Last week, Nicole, a squadmate of mine from LA, posted a music video about the ultra hip Whole Foods grocery store. Needless to say, after living in LA for four years, I couldn’t help but laugh hysterically at the stereotypes they bring up about the hipster culture.
(Watch it. It's definitely worth your time)
Fast forward to a few days ago. I was up in Utah mountain biking with my grandpa like we do every year (yes my grandpa mountain bikes because he is that awesome), and we needed to go to a grocery store. Well the only grocery store we found was this place called Sol Foods, and it was a Utah version of Whole Foods, with little shopping carts and everything. Naturally, we blasted the song when we got back in the car.
Combine that song with driving through the Utah countryside, passing through little towns of a few hundred people each, and I got to thinking about how different life must be for them. I’ve spent my entire life in Southern California, so I don’t know what it’s like to not live within driving distance of millions of people, or not have a Target 20 minutes away, or know everyone in my town by name (ok, maybe Fallbrook is close to that, but not quite). I only live 8 hours away from these people, and yet our cultures couldn’t be more different.
That’s crazy, isn’t it? This world is made up of billions of human beings, yet there are millions of different cultures all around us. We’re all made in God’s image, yet the way I live and experience life may be completely different than the person living down the street from me.
This is so apparent in Los Angeles. I’m (formerly) a college student at a prestigious university living the collegeculture while there are gang members 3 blocks east, Hispanics who speak no English one block in every direction, and LA hipsters living in lofts downtown (a few blocks away) who are all living in extremely different cultures than me.
The same thing can be said for the World Race. Some people are from the Midwest, some from the South, some from the West coast, and some from out of the country. All of those are very different cultures, yet we are all coming together on a journey that will transform our lives through the power of Christ. And this is going to be a huge blessing while we’re reaching the lost, poor, and hopeless throughout the world. We can use our different cultures and different life experiences to glorify God and bring his Kingdom in word and deed. You had a great family life? Sweet, you can help show community to people. You come from a broken home where you never knew your father? You can point orphans to their heavenly Father. God works in mysterious ways, and put each and every one of us in different places and cultures so that He could use us even better.
There are two more things I want to say about culture. First, I’m excited to break out of my culture bubble that I have been living in for the last 22 years of my life and experience not only the different cultures of America through my squadmates, but also the different cultures of the world that we’ll be seeing. It is sure to be an eye opening experience, and proof that the way we live on the west side of LA may not be the best way to live.
Secondly, I pray that we use the cultures and experiences we have to bring God’s Kingdom to Earth. We aren’t meant to go and bring little shopping carts and yoga pants to South America; we’re meant to bring God’s glory and freedom and power to those places. We aren’t going to transform the rest of the world to be like America; not even America has a good definition of that. We want to bring the culture that everyone can be a part of: God’s culture. We want people to know that they are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, and that the only culture we’re truly part of is that of God’s family.
What culture are you a part of? If you could be part of any culture, which one would you choose?
