Intelligent Cultural Engagement

• Cultural Intelligence: Living for God in a Diverse, Pluralistic World - Darrell L. Bock
• 7 Tips on Engaging Skeptics Like Paul Did in Athens (Part 1) - Mikel Del Rosario
• 7 Tips on Engaging Skeptics Like Paul Did in Athens (Part 2) - Mikel Del Rosario
• 7 Tips on Engaging Skeptics Like Paul Did in Athens (Part 3) - Mikel Del Rosario

Mikel Del Rosario

Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and cultural. I’m Mikel Del Rosario, cultural engagement manager here at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And our topic on the Table podcast today is intelligent cultural engagement.

We are living in strange times, it’s no secret, and conflicts we’re had before the pandemic–they haven’t gone away. Some conflicts have escalated even in think about issues of justice, issues of race. We go online we see so much hostility and we think part of us wants to engage, but the other part of us is like, “I don’t know if this is going to end well.” And so where do we find ourselves? How do we locate ourselves in this situation as the church?

I have two guests today coming to us via Zoom. The first guest is Dr. Darrell Bock, executive director of cultural engagement and senior research professor of New Testament here at DTS. Welcome once again Darrell.

Darrell Bock

Glad to be with you.

Mikel Del Rosario

And our second guest coming to us all the way from Washington DC is Rodney Orr. Rodney is the dean of DTS in Washington DC and the associate professor of world missions and intercultural studies. Welcome to the show.

Rodney Orr

Thank you. Good to be with you.

Mikel Del Rosario

Yeah, good to have you on the show. Darrell, we have you on the show today because you wrote a book called Cultural Intelligence, and the subtitle is Living for God in a Divisive Pluralistic World. Help us understand just to get us oriented to this whole idea of cultural intelligence. What is that and how did this book come about?

Darrell Bock

Well, I’m dealing with several things kind of all at once. It’s kind of a theology of cultural engagement, which I don’t think has actually ever been written. It isn’t written as a formal theology, but it’s kind of a prolegomenon into the area. And so we’re asking people to reflect on what it means to have lived in a cultural that has shifted as much as it has in Rodney’s and my lifetime.

I look back to when I was going to high school and into college, and generally speaking there was a Judeo-Christian net around the culture that at least that I lived in that you could assume some knowledge of a Biblical ethic in the background, that kind of thing. And it was a given even if a person didn’t go to church, wasn’t deeply tied to Judaism or Christianity. There was something about the underlying ethic that was there. All that has shifted significantly.

Now in other parts of the world of course that’s not a given, but particularly in the United States that was a reality in much of the west. It was a reality, and that change has put pressure on the church to deal with this shift.

Then a second thing that’s important to understand that’s a part of the book is why cultural intelligence. Well, actually the idea of culture is almost a misnomer. And the reason I say that is because culture suggests a singularity to what’s around you. And in fact, it isn’t a singularity. There are actually multiple cultures present in our world. And I like to compare it, if you want a metaphor, to plate tectonics. You know how plate tectonics rub against each other to create friction, and then the pressure builds up and then there are earthquakes that come off of it.

Well, culture is kind of like that. You get these different segments of the society that represent different subcultures, if you will, that rub against each other and that have to figure out how to function alongside one another. And sometimes the tension builds up and it becomes – and the space becomes very contentious.

So the question is how are you going to approach that reality and that diversity that surrounds all of us. We sometimes maybe wish that everyone was like us, but in fact that doesn’t happen. And so how do you deal with that diversity? So the book is designed to step into this and to help Christians think about the peculiar position that Christians have because we’re not supposed to be of the world. We’re supposed to be a part of an identity as Christians who represent really a way of inviting people out of the way the world functions into renewed relationship with God that should change all the dynamics with which we engage with the people around us.

Mikel Del Rosario

Mm-hmm. Now you’ve traveled all around America teaching. You’ve traveled all around the world. You do every summer pretty much except for this summer. Even so you’ve done a lot of Zoom teaching. You lived in Germany for a number of years. How have you seen the cultural challenges change in these different countries?

Darrell Bock

Well I do. I’ve had a lot of relationships with a lot of different parts of the world. I’ve lived in Germany for four years. I was in Scotland for three years doing my doctoral work. Every other summer I’m at least six weeks in Australia and New Zealand, and then on the other year, it’s every other year, I’m the same in South Africa.

So it’s – and that’s intentional because part of what I’m trying to do is to get a glimpse of what’s going on globally in the world. The center and the seminary aren’t just connected to the United States. We’re actually an international ministry in many ways, and so that background is important, and Rodney shares the same variety of experience as well.

Of course many of our faculty share that background, et cetera, and bring that perspective to the classroom. And it’s a helpful perspective because it keeps us from being too nationalized, if I can say it that way, and there are lots of organizations around the world in which the adjective is more important than the noun. If I were to say – I’ll say Russian Orthodoxy or something like that, you know, the adjective becomes more important than what’s believed, and that’s really a danger to the unity of the church globally that we have to be sensitive to as we minister.

Mikel Del Rosario

So you mentioned Rodney has spent many years overseas as well. He spent his formative years in Ethiopia and Germany as well. And, Rodney, you’ve taught in Kenya, you’ve worked in Zimbabwe. Here in the States and New York City you worked with diplomats from all over the world. What are the kinds of common issues that have come up in your ministry, and even in your classes as you teach cross cultural leadership development?

Rodney Orr

Well I think it – Doctor Bock explained it from a theoretical standpoint of the plates that are rubbing against each other, but when you translate that into people rubbing against each other, no matter where you live in the world, there’s tension, and change requires it. You cannot have change and growth without some kind of tension that makes you grow.

And I think God wants us to be not agents to try to keep everything the way it always was and go back to the good old days or whatever. I don’t think they were that good actually. But it’s funny when you talk about the things that we experienced as we were growing up. It kind of shows how old we are, Darrell, when you think about it, the millennials, the gen-Z, the gen-X’s, all these generations that have come after us, and each one of them has had to face this in a different way.

So not only do you have different cultures you have layers of culture that you have to deal with what I call matrix, and I believe that God wants us to become multicultural people. Paul could speak probably five maybe six languages, but there’s 5,000 languages. You can’t learn them all.

And when he went to Laodicea in Acts 14 they didn’t understand the Laodicean language and made a huge difference in the speed with which they could communicate. So I found that when you’re in a cross cultural setting you learn to slow down, you learn to listen, you learn to kind of feel the situation and sense what’s going on here before you jump in with all guns blazing, your mouth in gear as the ugly American can do from time to time. And you learn to assess situations and look for an insider who can help you to kind of determine, “Okay, what’s really going on here?”

Darrell Bock

Yeah, I call that slow thinking. Two points I make in any cross cultural conversations. The first thing you want to do is ask a lot of questions. You want to get kind of a reading on where a person is coming from, what’s driving them, et cetera. And the second thing I say is and you want to put your doctoral meter on mute.

You don’t want to just respond with the first thing that comes to your mind in rebuttal. You actually are trying first to understand the person before you engage with the ideas coming from the person. Because there might be underlying elements of what is driving a person to be drawn towards that they are thinking that will be important to know as you think about addressing the things that concern the person you’re having the conversation with.

Rodney Orr

And I can give you an example of that in that I pastored a Korean church in New Haven for a year. And at the end of the year the elders came to me, it’s a Presbyterian church, and said, “We like you. We want you to do more.” And I said, “Well no. I have a full-time job. I’m just doing this on the side. I can’t.”

And they said, “No, you don’t say no to us.” You know, that shames, that causes shame, and you cannot just directly say no. You have to be a little more subtle, and I said it again. I said it two times and I was replaced within [crosstalk] because I didn’t understand the shame honor aspect of saying no to the elders of the church and how that is done.

And so, yeah, you can learn two ways. You can learn by making mistakes, or you can learn by listening quietly and slowing down. And I like the bumps that come from listening quietly. Slowing down a lot better than I do the mistakes.

Darrell Bock

I like to say that hard places are God’s spaces. When you think about change that – and the challenge of interacting with someone who thinks differently than you do, and how do you get along with someone who’s in that situation. How do you represent your own life and convictions well in the midst of that? I mean that really is the challenge of our current cultural situation.

When the culture was more monolithic that was easier to do than it is now, and that’s certainly one of the major changes that has come in our lifetime. I mean the world is bigger and smaller simultaneously. There are more people in it, but we’re also more tightly connected to one another. There’s a lot more communication than there used to be. We’re a lot more aware of the alternative ways of living in various religions, et cetera. We’re all much more exposed to that than we were when I was growing up.

And part of the difference of the generations and their attitude towards things is that what Rodney and I had to adjust to as this came into our world in some ways, younger people have lived with from day one, and they’ve been around it constantly. They’ve gone to school with that variety, a variety that I certainly didn’t go to school with.

My kids who’ve been out of school now for a couple of decades had much more variety in their classroom than I ever had. And so that just – that presence forces you to come to grips at a personal level with things that otherwise would be theoretical or that you learned through a book, and it’s not the same.

Mikel Del Rosario

So we’ve mentioned the loss of that Judeo-Christian net that we’ve seen in so many places, not only in America but in other places around the world who mentioned the variety of different cultures. We’re not just dealing with one culture. We have a variety of cultures and demographics.

And thanks, Rodney, for mentioning gen-X. People tend to forget about us.

Rodney Orr

That’s why it’s gen-X.

Mikel Del Rosario

Yeah. Thank you for mentioning us. But in the book, Darrell, you talk about a variety of scripture passages that we can go to as we think about how do we engage better in this pluralistic world. One of the verses – one of my favorite verses, First Peter 3:15. One of our favorite text I know.

Of course that popular apologetics verse that people memorize, “To be prepared always, to give an answer for the reason for the hope that we have in Jesus, but to do it with gentleness and respect.” I really appreciate how you’ve helped me to see the broader context of that verse and how it relates to more effective cultural engagement. So could you unpack that for us?

Darrell Bock

Yeah, I’ll try and do this quickly. Verse 13 says basically you shouldn’t catch any flak for having done anything – for doing things right. It’s like what we teach our kids; do right and things will go well. Then the next verse reminds us; but we aren’t in a normal world. We’re in a fallen world.

So basically says if something should go wrong, even though you’re doing right, you’re blessed, and you’re not to fear those from whom it is coming, the injustice, the abuse, et cetera, which I think is important because sometimes I think the church responds out of fear, and out of a sense that they don’t control what’s going on, which of course they don’t. And so that’s the second step.

Then you get your passage; be prepared to give it a fence for the hope that is in you. The thing I like about that verse is when Peter has the choice of boiling everything that he believes down to one word that word is hope. The good news is hope. It’s a positive message. Sometimes when we’re communicating the culture all we have to say is pretty negative. And I like to say in the effort to talk about the challenge of what the Gospel is to people’s lives at one level we never extend the invitation and the hope that comes out of it. That’s why it’s called good news.

And so we have to be able to be sure that as we communicate with a cultural we’re always in the midst of whatever challenge might be going on, that we also extend this invitation that is the heart of the Gospel, the idea that you can be restored to a healthy relationship with God. So that takes us through verse 15. Of course the tone of it with gentleness and meekness is wrapped around not only that passage but several other text about how we’re supposed to engage.

Then it goes on to mention the abuse again, and then it turns to the example. And the example for the abuse is the life of Christ, that he as a just person suffered for the unjust. And then there’s a twist in the passage that’s very important, and that twist is that the just for the unjust so that he might bring you to God, not them to God.

And the point of that part of the passage is that we should never forget where we came from. That when we reach out to someone who doesn’t embrace the Christian truth, and doesn’t embrace the Christian Gospel, they’re starting out in the same place we started out from, and we should never forget that, that we didn’t come naturally to where we are.

It’s by God’s grace that we came to where we are. And that when we follow the example of Christ who reached out to those who did disagree with him, who didn’t think they needed God, who were separated from God, we’re actually making the same move towards others that Christ made towards us. And if you remember that that should change the way you interact with the person you’re disagreeing with because you’re doing it on the basis of the grace of God, the approach of God to that person, the example that God has said about how to approach that person, et cetera.

And then the best thing we have going for us is to live out the character of our faith and the character of our God as we do it. And if we do that well then hopefully we’ll be pointing to the hope that the Gospel represents. Now I did that about as quickly as I can. I’m watching Rodney smile while I’m doing it. So anyway, that’s how – that’s First Peter 3:15 is relevant.

Mikel Del Rosario

Yeah. Well, you think about the way that God reached out to us before we cared a thing about him or his message. And it’s so difficult for us, especially you look at social media online. You just see people just reacting, not dong that slow thinking that you were talking about. But it’s important that we remember that and that we give that same kind of engagement as well.

Now Rodney, years ago, you might remember, you lead a chapel activity that highlighted some of the differences in how DTS students experience the world. And talk to us a little bit about the value of recognizing different life experiences, and that how that relates to engaging in difficult conversations.

Rodney Orr

Yeah, we did a privilege walk where basically we lined everybody up in chapel and had them take a step forward if they had experienced a blessing actually in their life. And it showed the separation between kind of the haves and the have nots, the people who have had a lot. And I’ve done some thinking about that actually since then, and I realized that the fact that you’ve been privileged.

For instance my dad and my mom were married for 67 years, and that has been a tremendous privilege in my life. And the responsibility I have is what am I going to do with the privilege once I recognize that not everybody has a mom and dad who were married for 67 years, and that’s the issue. The issue is what do we do with what we are privileged with. But that exercise was a fun kind of practical way of helping people see that some have had privileges that others have not had.

Mikel Del Rosario

And how does that help –

Darrell Bock

The interesting thing about that exercise, Mikel, was is that we did it initially in Lamb Auditorium, which wasn’t big enough to do it in. We lined everybody up. And as it was happening I realized there isn’t as much of a spread here as you would normally see because we’re all – we’re dealing with graduate students who just to be graduate students were already in a highly privileged space, which was interesting to see.

So we redid it. We redid it in the Quad between the new Horner Building, the Library and Todd so that those who on campus will know what I’m talking about, the grassy area there. We drew a line down the middle and we did it again so we had more space to work with, and we still got some of the same results. But sometimes an exercise like that is criticized as being politically imbalanced or something like that, but that’s not the purpose of it.

If you think through a parable like the Parable of the Good Samaritan, or you think through the part of the New Testament where the example of Christ is he emptied himself and took on humanity to connect with people, what you’re trying to do is to explore the fact that people don’t have the same experiences. They don’t have the same blessings and challenges and relationship to each other.

And when you can see that and show that, and help people to see that and show that in relationship to one another, in relationship in the context of a chapel, the people that are going to class with, then you open up the possibility for conversations about what people’s lives are like, what God has done in their life, what they’ve learned from what they’ve been through, et cetera. And it can be a very, very positive eye-opening community building experience to see that going on.

And that’s why I was so pleased when Rodney and I worked on doing this together because we were trying to illustrate for students and make them aware that the experience that I have isn’t necessarily the experience of the person sitting next to me.

Rodney Orr

And, you know, I would say this too, Darrell. You and I had known of each other for 10, 15 years, but it wasn’t until that day you called me and said, “Hey, I’ve got a meeting I need to go to and I’m supposed to bring a friend, and I consider you a friend.” And I almost fell out if my chair. I didn’t know I was Darrell Bock’s friend.

But we went to that meeting and it was actually a racial reconciliation meeting where blacks and whites were meeting and sharing over a dinner together. And really that’s where our friendship really took off, and then we started going to baseball games together and doing other things with our families.

Darrell Bock

And then you moved away.

Rodney Orr

But we got a good baseball team here.

Darrell Bock

Well that’s good, yeah. Well if I ever get in a plane again. Anyway, and Rodney is making a key point here. What happened was is that we were in – one of the ways in which you bridge these gaps that we’re talking about culturally is to build that interpersonal relationship on a one-to-one level with someone whose background is distinct from your own, getting to know what their life has been about, what they’ve gone through, et cetera.

And some of the people who’ve been on the Table know that we’ve had Tony Evans on as well on many occasions, and we’ve talked very openly about some of the issues related to race, et cetera. But it’s because we have that friendship and we’ve built that trust that we’re able to have the conversation at the level at which it almost has to operate to get anywhere.

And unfortunately a lot of people have never had the experience of being – of developing a relationship with someone close to them whose background may or may not be like theirs at all and where they can ask what the different kind of experiences; things like what is the talk. Well we don’t have a talk in my culture, but virtually anyone of the African American culture has what’s known as the talk. And what generates that and that kind of thing.

And so all these issues are kind of interwoven together, and particularly in a Christian context it should not be difficult to build those bridges into work and to be able to work in that space. Because ultimately, the thing that ultimately connects us tightly to one another is our shared commitment in ministry, and our shared commitment to Christ that has drawn us to one another and gets us to appreciate what God has done in each one of our lives.

Mikel Del Rosario

Mm-hmm. Yeah, what you’re talking about with listening and getting to know the other person. On the one level it sounds so simple and yet people don’t take the time to do that, especially on social media. I know somebody puts out an opinion and they’re just slammed right away and you’re like you don’t even know the person.

And if we begin to think more about putting ourselves in somebody else’s shoes I think we can see some of that cultural conversation being more healthy. And I actually took part –

Rodney Orr

I define it as proximity breeds relationship. You have got to get into the lives of other people and love. The love of Christ is what draws us together. This social media is bitter. It’s really not very pleasant. But when you start talking about loving people and wanting to see their best, that’s a magnetic pull that brings people together.

I don’t think you can really disciple people if you’re not willing to enter into their lives and to walk in their shoes. You’ll always have a superficial relationship.

Mikel Del Rosario

Now, Rodney, I took part in those two chapels that you and Darrell were talking about. And I remember the first one before you introduced even the concept of privilege. You read Philippians three to eight about the importance of looking out for the interest of others going into the famous Christological hymn and the one that highlights Jesus’ humility.

Talk a little bit about how you see that passage playing into how we as Christians should engage in a pluralistic world.

Rodney Orr

You know, it’s really not tolerance. I mean tolerance is like the entry level. That’s the A, B, Cs. What we’re really talking about is engaging, engaging with people, and that’s going to require more than just getting along. You’ve got to really love each other, and in order to do that you need to be able to look for ways to disadvantaging yourself for the sake of others, for the sake of the Gospel.

And that’s what it’s really talking about is that, “Hey, if you have to suffer, you have to go through some difficulties in order to get this message out, in order to communicate it to people so that they understand it, then so be it.” I tell my students in class, “I’m not here to make you happy. I’m not here to make you happy. I’m here to make you uncomfortable. And to get comfortable with being uncomfortable because growing requires some kind of discomfort. It just doesn’t happen without some kind of equilibrium being upset in terms of holding everything the way that you want.”

And I think from being a world traveler, as well as a missionary, you just get used to being uncomfortable in a lot of different situations and learn to what I call dragon breath. When you dragon breath it means that you feel uncomfortable, you know that you’re in an uncomfortable place, but you take four counts in, and then you let out eight counts. And it’s not easy to let out eight counts, but what it does it just it quiets your heart, it prepares you for what you are about to experience, and you just say a quick prayer, “Oh Lord, be with me.”

Mikel Del Rosario

Mm-hmm.

Rodney Orr

And you get ready to dive in there.

Darrell Bock

Yeah, and the hard thing about being in an unfamiliar space is, and this is another important idea, is that a lot of people do things differently. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a better or worse way to do something. There’s a lot of stuff that goes on in the world that would be unfamiliar or awkward to a particular individual. Because someone has grown up in a context where things are done differently, and it’s not necessarily a good or bad difference, it’s just a difference.

And I think when you recognize that one of the things that happens from traveling globally is that you walk into these different cultural bubbles, if I’ll say it that way, and the rules change. They don’t work the way – things in Germany didn’t work the way things work in the United States. In Germany everything is done by a stimple, a stamp and the bureaucrat runs the way the world operates because that Germans are highly organized.

I used to joke about this when I was in Germany. In fact, I opened one of my sermons by talking about my lessons of living with the reality of the stimple and all the approvals that you needed to do anything, and all the bureaucratic stuff you had to – hoops you had to jump through. And I realized it’s just a different way that people have organized their lives to try and make their lives work. It isn’t that it’s better or worse, it’s just different.

And sometimes we get locked in to the way we’re used to doing things and think that’s the only way that thing can be accomplished. And in fact, that’s not often not the case. And sometimes by learning what motivates that difference you get the opportunity to look at your own way you’ve structured your life from the outside a little bit, which can be helpful. And you also get to understand the rationale for why someone would do it differently from the inside, which is helpful, and all of a sudden you’ve grown.

You’ve come to see that there are, in some cases, many ways to skin the cat. And in that process you learn that some skinning might be different or better, and some skin just is just the way – different way people do things, and that’s okay.

Mikel Del Rosario

Yeah. You know, I was born in Illinois but grew up in the Philippines, and my parents were with Campus Crusade for Christ (Cru). And then when I came to California to go to school I had to – there’s a lot of humility that goes into that is I used to say a lot part of my ignorance, but what is this common thing that everybody was talking about because I didn’t grow up in the United States.

And then I was a missionary with the Baptist General Conference in the Philippines and I’d have to do the same thing in the Filipino language being a Filipino guy, and people were like, “Why is this Filipino dude walking around like he doesn’t know what’s going on in this place?” But you find those friends, you find those people who are going to be able to be your cultural informants and help you navigate, and it really takes a lot of humility. And, yeah, they’re all good ideas.

Rodney Orr

Darrell, you know, we discussed this in class this last weekend. I was teaching cross cultural communication, and we were discussing this whole idea of American exceptionalism, which is the concept that somehow or other God has blessed America beyond any other country. And I admit that we have been blessed, but does that mean that we are superior to every other country of the world that also may feel God’s blessing at certain times?

And we really had to wrestle with that because some of the students had been taught from the time they were young children that to be American is to be God’s people. It’s almost as if we were Israel, and we were the 10 lost tribes of Israel and we’ve been brought home. The Monroe Doctrine, all these things that kind of give us –

Darrell Bock

Manifest Destiny, yup.

Rodney Orr

Yeah, Manifest Destiny. Those things that give us this feel that somehow we are superior people, and that no one else could possibly love their country the way we love ours. Man, if you start out with that you’re not going to get very far in a multicultural setting.

You really kind of have to even the playing field and allow people to kind of have their own cultural pride, and you’re the outsider. You’re the other as Hagel describes it, as the capitol O-T-H-E-R. You are the other who is seeking to share something within that culture that you want to share, which is the Gospel. And the question is, what are you willing to sacrifice in order to be able to communicate that message in a cross cultural setting?

Mikel Del Rosario

Mm-hmm.

Darrell Bock

And the danger of a Manifest Destiny approach is is that it can alleviate our sense of need for God. We may think the culture becomes that which defines us, that where identity lies, that which directs us, that kind of thing, and it impinges upon our relationship with God. And it certainly risks impinging our appreciation of other believers who come from other places, and other countries with other customs and that kind of thing. And it can take away from us the desire, and the interest, and the curiosity of being a good learner in those relationships that we’ve been talking about.

So there’s a lot that gets risked when we push – I’m back to the point I was making earlier in some ways, which is sometimes the adjective is more important than the noun. When we talk about American Christianity, for example. If it’s more important to be American than to be a Christian then something is out of whack, especially, and now I’m going to have some fun, when if you look for the words United States in the Bible you’re going to keep reading.

Mikel Del Rosario

You know, I once read this very fringed commentary that put America as the eagle who gave the wings to the women in Revelation. Like oh wow. So I have seen this on the mission field. I’ve seen ethnocentrism. I’ve seen reverse ethnocentrism in the people that they’ve ministered to, and the stress that that’s put on the relationship and on ministry there.

Now Rodney mentioned the Apostle Paul earlier, and I wanted to at least come back to that before we come to the end of our time here. Because, Darrell, when I first started my involvement with the Hendricks Center and in our mentorship, one of the first things we talked about was how the Apostle Paul engaged the culture. And there are a lot of lessons to learn from that. Actually inspired me to write a series of blog posts about it.

But talk about just a few key lessons we can take away from Paul’s example of cultural engagement.

Darrell Bock

Well, I have a message that I give. It’s called "Back to the Future" in which the argument is is that as our culture shifts and becomes more diverse. And of course one of the things that I haven’t – that we haven’t said that’s important, we’ve alluded to it is in different parts of the world the Judeo-Christian never existed, and never has existed.

So we’re talking about a peculiar situation here. That’s part of the plate tectonics I was talking about. Our culture and our cultures have certain features that other culture and other cultures in other parts of the world do not have. So that’s the first observation to make.

So Paul is this figure trying to introduce Christianity. He has no cultural power, he has no political power to speak of. There isn’t any national organization that he belongs to at the political/social level in the larger culture that gives him any credibility whatsoever. He’s operating as a great religious independent with a new thing that’s just sprung up, even though it has Judeo roots in Judaism.

So all the cultural crutches that Christianity functions in today in our context with that history, with that social power, with that political power, et cetera, didn’t exist for him, and yet he was very effective.

So the question is, how do you deal with that? And the premise of this is as we move away from a culture that has those props, those crutches, how can you effectively function in the culture if you’re in a situation in which your other supportive elements, like your politics and your social status and that kind of thing, aren’t tied to your Christian identity? How does that work?

So the message called back to the future and so on, the one end I talk about how Paul talks very directly with Christians about the nature of the culture so they can understand how problematic living in a fallen world is and what that means. That’s your end of Romans One. You read through that section and – I read through the end of Romans One and I go, “I think Paul has been watching my 10 o'clock news all his life.”

There’s nothing he’s describing there that I don’t see in my world today. And he’s very direct about it, and very – not just direct, but almost shockingly direct. I mean if someone reads that who identifies with the culture, man, they feel challenged and slapped down in some ways. So it’s a very direct passage.

Yet the odd thing is, and this is the lesson, when you watch him address that culture in Acts 17, and in fact the passage in which he addresses that culture at Mars Hill in Acts 17 actually begins by saying, “And he went around looking at the idols and was provoked by what he saw,” which means his blood pressure changed. He didn’t like the idolatry that he was surrounded with. He didn’t like what he was seeing in the culture.

But he begins his address to that very audience by saying, “I see that you’re very religious.” And when I read that verse with that tone in that way in I go, “Paul,” I’m a child of the ‘60s. I go, “Paul, what have you been smoking?” I mean how in the world would you address that situation that way with that kind of openness?

And really what he’s saying is this, he’s trying to build a bridge, and the bridge that he’s trying to build is, “I see that you’re engaged with a lot of interest in spiritual things.” Now underneath his thinking he’s going – now you couldn’t be approaching this in a more dangerous way, a more problematic way, “But I see you’re interested in spiritual things, so let’s talk about it for a while. Let’s have a conversation in this area.”

And then he steps in and he doesn’t step in tip toeing and saying, “Oh, I really like your idols. They’re really nice. That one on the corner over there I – that’s a cute looking god.” I mean no. He walks in and he says, “God can’t be contained by what we designed to represent him.” And he puts – and you and I, Mikel, we’ve talked about this a lot, the tactics of Greg Koukl, he puts a rock in their shoe. A rock is this thing that you put in a – when it comes in your shoe it bugs you and it stays with you until you either pull off your shoe and pull it out, or you resolve why it’s there.

So he’s doing these little things to give pause. So he shows respect for the culture on the one hand, and opens up and building a bridge to where they are coming from. He’s starting where they are coming from. He isn’t as direct, but he doesn’t give up on the challenge either.

And there’s this wonderful balance between trying to take them to the invitation, because he’s headed towards resurrection in his speech, trying to take them to the resurrection and the invitation on the one hand, but he’s challenging them in spots, but the way he’s challenging them is what I call giving them pause. He’s asking to think about the way they are thinking about spirituality and ask, “Is that the best way to think about spirituality,” and he’s opened himself up for a conversation by doing that.

And so I don’t think we do enough of that. Our tendency in interacting with a culture is to shake our finger at it to say you’re wrong, this is the way. This is wrong thinking, et cetera, rather than putting that rock in the shoe. Speaking with respect to the culture as you challenge them, even though deep down in your soul you know there are problems to deal with that are very, very serious.

And getting that balance right in sharing that tension between challenge and invitation so the invitation never goes away. And respect gentleness and meekness never goes away. Even in the midst of being direct, but speaking about culture in one way, but speaking to the culture in a different way. Understanding that difference of tone is very, very important in cultural engagement.

Mikel Del Rosario

Yeah.

Rodney Orr

And I would say this if I could, that it also applies to fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ.

Darrell Bock

Exactly.

Rodney Orr

You have got to treat each other with that same kind of respect that you are – that Paul is talking about in Acts 17, and he explains more in First Corinthians nine where he says, “Look, I have a right to get my living from the Gospel. But because of your attitudes I am not going to use that right because you guys are so immature.” And so even in dealing with Christians he gives up his rights as an apostle in order to be able to speak into their lives and to have a conversation.

And I think Paul valued conversations. I mean I think he really valued being able to speak into people’s lives and not speak into others. And if it meant giving up one of his rights in order to do that it’s out of here. He’s going to let it go.

And so I would come back to what I said earlier is that we have to look for ways that we can be disadvantaged in order to reach out to others. Look for things that are keeping us from being able to connect with other people and be willing to let those things go. That’s not an easy thing. That’s not an American cultural individualist kind of idea, but it’s something that it requires the power of the Holy Spirit working in and through us to enable us to say, “Hey, I give up my rights. If you’ll listen to me and let me talk and we can have a conversation I’ll let my rights go.”

Darrell Bock

And the whole second half of Jesus’ ministry with his disciples basically said, “Look, if I’m catching flack for doing this for God you’re going to catch flack for doing this for God, too. You can be absolutely sure of that. I sometimes think we whine too much about the way the world pushes back on us because it isn’t a surprise.

The whole – almost the second half of almost every gospel takes disciples there and says you’re going to have to bear your cross. Not bear your cross once every five years. You’re going to have to bear your cross daily. That’s look at a pushback that’s going to come from stepping into this space and trying to represent God well.

And then the question is, do we do this with a vulnerability that is like the way Christ made himself vulnerable. Vulnerable enough that he ended up on a cross, and we’re back to the first Peter three passage, “The reason we’re able to suffer this injustice is because we know that we’re modeling and walking down the same path that our savior walked down. And we also appreciate the fact that when he walked down that path he was rescuing people like us. He came for all of us, and no one is an exception.”

Another thing I like to say when you’re in Luke four and it says Jesus came to release the blind, and the captive, and the oppressed. Okay, and we tend to think of the blind, the captive and oppressed as other people. No, no, no. We were the blind. We were the captive. We were the oppressed. He came for all of us. And it’s appreciating that element of what we have experienced from the grace of God and how he has lifted us up that makes us care about the people who still need to be lifted up, and who can be encouraged that God is willing to lift them up and had loved them enough to lift them up if they will pay attention to what it is that God is doing.

And so that invitation, that good news, that hope needs to always be in our minds as we’re engaging with people and sharing with them. Because if you care about them as people you will care about the hope that God offers to people.

Mikel Del Rosario

Amen, amen. Well, guys, thank you so much for being with us. Our time is entirely gone. We could continue talking about this more, but I’ll direct people to Darrell, to Darrell’s book Cultural Intelligence: Living for God in a Diverse Pluralistic World. And, Darrell, thank you for being on the show today.

Darrell Bock

My pleasure as always.

Mikel Del Rosario

Rodney, thanks so much for being on the show.

Rodney Orr

Thank you so much.

Mikel Del Rosario

And we thank you as well for joining us on The Table today. We’d encourage you to subscribe to the podcast, and we hope you’ll see us – we will see you again next time on The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture.