A Pondering Partridge

Sub-Culture and Me

01 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment

by Jason Partridge in Theology

Sub-Culture is seen to be a culture in which a person chooses to belong too, usually based on individual preference.  Unlike national culture you are not born a surfer, alternative, pop, skater, metal-head, Goth, emo or the other 1000’s of sub-cultures that exist.  Instead we volunteer to be part of that culture and how much time and effort we give to the culture is usually an indicator of how much we expect to be respected within it.

Is this bad?  Is it bad that we chose to belong to a sub-culture?  Should we remove ourselves from these voluntarist communities?

I want to suggest no; there is much good in sub-cultures.  First I wish to argue that sub-cultures are in fact a response to God’s created purpose for humanity.  God, the triune God created humanity in his image.  The image of God is expressed in terms of relationships, the persons of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, mutually indwelling in bonds of love.  Community then for humanity is a way we express the relational nature of the God we are called to be in the image of.

Sub-cultures are a by-product of city dwelling life where the sense of local community has almost disappeared.  So people look for community somewhere else, our technology makes us mobile and our consumerist culture turns community into a consumer good that can be sold.  Our voluntarist culture creates communities which people op in and out off.  While we may not like some of the ways these communities are formed, they do offer community in a community-less village called a city.  Sub-cultures provide community in a community-less city, community is a God given gift we should encourage.

But there is something in sub-cultures that doesn’t gel with the gospels.  Sub-cultures are about finding community with those who are like us!  With those who share my loves!  The emphasis is on our own self, we find people like ourselves, we may even find ourselves; and we find in our sub-culture a way of expressing our self.  Yet Jesus is the ultimate example of self denial, the one who took up his cross to die for our sins.  He calls us to bear our cross to lose our self for the service of others (Luke 9:23), in response to that which he accomplished for us on the cross.

The gospel calls us to love the one who is not like me.  The parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10) shows a Samaritan loving a Jew, no greater contrast could Jesus draw.  The Samaritan in loving the Jew fulfils God’s call to love his neighbour, one of the two greatest commandments.  The apostle John reminds us that if we cannot love our brother who we have seen then can we love God who we cannot see (1 John 3).  Loving our brothers and sisters in Christ no matter who they are, what they are, their race, culture or sub-culture, is the way we show that we do in fact love our Lord our God with all our heart mind and soul, the first of the two great commandments.

So what does this mean for sub-cultures?  If we live only in our sub-culture, if we chose to only love others who are like us, how can we say we love God who is distinct from us?  We can enjoy the good things in our sub-cultures but we must not fall into the trap that our society has in loving our self.  A good diagnostic tool is are all my friends like me, are all my friends part of my sub-culture?  If so then I would suggest you are being self obsessed.  For God so loved the world he sent his only Son to die for us, the wicked, the unholy, we are so unlike God.  Yet his love extends to his creation, a corrupted and sinful human race who are darkness in comparison to him who is light.

Church is a great place where this love for the other who is different can be expressed and where we can find friends who are different to ourselves.  But I want to engage with that next week.