A Practical Guide to Culture
Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today’s World
Authors: John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle
Publication Year: 2019
Started on: 2021-12-17
Finished on: 2021-12-27
Questions
John’s most recent book is intended for Christian leaders and parents as they equip the next generation for cultural engagement. The book is neatly organized. Read through the contents and write out the titles of the four main sections. Note the subsection titles and how they relate to the section theme. Why do you think Part Four was included?
Part One: Why Culture Matters
What Culture Is and What It Does to Us
Keeping the Moment and the Story Straight
A Vision of Success
Part Two: A Read of the Cultural Waters
The Information Age
Identify After Christianity
Being Alone Together
Castrated Geldings and Perpetual Adolescence
Part Three: Pounding Cultural Waves
Pornography
The Hookup Culture
Sexual Orientation
Gender Identity
Affluence and Consumerism
Addiction
Entertainment
Racial Tension
Part Four: Christian Worldview Essentials
How to Read the Bible
How the Trust the Bible
The Right Kind of Pluralism
Taking the Gospel to the Culture.
If Parts One through Three introduce you to the problem and convince you of its significance, Part Four is there to answer the, “Now what do I do about it?” question.
Part One: Summarize the concept “culture” and what impact it has on the individual.
Culture is the environment humans make for themselves to live in; it’s what we think is normal. We (mostly passively) shape it, and it actively shapes us.
Part Two: In a sentence or two, summarize how each of the “undercurrents” of culture in the subsections impact the individual.
- The Information Age
Kids these days are inundated with information, but aren’t trained with how to evaluate the ideas that bombard them. The media through which information is delivered are not neutral, but shape what and how we think.
- Identity After Christianity
When we jettisoned Christianity, we lost what it means to be human. In the ensuing search for meaning, we seek to place self, sex, science, stuff, or the state in the place of God.
- Being Alone Together
The ever-presence of information technology in our lives gives us the false impression that we don’t need physical community in our lives, that digital community is sufficient; however, buying this lie tends to convince us that (1) we’re the center of our own universe, (2) we deserve to be happy all the time, (3) we must have choices, (4) we are our own authorities, and (5) information is all we need, not teachers.
- Castrated Geldings and Perpetual Adolescence
There was a time when there were two groups in society: children and adults. In the middle of the 20th century, teenagers emerged as a distinct group, and in the intervening decades this middle group of those who haven’t matured has expanded to the age of 30 or so. The antidote for this perpetual adolescence is to cultivate virtue in young people and actively raise them into adulthood.
Part Three: Which ones among the cultural issues discussed really cought your attention? Are the “Action Steps” particularly helpful for you?
- Pornography
Having been rescued from addiction to pornography myself, I was surprised that none of the action steps involved growing up to be the man or woman God’s made you to be. That was the turning point for me.
- Addiction
As one who’s been saved from certain addictions in the past, and still struggles with some in the present, I was disappointed that this chapter was so narrowly focused on drugs and alcohol. It’d be worthwhile to broaden it and ask people if they’re addicted to coffee, sugar, carbohydrates, etc., plus a number of the other chapters in this part of the book.
- Racial Tension
It feels like there’s an unspoken assumption that if your circle of friends isn’t ethnically diverse, then you’re racist (I’m exaggerating it to make a point). When I lived in the United Arab Emirates, my friends came from here, there, and everywhere across the globe. As I live now in Albuquerque, NM, the people I regularly interact with are largely white and New Mexican. The diversity of the groups of people I interact with is representative of the diversity of the local population. Such a possibility was overlooked in the treatment of this chapter.