Ordinary Radicals

               What is this thing we call “culture”? And why is it important to everyone, but especially Christians? In the broadest sense, this is what I spent my first Interim thinking and talking about. I know that I was drawn to that class for a purpose; God needed my eyes to be opened a little further and my horizons to be widened a little more. It was the gateway to a changed way of thinking.

                So what is culture? Culture is a neutral thing in and of itself, although many Christians (and others) misuse the term to mean “what is wrong with the world.” It encompasses high culture—going to the symphony, art galleries, opera, museums; ethnic culture—the foods, traditions, etc. that pertain to certain ethnic groups; political culture—the view and values held in high esteem in the realm of politics; and the most obvious branch: pop culture. Pop culture is all the music we listen to, everything we watch on TV or in the movie theatre, every book we read, and all the websites we browse. Everything comes from somewhere, everything has a purpose. Everything points toward the future. People often fall into the trap of just condemning culture as terrible or mindlessly consuming culture. When we stop making our own culture, stop questioning the culture, stop trying to break the status quo, we fall into having a certain view and interpretation shoved down our throats. Our eyes and minds are numbed to the world.

                And so, culture touches more than meets the eye. It fully includes the environment, stereotypes, the food we eat, the fuel we put in our cars, the advertisements we are bombarded with and so much more. We live in a fallen world. Every one of these areas mentioned have been twisted and distorted by sin. Culture contains both very good and very bad, truth and untruth, wisdom and folly mixed together. I learned I needed to… Wake up! To see the world around me as it is; to reorient myself to engaging culture and choosing to embrace the pieces (however unpopular) that bring about the Kingdom.

                This is where the idea of ordinary radicals comes in. Ordinary radicals are people who see the upside-down world (upside-down in comparison to how things should be) and make a choice to never stop inquiring and never settle for the world’s idea of success. They take righteous risks in attempting to fulfill the Lord’s call in their life. Whether this risk is job-sharing, befriending a social outcast, or standing up against social/political injustice, the Kingdom is being pursued. These people are humble, live simply, abound in generosity and hospitality, and all in all look like “Martians” in comparison to the general public. They have ridiculous joy because “We have hope beyond ourselves.”

                The values I listed are wonderful things, and are all things I want to embody, but putting them into practice and connecting them with food, the environment, community, ethnicity, advertising, etc. is where things get tricky. Over Interim we compiled a list of many practical ways to challenge the normal way of the world. I do want to mention a couple things that I think are great ideas, and a couple more things that I plan on putting in to practice as soon as I can:

Consuming consciously, buying food from local farmers/ organic farmers, being engaged in a community, recycling, spending real quality time with family, teaching kids (if you have them) Kingdom values, starting a garden, using eco-friendly products/fuel, getting to know your neighbors, carpooling, having block parties, having a clothing exchange, shopping at thrift stores, connecting with intentional communities, buying fair-trade products, having potluck meals.

Buying local and organic produce (when possible), learning to cook real food from scratch, learning to sew and knit, eventually getting a more eco-friendly car, trying to reform my mind into living a more simple life, attempting to glorify God and bring about shalom on the earth with my every action.

Almost of all these ideas were sparked by an Interim 2013 class, “Culture Making in the Empire,” taught by Rob & Kirstin Vander Giessen-Riestma at Calvin College. Additionally, these themes and discussions were based off of the books: Engaging God’s World: A Reformed Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living by Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Everyday Apocalypse by David Dark, and Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat.

Mixed Signals

           No, this isn’t some whiny blog post about unrequited love or anything like that. This is me, actually considering the importance of signs, symbols, signals, etc. I first stumbled upon this idea when I realized the “math” class I was taking hardly used numbers anymore. It is more a mix of variables (letters), Σ, e, ∞, θ, ln, π, and ⌠. After developing basic arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry skills, I (more or less) understand and can use these symbols in calculus to some extent. Let’s suppose that, although I don’t see any evidence for it, there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Would the most intelligent mathematician from another planet be able to understand my work? Even if our understanding of calculus was the same, he (or she… or it) would be totally lost because the symbols we use would not be the same.

            I also noticed this phenomenon while sight-reading The Semiramide Overture in orchestra (pretty cool piece, by the way). What are musicians actually doing when they read music? To the outsider, it looks like staring at a piece of paper with little black dots attached to sticks on a set of five lines—with some funny looking b’s (♭) and hashtags (#) thrown in the mix. Each little dot corresponds to a note, and the flats and sharps tell you how to manipulate that note to the correct pitch. Would the most proficient musician from thousands of years ago be able to sit down play a piece given the music notation we have today?

            Is anything actually as it seems? Is there anything that doesn’t need interpretation? Honestly, I don’t know. Everything we experience is picked up by one of our senses, but only has meaning because our brain interprets the signals. The feeling we call love is, in part, a confluence of chemicals in our brains: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, etc. This is not meant to downplay love by any means. It is a beautiful gift from God, and without God there could be no love, even with all the chemicals in the world. However, it is amazing that we can figure out what signals our brains that we love someone! This is only one example of how reliant we are on the interpretation of signals.

            I guess it just surprises me how much our brains do for us, that we don’t even realize. On top of the involuntary interpretation of bodily signals, we are also able to use our brains to decode outside signs. Like reading a book, driving a car, playing a game, or playing an instrument. The amount of things we are interpreting at one time is, to me, astonishing.