The Kingdom of God: is it Really Counter-Cultural?
“You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” — Daniel 2:31-35 (ESV)
Sometimes the title of an article will get me thinking so hard that I can’t pay attention to the article itself. Case in point: Jared Wilson’s Counterculture, Story, and the Vocabulary of Faith at Gospel-Driven Life. He opens with this sentence:
The kingdom of God is a counterculture; therefore, because the Church exists to proclaim and practice the presence of the kingdom, the people in churches should be thinking and living counterculturally.
And it started nagging at me, because really, what is “a counterculture”? Forgive my apparently picky approach to this, but is “a counterculture” really a good descriptor for the Kingdom of God?
Here’s what I mean: culture “generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance” (Source: Wikipedia). Something which is “counter-cultural,” then, would bring about the disruption of patterns of human activity and/or the destruction of those ideas, beliefs, etc. which give those activities significance. That’s it; that’s all it accomplishes.
Something which is “counter-cultural” is by its very nature nihilistic. When it destroys “patterns of human activity,” new patterns only sprout up as a side-effect—rushing to fill the void. You can see this quite clearly in the way sociologists have used the term: first coined in 1969, it has (outside of Christian circles) almost always been used to describe vocal groups calling for the tearing down of cultural mores, and the celebration of a diversity of ideas which had previously been labeled “good” or “evil,” “better” or “worse.” The closest these counter-cultural movement ever get to introducing a “new pattern” is to insist that it is inherently wrong to seek a pattern for the general public to conform to. Something which is counter-culture is not counter to a particular culture, but counter to the very concept of culture itself. Counter-culture is the pinnacle of self-idolatry: it seeks to destroy all forms of social conformity because they are a hindrance to complete and total freedom of the self from the desires and impositions of the other.
“And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.” — Daniel 2:44-45 (ESV)
The Kingdom of God does run counter to every human culture in some way, but this alone doesn’t make it a counterculture. No, the Kingdom of God is a competing culture, because it doesn’t just cause disruption; it tears down in order to build something better. When we seek to tear down the dominant culture’s idols, it isn’t because they repress us; we tear them down to clear the field for the worship and exaltation of the One True God. When we abandon the dominant culture’s self-seeking attitudes or class structures to love our neighbor, it’s not because we enjoy being different; we love our neighbor because our King loved us first, and calls us to follow Him. When we oppose “the Man,” it is not because he’s “the Man,” but because (and only ever if) he opposes the God-Man and calls us to follow after his delusion.
The “cultural clash” we experience is not a sign that the Kingdom of God is a counterculture. The Kingdom only disrupts patterns of human activity when those patterns conflict with the patterns of the Kingdom. So you see, the Kingdom of God is a culture. And since it is a culture created and ruled by the Creator of all things, the Kingdom of God is the culture. Thus, the kingdoms of the world are counter-cultural… and they’re only delaying the inevitable.
“Assemble yourselves and come;
draw near together,
you survivors of the nations!
They have no knowledge
who carry about their wooden idols,
and keep on praying to a god
that cannot save.
Declare and present your case;
let them take counsel together!
Who told this long ago?
Who declared it of old?
Was it not I, the LORD?
And there is no other god besides me,
a righteous God and a Savior;
there is none besides me.“Turn to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.
By myself I have sworn;
from my mouth has gone out in righteousness
a word that shall not return:
‘To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear allegiance.’ — Isaiah 45:20-23 (ESV)
