West and East: Historical Friday

The last two Historical Fridays we have been examining the differences in the way Eastern culture and Western culture has affected Christianity. I think it has been made clear just how much a cultural idea can influence faith. I encourage everyone to not only examine other cultures and their influences, but also your own. American culture has had a huge impact on Christianity in America, something we will discuss eventually.

Today we are going to look at the West and East and see why neither influence is necessarily a bad thing. Really what happened was that each culture emphasized a different aspect of the Christian faith. The West emphasized the legal aspect and the East the philosophical aspect.

The West, the East, and Us

So what can we learn from these cultures and the way they shaped churches? Well first off it helps us to look at our own churches and identify where we stand. Most of the people reading this blog (I assume) are from the West. We are more heavily influenced by Western civilization and by extension Western Christianity.

The big example I'll point to is the emphasis we place when it comes to Jesus. Now I didn't talk much about this in the previous two weeks because I want to talk about this now. I touched on it but this is where the core differences arise between the cultures.

In the West everything about Jesus revolves around the Cross. Most of our songs have to do with the Cross. Most of our sermons have to do with the Cross. Communion is centered on the Cross. We would say history revolves around the Cross. 

Those in the East would say something different. They would say that the Incarnation is the most important thing about Jesus. The fact that God became man, that the Word became flesh. Their songs focus on the life of Jesus. Communion for them is centered on the Incarnation. To them history revolves around Jesus' life on earth.

This is important: Christian in the East believe the Cross is important! Westerners look at their emphasis on Incarnation and our gut reaction is to think that they are devaluing the Cross. This is simply not true. They see the Cross as an important piece of the Incarnation, while we see the Incarnation as necessary to get to the Cross.

What I want to point out is the thing that neither culture seems to emphasize; the Resurrection. If anything this is the center of history. The Bible focuses more on the Resurrection than anything else. In fact the Bible seems to say that it is the Resurrection that saves us! How often do you hear that preached?

Now this is not to discount the Incarnation or the Cross. In reality all three work together, but I hope you seem my point. The culture we live in can greatly influence the way we look at Jesus. Studying other cultures' interpretations of the faith is informative and beneficial.

For example, we could learn from the East that thinking and believing the right things about Christ and God are important. We are typically far more concerned about what and how we do things than if our faith lines up with Scripture. The East could learn from the West that thinking and believing the right thing about Christ doesn't amount to much if you don't put it into action. 

Now these are oversimplifications, but you see the point. Westerners could learn to pay more attention to Christ's life instead of just fast forwarding to his death. Easterners could learn to meditate more on the power of the Cross and that event instead of just seeing it as a piece of the Incarnation. Both sides could learn to focus a lot more on the Resurrection.

Conclusion

I hope the last few weeks have been informative. My goal was to simply introduce the idea that culture plays a much bigger role than we like to acknowledge. We prefer to see ourselves as outside of the culture, but in truth we are very much a part of it. Eventually we will look specifically at American culture, but not for awhile. For now I encourage you to examine your faith and see what is from us and what is from God.