Cultural Engagement and the Media

I also began to occasionally be a guest host on Moody Broadcasting Open Line and then later began to be kind of a guest host and now even am the host of a show called Point of View, which is on about 360 stations. So between television and radio, I’ve done a lot of media, been really fortunate to do that. And I’ve been on both sides of those microphones so I, as you, have well been aware there are some times when you get some interviews, which aren’t really very well done.

But that’s when I began to say, you know, there are a lot of other issues we’re addressing. The topics we’re addressing on the campus are also in the media. And just as you have written on that and really tried to address that, we began to write books, I began to do some of the radio programs, we began to do more in the media. And still to this very day, we’re all about kind of helping people understand the world from a Christian point of view. It’s kind of a worldview ministry.

But I suggest now our culture is more like an Acts 17 culture where here instead Paul is on Mars Hill. He can’t assume any of the things I just mentioned: that they believe in one true God, that they know the Old Testament, that they believe in a coming Messiah. We have to sort of back of.

Likewise, I know when you’ve been on ABC, when I’m on secular talk shows, when I’ve been on McNeill-Lehrer, whatever it might be, I cannot assume that the host or the audience is familiar at all with some of the basic kinds of ideas that we would be talking about in a typical classroom at Dallas Theological Seminary, so I sort of have to back up.

So as I engage the culture, I still engage it, but it isn’t necessarily with Bible verses first. I sort of have to argue to my biblical presuppositions rather than argue from my biblical presuppositions. And so, really, cultural engagement is much more difficult, not only for those of us in America, but think about the secular world that many of our listeners inhabit in other parts of the world. You have to engage the culture by maybe sometimes defining more terms, help them understand what a biblical worldview might be because that would be foreign territory for them.

Isn’t it the case – and you’ve alluded to this – that really in one sense to talk about culture almost misleads people as if it’s a singular monolithic thing that is the same everywhere. We really are talking about cultures: national cultures, local cultures, regional cultures, et cetera. And that also complicates the discussion to some degree because being sensitive to culture means that you have to have some awareness of how the culture that you live in in one place may not be like the culture that exists in another. Isn’t that the case?

And so it’s very important to recognize that in this culture of pluralism and the pluralization, the process that has taken place, you really have a multitude of different cultures, which means again if you’re going to communicate to the culture, if you’re going to engage in cultural engagement, you really have to understand a little bit more of the audience. And so you have to not only sort of exegete God’s Word, but you have to exegete the culture as well. And that’s going to be, I think, much more important as we move further into the 21st century.

And this is one of the areas where I think the church has struggled a little bit. We’re pretty good at our – I like to say we’re pretty good at our own message and we’re pretty good at what we want to say. And we do a good job oftentimes of going from a Bible to a topic, but if you flip that around and make us go from a topic to a Bible or interact with someone who is coming at us from a little different perspective, our ability to understand how to reach out and touch them because of where they are – oftentimes we’re not so strong at.

I think the advantage of a worldview, Darrell, is that you can begin to say well, what is the worldview of the person I’m talking to, whether it’s a television talk show host, whether it’s a radio show host, whether it’s a radio person or maybe an individual that’s a religion editor for a newspaper or whether it’s just somebody you’re talking to at Starbucks. Where are they coming from? What are their presuppositions? What are some of their ideas and values? And then as you’re communicating to a culture, what are those values? What are some of the hot buttons? What are some of the key points?

And if we’re going to be really effective, I think in the 21st century, no matter where we find ourselves, whether it’s in the United States or other places around the world, we’re going to have to understand a lot more of the worldview of the audience that we’re speaking to, the worldview of the people that we’re engaging.

I think, again, our ability to know the variety of ways in which people assimilate things, which you’ve called worldview, and the lens through which they look at it – and the problem for a lot of people is that the person that you’re talking with sometimes doesn’t even think about themselves as having a worldview.

Islam is a good example. Almost every time you get talking about Islam or you talk about Christianity, usually especially on a college campus I’ll have kids say, “Well, what about the Crusades?” and so I’ll say, “Okay, what about the Crusades? There were nine of them. Which ones do you have a problem with?” And you kind of get this, “Well, I really don’t know anything about it.” I didn’t think so but that’s a favorite line. What about the heathen in Africa? You get all sorts of things. How could a good God allow evil in the world? I mean, these are sort of perennial questions or comments that come up, but you get them to think a little bit more.

Or you have a young person. And I’ve had many of them say, “Well, I believe that all truth is relative.” And so I ask, “Is that truth that you just expressed relative?” “Well, I don't know.” “Well, what you seem to be saying is you don’t believe in absolutes.” And I had one student say, “Yeah, absolutely.” I said, “Let me understand this. What you’re basically saying is that you absolutely believe that there is no absolute truth except the absolute truth that there’s no absolute truth.” And he smiles. “Okay, okay, you got me on that.” I said, “No, I’m not trying to play a game here. I’m helping you understand that somewhere along the line there are some first principles. There are some basic things that you believe.”

And when you engage in maybe even sort of a lighthearted kind of back and forth, it helps them sometimes understand yes, I have all sorts of assumptions I’ve made. I haven’t really thought them through. They’re part of my worldview. They’re part of the lens through which I view the world. And so in kind of a gracious sort of way you can begin to get them thinking about some of the ideas that they hold dear and help them maybe see that the biblical truth answers more questions than what they thought was true.