{"id":414,"date":"2016-06-06T02:15:31","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T02:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/classicaldifference.com\/?p=414"},"modified":"2022-01-22T05:15:51","modified_gmt":"2022-01-22T05:15:51","slug":"414-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classicaldifference.com\/414-2\/","title":{"rendered":"How other cultures help us recover our own"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>How other cultures help us recover our own<\/h1>\n<pre>by David Goodwin   |   Spring 2016<\/pre>\n<blockquote>\n<h4>\u201cWell, &#8230; I don\u2019t know.<\/h4>\n<h4>That, you\u2019d have to<\/h4>\n<h4>convince me of.\u201d<\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"page\" title=\"Page 16\">\n<div class=\"section\">\n<div class=\"layoutArea\">\n<div class=\"column\">\n<p>This wry and skeptical reaction from a teen working on her senior thesis said volumes. What statement of mine could have elicited such a challenge?<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThere are better cultures and worse cultures.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Christians believe in good and evil. Beauty and ugliness. Truth and falsehood. But, here in the U.S., why do we struggle if these standards are applied to a culture? Americans might turn a blind eye to cultural differences, but our Christian brothers and sisters overseas do not. I hope this issue of The Classical Difference will illuminate that which we struggle to see.<\/p>\n<p>Some time ago, a group of Chinese scholars was asked to \u201clook into what accounted for the &#8230; pre-eminence of the West all over the world.\u201d Their answer: The \u201cheart\u201d of the West\u2019s pre-eminent culture\u2014Christianity. (See this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breakpoint.org\/bpcommentaries\/entry\/13\/28621\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cBreakpoint\u201d from Chuck Colson<\/a>.) Why does democracy struggle in the Middle East? Class equity in India? Religious liberty in Southeast Asia? These questions all come down to culture, or what used to be called \u201ca people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Early in the fifth century, St. Augustine wrote what is probably the second most influential work after the Bible, <em>City of God<\/em>. He wrote about the kingdom of God and the impact its people had on culture. He defines \u201ca people\u201d\u2014or culture\u2014as \u201can assemblage of reasonable beings bound together by a common agreement as to the objects of their love.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cObjects of their love?\u201d What does this have to do with culture? What does it have to do with your family? In a word: everything. This is why classical Christian education seeks to cultivate rightly ordered loves in our students. We want students to love to worship God, to love others as themselves, to love virtue and\u00a0hate evil, and to love and enjoy beauty. These are why we educate.<\/p>\n<p>Augustine continues his\u00a0commentary on culture:\u00a0\u201cTo discover the character of any people, we have\u00a0only to observe what they\u00a0love. It will be a superior\u00a0people in proportion as it\u00a0is bound together by higher interests, and inferior as it is bound together by lower.\u201d Clearly, Augustine believed cultures should be judged.<\/p>\n<div class='et-box et-shadow'>\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class='et-box-content'>&#8220;To discover the character of any people, we have only to observe what they love &#8230;\u201d<\/div><\/div>\n<p>Now, before we start asking Indonesian people to wear wool suits, we need to heed Augustine\u2019s words about cultural customs and habits. \u201cIt is a matter of no moment &#8230; whether he who adopts the faith &#8230; adopts it in one dress and manner of life or another, so long only as he lives in conformity with the commandments of God.\u201d People with various customs need not throw them out, but they will be blessed as they conform them to Christ. This is how a pagan solstice feast became Christmas! Several years ago, a Rwandan pastor visited the classical Christian school in our area. [See page 8]. He was taken by the idea that education could be Christian in every subject throughout the day. He said that, had classical Christian education been widely practiced in Rwanda, the 1994 genocide in his country might not have happened. At first, I thought this statement too bold. But as he explained, I realized that he instinctively understood the importance of paideia [for more on paideia, visit classicaldifference.com\/about]. He simply observed that the way we are educated influences who we become and what we love. This is a key contribution of Christianity to the nations\u2014rightly ordered loves. From Indonesia to Iraq, from Africa to Seoul, from Haiti to Hawaii to the Bahamas, people worldwide see the value of classical Christian education in forming souls and shaping them to love Christ. Our Christian brothers around the world want to see God bless their cultures, not with the kingdom of the West or America, but with the kingdom of Christianity. It just so happens that, for over 1000 years, the West embraced Christianity. So, it\u2019s a\u00a0good place to start.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How other cultures help us recover our own by David Goodwin | Spring 2016 \u201cWell, &#8230; I don\u2019t know. That, you\u2019d have to convince me of.\u201d &nbsp; This wry and skeptical reaction from a teen working on her senior thesis said volumes. What statement of mine could have elicited such a challenge? \u201cThere are better [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":456,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,14,70,31],"tags":[256],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How other cultures help us recover our own - The Classical Difference<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/classicaldifference.com\/414-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How other cultures help us recover our own - The Classical Difference\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How other cultures help us recover our own by David Goodwin | Spring 2016 \u201cWell, &#8230; I don\u2019t know. 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