Summary Of Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling

Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch is a book addressing culture. To begin it is helpful to establish what exactly culture is, Crouch defines it as “Culture is, first of all, the name for our relentless, restless human effort to take the world as it’s given to us and make something else.” (pg. 22), he also says “Culture is not just what human beings make of the world; it is not just the way human beings make sense of the world; it is, in fact, part of the world that every new human being has to make something of.” (pg. 25). There are three parts to this book: Culture, Gospel, and Calling. The first section, culture, begins by examining the horizons of possibility. He argues that people have lost sight of cultures

It caused a great deal of self-reflection on how I could go about engaging culture. I came away with a couple of great take aways that I will apply. The first is on changing the world. Like Crouch said there is a great paradox that exists when we talk about changing the world. Yes, as Christians we are called to love and care for the world, and culture is damaging the world. But we can not change culture, so what do we do? We can not go around telling people that culture is wrong, that there is sin in culture. Instead, we need to make more culture. We need to produce a culture that is glorifying to our creator. Once again Crouch sums it up well “...when the human beings, male and female, are created “in God’s image,” surely the primary implication is that they will reflect the creative character of their Maker.” (pg 104). If we produce a culture that is glorifying of our creator than it will bring about positive change. Too often I try to push back on already existing culture, Crouch would argue that this is wrong. That if I want to bring about positive change then I need to create a positive culture. In a day and age where we are so divided as a society, it is hard to disagree with this. This does not push people apart like disagreeing does. My second large takeaway is that humans are meant to be culture makers, we all are. Culture gets a dirty reputation which is not fair. God was a creative culture maker and we were made in His image. Beyond that, He calls us to be culture makers when he gives us domain over the earth. I have often shied away from creating culture because it felt wrong. I did not understand that it was actually a good thing to