Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling - Andy Crouch

In his book, Andy Crouch calls Christians "toward new, and also very old, directions for understanding our calling in culture" (10). Culture is "what we make of the world" (23). "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" (23).

Culture is good, a gift of God. The goodness of culture is emphasized at both ends of the biblical story - its origin is found in the Genesis account and its destiny revealed in the book of Revelation. In both cases, culture plays a more prominent role than many people think.

In Genesis 2, God places our first parents in the Garden. It is here that culture begins, for "a garden, of course, is not just nature: it is nature plus culture" (107). The garden is God's gift. Our first parents must now "make something of the world." It is crucial to realize that "culture begins, just as human beings begin, in the realm of created blessing. The beginning of culture and the beginning of humanity are one and the same because culture is what we were made to do" (36). For a much larger summary and reflection on this book, click HERE.