. What is culture and why is it important?

American writer Walter Lipmann usefully defines culture this way:

Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.

Sociologist Margaret Anderson goes on to show how important culture is:

Because culture is learned, members of a given society seldom question the culture of which they are a part, unless for some reason they become outsiders or establish some critical distance from the usual cultural expectations. People engage unthinkingly in hundreds of specifically cultural practices every day; culture makes these practices seem "normal." If you suddenly stopped participating in your culture and questioned each belief and every behavior, you would soon find yourself feeling detached and perhaps a little disoriented.

While all of this is true, it is not necessarily something we are conscious of. We are born into a culture and are immersed in it for all or much of our lives. Most of our priorities, values, and habits are to the largest degree dictated by our culture without our even thinking about it. This applies to the culture of the city, province or country we grow up in, our faith or ethnic tradition, organizations for which we might work, and of course, our family upbringing.

Can I give any examples of how culture shapes our judgment? Here’s a cute one from the writings of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, the man who discovered mainland America and described the inhabitants he found there:

The manner of their living is very barbarous, because they do not eat at fixed times, but as often as they please.

But to bring things much more into the present--the economic trauma going on right now in Greece--consider this ingrained Greek cultural perspective, which they defend against a Canadian alternative point of view:

The Greek island of Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea is famous for its sublime beaches and sparkling turquoise waters. It is also where one of the most brazen scams to plunder Greece’s beleaguered treasury took place.

In a notorious scheme that may provide guidance to eurocrats trying to figure out whether this country deserves another big bailout, as many as 700 people of the island’s 35,000 residents falsely claimed that they were blind. They were rewarded with more than 350 euros a month in compensation.

The scheme, which operated for years, was finally shut down in 2011 after one of the “blind” was said to have been caught driving his Porsche. Among the cheats receiving the monthly stipend, which cost the government several million euros a year, were a taxi driver and a hairdresser.

One of the local residents rationalized the practice this way:

“I know from a good friend of mine who grew up in Canada before returning to Greece that your country was built on the rules of Her Majesty. Every country has its own mentality and it has never been the same as that here. What we have is the mentality that rules are made to be broken.”

The Greek gentleman I quoted simply accepts that culture rules, and that another point of view is fine for you but not for me. This is easy to see and criticize in the Greeks. But what of ourselves?

I’m the furthest thing from a sociologist, but from what I’ve seen from literature on the topic, cultural priorities, perspectives and values—what we often refer to as a worldview—are remarkably persistent. Transforming culture takes tremendous effort, whether it’s the micro-culture of a business organization or a church, or the macro-culture of a country or ethnic group.

Some very different kinds of people feel exactly the same way about the impact of culture and why it is necessary to recognize the stranglehold it can put on priorities and values, not to mention potential change.

Feminist and human rights activist Charlotte Bunch says:

Sexual, racial, gender violence and other forms of discrimination and violence in a culture cannot be eliminated without changing culture.

The estimable Pope Francis, in recent comments concerning the environment, observed as follows:

We should not think that political efforts or the force of law will be sufficient to prevent actions which affect the environment because, when the culture itself is corrupt and objective truth and universally valid principles are no longer upheld, then laws can only be seen as arbitrary impositions or obstacles to be avoided (sounds just like Greece).

Canadian political commentator Mark Steyn also recognizes the impact of culture:

You can't have a conservative government in a liberal culture. Schools in the U.S. are liberal and churches are liberal. The hip, groovy elite is liberal. Makers of movies and pop songs are liberal. Liberalism fills the air; it is the climate….Liberals expend tremendous effort changing the culture. Conservatives expend tremendous effort changing elected officials every other November--and then are surprised that it doesn't make much difference.

And, finally, my old cartoon favourite--Pogo the Possum, wading through a grossly polluted swamp--who observed that humanity is its own worst enemy with his famous quote, “We have met the enemy, and he is us”—‘he’ and ‘us’ referring to our very own culture.

That’s not to say that there are not many good things about our Canadian culture. Canada has once again been recognized as the most admired nation on earth for a reason. It’s a genuine privilege to live in this great land despite politicians, particularly those in the Opposition, constantly trying to convince us that we’re going to Hell in a hand basket, and that the only way to make life palatable again is to vote for them. Of course, our present government said exactly the same thing when it was in opposition. 

But what does a good living situation breed in its residents? —Complacency. If we conclude that things are great and that very little needs to be changed, then very little will change, and our worldview will carry on in an untroubled fashion. St. Paul's admonition (Romans 12:2) that we don't conform to the pattern of the world we experience will lose any punch; in fact, we probably won't really understand at all what he could possibly mean.

But there is a way to prevent that from happening. I'll discuss this next.