Most of us want to think that the answer to this question is spiritual. “Jesus rules my life.” And that may be. But the lives of many people—even Christians—are largely governed by another power—culture.

Let me support my point. At least 75% (and that is a modest estimate) of evangelical churches in America either recently have undergone or will soon undergo a worship war, with a large segment pushing the music and worship style toward a more contemporary motif and another segment fighting this trend. Seldom is this a peaceful transition. Usually those on both sides of this conflagration—including spiritually mature people—will display hostility. Combatants on both sides are convinced that their style of worship is genuinely spiritual, and that the alternative is substandard, and perhaps of the devil, even though neither can make a biblical case for their contention.

Why don’t they settle this issue in love? The reason is that for many of these people culture trumps spirituality. They can’t get beyond their own cultural background in order to love the person with a different cultural background when that person’s culture is being imposed on them.

Please don’t misunderstand. I am not saying that the power of the Holy Spirit cannot and should not prevail. The point is that it often does not, that culture is so powerful that even in the lives of mature Christians it is sometimes dominant.

With culture holding such powerful sway among believers, who possess the power of the Holy Spirit, how much more control does it have over those not enjoying that advantage? A politically incorrect topic that manifests the power culture in the second world is found in racial differences. In our society it is okay to make mention of areas in which black people do better, note the movie title, “White Men Can’t Jump.” However, it is not permissible to identify areas where whites do better than blacks. People have been drummed out of the academic world for this sort of observation, valid research findings notwithstanding. However, one author who has taken on this topic is Dinesh DeSousa in his book The End of Racism. He comes to the still politically incorrect but not racial conclusion that areas of black poor performance are not genetic but brought about by cultural deficiencies, and that where blacks embrace better culture they display better performance. Hence, assuming he is correct, another example of the power of culture.

Of course, there are the more mundane yet still very serious issues over which culture wars are fought such as the superiority of our family, who opened their gifts on Christmas morning, had the toilet paper coming off the front of the role, and stored the drinking glasses open-end-down so that nothing could get in them (your bogus contention that the shelf paper might be dirty notwithstanding). These are causes worth fighting for.

Our previous postings have been dealing with the issue of psychology. Why have I switched to the topic of culture? Because the most powerful shaper of contemporary culture, both secular and evangelical, is psychology. (Evangelicals might question this assertion, but I will support it in future posts.) Therefore, if culture is a dominant influence in our lives, and psychology exercises a dominant influence over culture, psychology constitutes a force of great power in our society and in our lives as individuals.

Of special interest is the fact that the psychologist who has exercised the greatest influence over our secular and evangelical cultures is not a household name. Nonetheless, others share my opinion regarding the power of his influence. In my next post I plan to identify him and described his theory.