Isaiah 60 and Revelation 21, 22.
Cultural Renewal. Inside the Christian church the phrase might sound unspiritual. Outside of the church it could sound sinister, referring to a takeover of some sort. I think though it summarizes somethings that I have been learning from reading the Bible recently, listening to Tim Keller speak on the Bible, and reflecting on a discussion about related issues with my awesome wife.
Isaiah the prophet is prophesying in chapter 60. What is he prophesying about? It may at first seem to be of some future time where Israel and Judah have a great deal of economic and political power and wealth. It does indeed talk about the wealth of the nations coming and rulers who ‘used to oppress you’ now are coming to them. But if you look closer at this chapter you can see that it is not only referring to something that has never happened in history, but as far as we know could never happen in human history. Notice v 8-10. The view point of the prophecy is standing out and looking at the ocean. Across the whole horizon something white appears. Not clouds, birds, land, but the most massive of fleets. These names don’t mean a lot to us today, unless you do a little study, but Tarshish was the farthest thing West that anybody knew about, Midian and Sheba are lands to the South, Ephah was to the East, and Kedar was to the North. This is saying literally that all the wealth of the nations at this time is streaming into Jeruselem for the honor and glory of God. And not to make money! Over and over it says all of this is coming to proclaim the praise of the Lord (v. 6) and to the honor of the Lord your God. That has never happened and we cannot imagine it ever happening within human history. And then at the end of the passage (v. 18) it talks about a society where there is no violence, disorder, crime of any kind, no more war, no more sadness... and then (v. 19) this place does not even need the sun or moon anymore. I think at that point we can see that we are looking here at the renewed heavens and renewed earth in the future. At the end of Revelation John has a similar vision from God of the same time.
John and Isaiah (the whole Bible as a matter of fact) are unanimous on the future of the human race. What is heaven all about? What will we be spending the rest of eternity doing? Cultural activity. This society is filled with cultural activity here and I think we can at least see 4 things in the Isaiah chapter.
1. The goodness of culture, 2. The brokenness of culture, 3. The true diversity of culture, 4. And How culture can be redeemed
1. Let’s stand back and see what is being said here in Isaiah. Here we have the future state. There is commerce, architecture, science, art... in the future we have all of the cultural activities going on. Why? Because our future is a material future. The book of Revelation is very clear that at the end of time we don’t see God’s people as individuals leaving the material world and going off into spiritual bliss, a disembodied spiritual realm. Instead we see God coming down to cleanse and perfect THIS material world. Look at Jesus after the resurrection eating with his friends, where He was felt and spoken to. We are not going to be balls of light or points of conscienceness. We are going to hug and be hugged! We are LITERALLY going to eat, drink, and dance in the kingdom of God.
At the beginning of the Bible you have God with His hands in the soil making us. Also, keep this in mind here, Eastern religions have always said that the material world is an illusion, that it is not really important, and Western religions (the Greeks and Romans at least) thought the natural world was defiling and debasing. The spirit was good, the body was bad, and the dirt was worse. Unprecedented, compared to the worlds religions, we have God with His hands in the soil making us. And He makes us as gardeners! A gardener cultivates the land, which can also be said like this: a gardener cultures a piece of land. To cultivate or to do cultural activity is to arrange what you are working with in such a way as to draw out all of the enormous potentialities of it for the flourishing of human beings and the human community. For example, we need beauty - there are flowers. We need food - there is vegetation. A gardener is cultivating these things. This is cultural activity.
Mark Noll, a Christian historian, has a great list that is relevant to look at here: “Who formed the world of nature which provides the raw material of all of the physical sciences [which is a cultural activity by the way]? Who formed the universe of human interaction which is the raw material of politics, economics, sociology, and human history? Who is the source of all harmony and narrative patterns which is the raw material for art? Who is the source of the human mind which is the raw material for philosophy and psychology? And who moment by moment maintains the connection between our minds and the world beyond our minds? God did and God continues to do.”
The ‘land’ was and continues to be arranged so it brings forth ‘food’ which we need for the flourishing of human beings and human communities. Let’s continue the list: ‘What’s music? The raw material of sound is fashioned into music. What’s writing? What’s theater? It is taking the raw material of human experience and fashioning it into narrative and story.’ The human race cannot live without stories, beauty, art... these things give our life meaning... This is the same thing as gardening. We are taking the raw material of creation and drawing its potentialities out for the flourishing of human beings and especially for the human community. Even to the point of when someone combs another’s hair they are brining order out of chaos, same as the work of the Spirit in Genesis 1. We are unable to flourish unless someone cleans a house, maintains a car, sweeps the sidewalks - so called “menial work”...
When God, who originally started the world with His hands in the soil and who made the first human beings gardeners, when He became a human being He did not come the way a Greek god would have come, as a philosopher, or the way a Roman god would have come, as a General, but He came as a carpenter. The Biblical worldview has the HIGHEST possible view of the most “menial work” because everything from gardening to combing hair, to even investment banking is cultural activity. It is something that God is most concerned in doing. Starting in Genesis 1, the Spirit bringing order out of chaos, is concerned about creation, over and over again the Bible shows how the Spirit loves creation and cultivates creation...
What do I mean by creation? God existed, and then God decided to take the breath of life, which He alone had, and put it in some other being so there were other personal beings. And He gave them freedom. Knowing that by putting something that He had into these people, allowing them to see the light of day, and giving them free will, He knew that it was going to be incredibly costly. The investment was going to incredibly costly, infinitely so. And so why did He do it? Will it be worth it in the end - to have a whole universe filled with angels, humans, and who knows what else? All loving and praising! I definitely think so. God is actually the ultimate investment banker. Because what He did was He took His resources and risked them, and at infinite cost did something that actually expanded the beauty and glory of the universe.... By the way, when an investor sees a human need and sees a talent to meet that need and then risks their resources to create an enterprise that meets that human need and creates jobs and creates human flourishing - that is not just godly that is God-like...
The American church is continually perpetuating the deception that clergy and pastors are doing God’s work and others work solely to to give money to the church because they are doing God’s work and the people out in the ‘world’ are not. As capitalists they certainly have interest in doing so, but what Revelation and Isaiah are actually saying (as well as the rest of the Bible) is that the purpose of ‘saving souls’, all of the ‘spiritual’ work done in the church, is for the renewal of creation! When we get to the new Heavens and new Earth pastors will be out of a job. All of the souls will be saved, but we will still need musicians, architects, investment bankers... If the spirit of God is a preacher, proclaiming God’s word (John 16), He is also an artist (jeremiah 10:12), a gardener (Psalm 104:30). The spirit is saving souls, but ALSO committed to creation, committed to renewing creation, investing in creation, and drawing out its potentiality. And if the purpose of saving souls is to renew creation, then how dare we say that the church is doing God’s work and the rest are JUST there to give money to the church. How wrong is that?? There is no religion that gives you more reason to do cultural activity then Christianity. Do you know why? There are religions that say this material world isn’t real, others that say it is debasing, and the ‘secular’ that says that the world is eventually going to burn up, but the Bible says that cultural activity will go on forever. And that this is even what that Christianese word ‘redemption’ is about - to get back to the place where we really do the work that God gave us originally to do (cultural activity) - endlessly, unfrustratingly doing our art, doing our business, doing our music, doing our carpentry...
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