Here’s a short video interviewing my friend and doctoral supervisor, Bruce Ashford, about his recent book Every Square Inch:An Introduction to Cultural Engagement for Christians.
In my favorite part of the video, he reiterates something he said in an interview with Christianity Today:
One of the ways I help people get started making culture and engaging with their cultural contexts is to teach them to ask three questions. These three questions can be asked and answered when we find ourselves in any sphere of culture.
1) “What is God’s creational design for this realm of culture?”
2) “How has it been corrupted and misdirected by sin and idolatry?”
3) “In what ways can I help bring redirection to this realm by shaping my activities in light of Christ’s Lordship rather than in submission to idols?”
These questions are not easy to answer. It is mind-numbingly hard work because Scripture does not provide an apple-to-apple answer for each question. Discerning God’s creational design for a sphere of culture is hard enough. On top of that, we must put in the hard work of discerning the profusion of ways our society has corrupted and misdirected that design, and then how we as believers might interact in a way that redirects that realm.
This is a relevant book for every Christian. Bruce’s book will stimulate the sort of conversation that addresses the tendency to divide one’s life into a “spiritual” sphere and the so-called “secular” sphere.
I’ll close with a quote from the book,
“Jesus Christ is Lord of all, and because of that fact, every aspect of our lives should be affected by the fact that we are Christians.”
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