Blinded by Culture: The Truth We Can't See

Could our culture be preventing us from seeing biblical truth?

And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’  - Luke 13:23-25

Why do you believe what you believe? 

I think many of us would point to a range of things: life experience, logical arguments, historical evidence, and the truth we find in the Bible. However, as someone who has spent my whole life surrounded by people who see the world differently, either as a Christian teen growing up in atheist England, or a 20-something Brit in small-town California, or now as a 30-something back in the UK, I am convinced that we hugely underestimate the power of culture to shape our beliefs.

I’m thinking of impassioned arguments I had as a teen with atheist friends who had no way to explain why this complex, beautiful, impossible world could have popped out of nowhere by chance - yet they held on to this belief regardless of the evidence. Everyone knows the existence of God was disproved hundreds of years ago. 

Similarly, I was deeply moved by reading Nabeel Qureshi’s story in “Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus”. In this book, Nabeel describes his three-year battle as a devout muslim confronted with the truth of Christianity. Despite being presented with overwhelming evidence  - even from his own scriptures  - he found it almost impossible to surrender the creed of his culture. Everyone knows the Bible has been corrupted. God has no son. 

All over the world and at every stage of history, groups of people have been fully convinced that their way of seeing things was right. “I know in my heart,” we might say. Breaking out of these deeply rooted ways of thinking is incredibly hard. However, it is also absolutely vital for those of us who call ourselves Christians.

It’s crucial that we acknowledge the deeply rooted beliefs and assumptions we’ve absorbed from our culture and find the courage to ask the Holy Spirit to dismantle them. If not, we risk presenting the world with a gospel of half-truths.

Let me explain. 

One of the most deeply embedded “truths” at the heart of our enlightened, western culture is this: it’s all going to be ok. A major barrier to the gospel is not actually passionate unbelief. It’s more a kind of agnostic apathy. There may be a God, but it’s probably not that big of a deal. If there is a God, I’m sure he’ll see sense and send me to Heaven. After all, I’m a good person. This is heartbreakingly, earth-shatteringly, wholly, utterly, and completely false. But some part of me, very deep down, seems to believe it.

What I mean is, it feels true. Even though I know, at least in theory, that, without Jesus’ death on the cross, I would be eternally dead, that everything hinges on my decision to put my whole trust in him, that there are people all around me on their way to hell because of their refusal to repent and believe…the danger just doesn't feel real.

God’s righteous judgment, celebrated in the Bible as the moment when good finally triumphs over evil, is profoundly offensive to our culture. Not just to unbelievers - to Christians. It’s foundational to the story of salvation, it’s on almost every page of the Bible, but we don't talk about it. Sometimes we even try to explain it away. Everyone knows a God of love would never send someone to hell.

Even if I am able to wrap my mind around the reality that other people may face eternal judgment, I have a very hard time feeling any sense of danger myself. I remember as a child hearing the verse “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” and having honestly no clue what this could mean. And that’s a good thing, right? Why would a child of God have any fear? There’s nothing to be concerned about. It’s all going to be ok. 

Humour me for a minute, and read the following passage of scripture slowly and carefully, several times over, taking your cultural glasses off for a minute, if you can. It’s a bit of a dense passage, so here’s some context: the author is talking to Christians from a Jewish background, drawing a parallel between them following Jesus to eternal life and the Children of Israel in the desert following Moses to the promised land.

Here we go:

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said,

“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.

Hebrews 3:12-4:2 (ESV)

There are so many things in this passage that challenge what I believe, in my heart, about what it means to follow Jesus. In fact, I remember doing a group Bible Study on the book of Hebrews as a student and coming away totally lost as to what any of it was about. I simply dismissed what I was reading because it couldn't mean what the words seemed to be saying.

What do you take from this passage? This is my attempt at a summary:

As Christians, we’ve heard the good news: God’s salvation is here! Yet, like the Israelites—rescued from Egypt and brought to the border of the Promised Land, but ultimately doomed to die in the desert—we too face the danger of not making it in. Sin is deceitful: it leads people to place their trust in other things, hardening their hearts toward God and draining away their faith. Knowing this, we must constantly look out for one another—continually warning and encouraging each other to turn from sin and to build our lives on one foundation alone: trust and obedience to God.

Some theologians believe it is possible for a true believer to lose their salvation, whereas others would say that those who fall away were never true children of God. Whatever position you hold, does it make any practical difference to how you apply these verses?

Once you see it, you can't unsee it. These heartfelt, sober warnings to Christians are all over the New Testament. There are too many to quote - I wouldn’t know where to start. If they are unfamiliar, it’s because we avoid reading them. Hebrews alone has five passages specifically warning Christians not to turn back to sin and away from God. I picked one of the least scary ones, honestly. 

I took one more thing from reading Nabeel Qureshi’s book about his journey out of Islam. There are good people, like Nabeel and his family —devout, honest, kind people — all over the world who devote their whole lives to following a lie. My eyes have been opened to the truth - not because of anything I have earned or done - but by the incredible mercy and grace of God. To know this truth, to know what Jesus did for me, and yet to waste that sacrifice by dabbling with sin, would be offensive in the extreme.

Let’s take a deep breath, remember the incredible love of God demonstrated by Jesus on the cross, remember that he has chosen us and not rejected us, remember that he numbers the hairs on our head and catches our tears in a bottle, and let’s be brave and face the loving warnings that he has given us. Let’s watch out for each other and take sin and disobedience as seriously as God does.

​​“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts…” - C.S. Lewis

Join my email list