How do you engage with culture? Are you aware of how culture is shaping your sensibilities about meaning, power, morality, religion, and aesthetics? Do you blindly reject everything in the culture so that you can remain separate from the world or do you blindly accept everything so that you remain relevant? My guest today is Dr. Justin Bailey of Dordt University in Iowa. Today we’re talking about his book Interpreting Your World. Rather than accepting or rejecting culture, professor Bailey advocates exegeting the culture and evaluating it in light of the gospel and the Christian worldview. Then we can better understand our own hearts as well as reach unbelievers with the gospel.
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—— Links ——
- More about Dr. Justin Bailey on his website pjustin.com
- See these posts about culture or apologetics
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- Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library.
- Who is Sean Finnegan? Read his bio here
—— Questions——
- To begin, could you tell us a little about yourself and your work? You seem like the kind of person who straddles the fence between theology and praxis. Is that a fair characterization?
- You’ve written a book about culture. It’s called Interpreting Your World: Five Lenses for Engaging Theology and Culture, published by Baker Academic. Why did you write this book?
- I’ve been in pastoral ministry for 17 years so far. During that time, I’ve seen two extremes. On the one hand, you’ve got the people who fully embrace separation from the world and for the sake of holiness, disengage from the culture as much as possible. On the other hand, you’ve got the people who so inhabit the culture that they are super relatable to unbelievers, but they also indulge in the sinful behaviors of the world to such a degree that they lose their witness. Have you seen that too? (How can your book help people figure out a good balance on this?)
- Let’s talk about your concept of Christianity as a virus. What do want to get across with that analogy? (Little awkward writing this during COVID, eh?)
- You structure the book around five main dimensions of culture. If it’s alright with you, I’d like to go through each–if time permits.
- Let’s begin with meaning. What does our culture say about meaning?
- What does the bible say about meaning?
- What about power? It seems like we’ve fully entered the Nietzschean age when everyone is obsessed with power. It’s the lens through which we judge each other. What’s going on?
- What does the bible say about power?
- Can you briefly explain the other three lenses? morality, religion, aesthetics
- Dr. Justin Bailey, thanks for joining me today. Once again the book is called, Interpreting Your World. How can people learn more about you and your work? Thanks for joining me today.
What ever happened to “walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the deeds of the flesh”
I can relate getting rid of all my albums(dating myself) when I first became a Christian. Could it be that God impressed upon me the need for total commitment. So, that brings me to a situation that happened at this same time. Another Airman(I was in the Air Force at the time) had just accepted theLord . We became friends. Soon he asked me to go to a movie. My new commitment to Jesus cried out in me that I should not go to this type of movie however my friend convinced me to go.
After the movie we had our disagreement about what seemed acceptable to God and not.. I chose the separationnist route and he chose the more non total commitment route.
So I chose God and got involved in a local church and was able to grow in the Lord. One year later at a farewell party I was heading to the beach(this was on Guam) and he was coming up from the beach. We looked at each other and an unspoken communication passed between us. He was in bad shape after partying hard for the last year. He seemed to say ,I made the wrong choice. All I could give him was sympathy.
Maybe at first birth God knows it’s important to come out from among them.