Jon Acuff - Booty, God, Booty

• Lunch with friends – realized they did the same thing on Sunday mornings. Get in car, realize what’s on the radio and change the channel to Air 1.
• We’re all prone to this behavior.
• Highlights the challenge to live successfully as Christians and interact with our culture. 
  • Too often, though, we become so immersed in ways of thinking and patterns of living that we can’t recognize them. 

1. What do we mean by culture?
2. From Latin: cultura. Means “agriculture.” Idea is to cultivate, work, shape the land. 
3. Basically, culture is what humans do with the world around them. 
   1. “Culture is what human beings make of the world.” 
4. We see culture our music, movies, art, fashion, internet, advertising.
5. Influencers in our society modify our culture. We shape and mold it as surely as we are shaped by it.
6. As you can see, culture is powerful. It can be powerfully good or powerfully evil.
7. It’s also constantly changing. Technology, new ideas, events both local and global change and influence us.
8. It’s also unique to the local environment. What is culturally acceptable in one place isn’t in another.
9. Culture, then, tells us what is normal, acceptable among groups of people.
10. Here’s where the problem starts: What our society accepts as “normal” often doesn’t mesh with our Christian beliefs and practices.
11. Christian reactions to culture.
12. Sacred/Secular divide – false dichotomy.
13. We make church things “good” and world things “bad.”
14. This is the “line approach” to culture. Too simplistic. 
    1. Not everything labeled “Christian” is good. Not everything in the world is bad. 
    2. Where we draw the line is arbitrary. 
    3. Basically a reaction to culture, not a clear understanding of a biblical worldview. 
15. The line isn’t where we need to start.
16. 1 Peter 1:3–4 (NLT) 3All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, 4 and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.Jesus reaction to culture show us the way.
17. The way we navigate the culture successfully is to look to the true “captain” of our souls.
18. b. Give in or run away. 
    1. Mark 8:36 
    2. Matthew 6:24 
    3. 1 John 2:16 
19. c. Engage. 
    1. Matthew 5:14–16 16 In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father. 
    2. Matthew 28:18–19 (NLT) 18Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

Conclusion:

• Culture and the Christian.
• Are we just getting a little “inspirational vitamin” and calling it a Christian life?
• Is our instinct to simply run away from any activity, issue or person that threatens our belief system?
• We’re called to engage our world in the name of Jesus.