The Cross in the Culture

Connecting Our Stories to the Greatest Story Ever Told

Ruth Buchanan

• Publisher: Build a Better Us
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780578754628
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Literature & the Arts in Christianity

The basic needs of the human heart are reflected in the stories we tell.

As women and men made in the image of God, all storytellers reflect his timeless truths-whether they realize it or not.

In The Cross in the Culture, Ruth Buchanan explores how Christians engage with stories of every kind. Together, we will discover the image of God and the eternal truths of Scripture reflected in our shared narratives. In one way or another, every story connects back to the greatest Person who ever lived and the greatest story ever told.

All we need are eyes to see the connections.

The Cross in the Culture
© 2020 by Ruth Buchanan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version.

Emphasis to Scripture has been added by the author.

Cover design and interior formatting by TK Consulting & Design, LLC.

Author photo © 2016 by Rita DeCassia Photography

Published by Build a Better Us

For Hilary and Laura,
who came along for the ride.

Introduction

When we say culture, we’re often referring to the social institutions and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social groups. But culture can also refer to “the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.”¹ When we use the word culture in this book, we will be thinking less about how people behave socially and more about how they express themselves creatively—specifically, in their stories.

Society’s cultural artifacts speak to who we have been in the past, how we see ourselves now, and who we want to become in the future. Needless to say, society's answers to these questions do not always align with ours. Because of this dissonance, Christians raised on a wave of “culture war” ideology may not know quite what to do with their love of culture. For a long time, I felt similarly conflicted.²

In these pages, we will seek not to war against the culture but to steward our cultural gifts well, recognizing all the ways in which they point toward the presence of our Creator. We will journey together through storytelling genres, tracing our Savior’s steps all the way. And make no mistake: he is there. Sometimes his presence is overt. Sometimes it’s covert. Either way, once we know how to look, we will find him everywhere.

We seek Christ in our culture by pursuing his pathways through our stories—the ones we tell one another and the ones we live in real-time.

PART I

Chapter 1

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There was a time when, if you had told me you could see the cross of Jesus Christ reflected in the culture, I wouldn’t have understood what you were talking about even if you gave me specific examples. It’s not that I didn’t understand the cross. I didn’t understand the culture.

To recognize the cross in the culture, you must view this world for what it is, understand your place in it as a Christian, and see yourself as both a product of society and a contributor to it. You must understand not only the gospel’s personal implications but also its collective ones. God is not just in the business of redeeming you—he’s demonstrating his glory by redeeming his Bride and restoring the entire cosmos. Faith is not just a personal matter, and God doesn’t just work through Christians. I mean, he spoke through a donkey once. That should be all the evidence we need that the Redeemed aren’t the sole reflections of his majesty and glory.

I didn’t always see things this way, though. Let me start by telling you a little bit about where I come from. I wasn’t brought up in the culture, and though I’m an American Christian, I wasn’t raised in the Evangelical bubble. Not exactly.

I want to be clear. My family was not in a cult. We weren’t members of a commune or a collective. I wasn’t raised in a bunker like Kimmy Schmidt. Yet when I started my first job, I was just as clueless about what my coworkers were talking about most of the time. Sometimes I still feel like a recovering mole woman.

This is both a weakness and a great strength.

Not Exactly the Bubble

When I talk to siblings in Christ who came to faith as adults, they sometimes mention experiencing culture shock when they joined a Christian community. When I talk to believers raised in Evangelical backgrounds, they’ll describe having grown up in bubble. Neither situation describes me perfectly, and yet I’ve experienced both sides. Though I grew up in a Christian home, my family wasn’t part of America’s Evangelical subculture. We weren’t in the bubble. In a bubble, you can see what’s going on in society but not interact with it yourself. What we experienced was more like a rabbit burrow.

Let me explain.

Rabbits burrow underground. There, they create nests and systems of tunnels. Rabbits who live in the same area will often link their systems together, resulting in a little underground complex all its own. That’s how I grew up. Safe and protected, but definitely separated. Lots of freedom to run around—but all in a closed system.

When I was born in the late 1970s, my family was living in rural Pennsylvania. Though I was technically born in Lancaster (known for its Amish and Mennonite communities), I spent my childhood in nearby Lebanon County. Back then, it was all rolling pastureland, farms, and cows. Once when an old tree in a field was cut down, it made the paper. It was that kind of pl...