Developing the Right Culture

Now the Lord had said to Abram: "Get out of your country, From your family And from your father's house, To a land that I will show you."

Genesis 12:1 (NKJV)

Abram, the man through whom God succeeded in creating a new race in the earth, lived with his father Terah in Ur of the Chaldeans, a city in Babylonia. It is believed that Terah served on the advisory council of King Nimrod, which made theirs a very prominent family in the region. Abram was born into a culture deeply rooted in paganism; his family, like the vast majority of the population, worshipped idols of the sun and moon.

At some point in his life he encountered Almighty God, an encounter that undeniably changed his life and set the precedent for the birth of a new race.

God's first command to Abram was to leave his country, his family and his father's house: the fundamental factors that create culture.

Culture is the deep-seated values, ideologies and traditions that precondition an individual or a society to think, act and behave in a uniform manner. I think of culture as the prevailing thought patterns of a society. It is very powerful, because it is an environment that nurtures us, with either constructive or destructive potential for us as individuals. Culture preconditions destinies, creates the limitations, mindsets and language of a region, and strongly influences beliefs.

We can understand why God instructed Abram to leave everything behind: he was to be the father of a new race of human beings (the Jewish people are an entirely distinct race), who would need to be cultured by God Himself. It is very interesting that God would not show Abram his future until he had moved, and not only geographically but spiritually and mentally too.

This is what I find most challenging about modern Christianity. We have tried to live out our Christian lives within the culture we inherited from our families and our countries. We live out Christianity the African way, or the American or European way. No wonder we are unable to move into the full purpose of God in Christ: we are still uncultured in the way of the Kingdom.

In the Old Testament God used the Law to culture the Israelites and distinguish them from the rest of the nations. In Christianity God uses the Word of God and the Holy Spirit to distinguish us. There is a culture in Christianity that we must develop, a royal culture in which every Christian must walk to experience the fullness of the divine life.

Queen Elizabeth may have been born royal, but she still had to be trained and cultured in the royal way. The same is true of you and me. We are born of Christ as kings, but we must first leave behind our nationalities and our societal conditioning and adopt a new way of thinking and living. This is a reorientation of culture, through the vigorous study of the Word of God and the grasping of the language and mindset of the Kingdom, if we truly want to live the Christ life and experience the reality of the Kingdom. It is difficult, yes, but with God it is possible. Start living the Kingdom way. Study how royalty and deities think, behave and act, and then begin to imitate that way of life. The Word of God says, "Be imitators of God as dear children." This is the culture of the gods. He wants you to think, talk and act like Him. Start today.