Culture of God

I like borders. Even though they make me nervous, they make the differences easier to see. According to my daughter, when we cross the border from the US into Canada, the houses and roads perk right up in quality, but they turn somber and cautious. Other than the occasional red door, their colors are subdued. She lets her breath out in relief crossing into Mexico where variety and color reign, even riot. Like people, countries have personalities. Margaret Atwood says that at their core, countries have a single symbol that comes out over and over in their literature, movies, music and art. For the US she says it’s The Frontier with its Lone Ranger saving the world. For Canada it’s The Survivor, carving out a life up there in the North. 
 

She didn’t offer a symbol for Mexico, but maybe it would be The Rebel, someone never quite happy with the rules or the status quo. (Feel free to offer something better.) I’m thinking of the iconic legends of Zapata and Pancho Villa, or the name of Mexico’s strongest political party, the Institutional  Revolutionary Party (PRI), or the fact that narcocorridos,  drug ballads like the tribute to Chapo Guzman, are becoming ever more popular, even though they subvert every family value on the planet. “El Chapo” (Shorty) is the drug lord that just escaped from a Mexican maximum security jail (whether through a tunnel or right out the front gate, no one is telling) for the second time. He’s so wealthy that Forbes listed him as a self-made billionaire along with Gates and Buffet, and he’s offed thousands of people. There is a section of society in Mexico that admires Chapo’s ability to thumb his nose at authority. Not all Mexican rebels are as harmless as El Chavo. 

The week spent with my parents and sister, a type of  “border crossing,” reminded me that not only did our own original Patterson clan have its personality (that fortunately included card games I could win), but Angie and I have our own family personalities, or cultures, as well. And all of us are embedded in such different environments: living in a retirement community in Florida; selling houses in a bright Texas economy, and teaching school in southern Mexico. We are all constantly weaving new cultures out of old.

Recently, I have been asking myself how to describe the culture of God’s country. If it’s true that God as Trinity has always been a Family, a Community, a Union, a Pueblo, a Nation, a Country, then His country has its own culture, too, its own way of doing things, and its own unifying symbol. I think God revealed this symbol through Jesus when he taught us to pray, “Our Father...” Only he turned the whole device on its head, because He is The Father, and earthy fathers are symbols of Him, and never the other way around. We are the Bride to the Bridegroom, and earthly marriages are symbols of that, and never the other way around. Jesus showed us that the primary way we relate to God now is as his children. He is our Father, and he wants us back! And not just us; He wants the whole family estate. He wants the land, and he wants the people, and he wants all the ways we relate to each other in groups, too—the ways we govern, educate, work, heal, play, love, worship—everything.  In other words, he wants His Culture to utterly infuse ours. That’s living in God’s kingdom.

We are all embedded in such different cultures when He calls us: Mixtecs, Smithvillians, Oaxacans, Texans, young, old, post-moderns, pre-moderns, dead-on-moderns, don’t-try-to-label-me-whatever-moderns, and He meets us where we are. That’s the meaning of the Incarnation. But then he disciples us. And as more and more of us from any culture follow his lead, together we weave from that culture something truly beautiful, a tapestry made by all our choices together, all our work together, all our creative acts of worship together. May that tapestry be rich and not one culture lost! We kid ourselves if we think this is easy.