culture clash

As an American living in London...I have become keenly aware of the cultural differences between my home* and my home-home**. These differences seep down into our sub-cultures as well (e.g. into the local church). One would expect this on an intellectual level, but even I am shocked at my own lack of awareness of this on a practical level.

Further to that, armed with my new-found cultural awareness, I'm shocked at the pre-conditioned response I still seem to bring to Scripture. So, today's little dose of Stott was a poignant one for me.

Obedience and understanding

Obedience is a precondition of understanding. We need to repent of the haughty way in which we sometimes stand in judgment upon Scripture and must learn to sit humbly under its judgment instead. If we come to Scripture with our minds made up, expecting to hear from it only an echo of our own thoughts and never the thunderclap of God's, then indeed he will not speak to us and we shall only be confirmed in our own prejudices. We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behaviour.

--From "Culture and the Bible" (Downers Grove: IVP, 1981), p. 33.

Someone once said that upon accepting Jesus as Lord we are positionally justified but that we will also always be going through the process of sanctification (i.e. we are both positionally and progressively holy). I'm really thankful for the term "process" in that context.


*home: the place where one spends most nights and all her currently-used stuff lives.
**home-home: the place one claims to be "from" or where her "roots" are.