CANADA TODAY Understanding the Times by Michael Schutz
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n our circles, we’re pretty good at dealing with God’s Word. We rightly focus on doing sound biblical exegesis, which is the task of interpreting the Bible based on what the Bible actually says. To do good biblical exegesis, we need to start with what God says in His Word and allow that Word to lead us into proper interpretation. As a pastor, it’s critical that I do good biblical exegesis so that I can rightly handle the word of truth and communicate it to people. Over the past few years I’ve become convinced that we need to get better at doing a different kind of interpretation: cultural exegesis. This I what I would call “the task of understanding the world around us, based on the reality of our world.” In the same way that we need to allow God’s Word to speak to us and not impose our own desires or thoughts on the text, we need to do the same thing with our culture. We cannot approach the culture around us based on what we wish it was or what we think it should be; we need to understand our culture for what it truly is. The Apostle Paul was doing cultural exegesis in Acts 17 while waiting for Timothy and Silas to join him in Athens. He saw that the city was full of idols, and he used what he saw there— including their poetry and art—to proclaim the true God to the people. But while he used this method with Greeks, he took a different tack with Jews: visiting the synagogue and proclaiming the crucified and risen Christ from the Old Testament. In a similar way, we are told in Scripture of the men of Issachar, men who “had understanding of the times, to know what Israel should do” (1 Chronicles 12:32). This task of cultural exegesis is important because it allows us to proclaim God’s Word in a way that addresses the reality
of the world in which we live. Proclaiming God’s Word isn’t a theoretical exercise; it’s proclaimed to real people in real places in real history. So we need to understand the real world—the culture—around us. The meaning of “culture” is a topic that deserves its own discussion, but for our purposes let‘s use Seth Godin’s simple definition: “People like us do things like this.” So who do Canadians believe are “people like us”? And what do they think those people ought to believe and do?
The Reality of our Culture One of the tools that can help with cultural exegesis is statistics. Sure, there are varying opinions about statistics— it’s been joked that 68.7 percent of all statistics are made up—but observing what people say and do, and compiling those observations, can help us better understand the culture in which we live, and thus how to engage people in our culture according to God’s Word. What do recent statistics say about the culture of 21 st-century Canada, then, especially regarding religion and spirituality? There are a lot of numbers and opinions to wade through, but there’s one overwhelming theme: Canadians are continuing to move away from biblical Christianity in both belief and action. A 2018 Pew Research survey found that 55 percent of Canadians self-identify as Christians, down from 67 percent in 2011. As of 2018, just 29 percent believe religion is very important in their lives. Two-thirds say it’s not necessary to believe in God to have good values. Much has also been made of the rise of the “nones.” According to Statistics Canada, those claiming no religious
Canadians are continuing t o m ove away f ro m biblical Christianity in both belief and action.
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THE CANADIAN LUTHERAN January/February 2020
