Cultural Engagement

“Worldview is about spectacles, not what you look at, but what you look through. You only stop to examine your worldview, like your spectacles, if suddenly things have gone foggy and you can’t see straight.” – N.T. Wright

I’m always a bit jarred by school culture when the academic year begins. It hits me in not-so-subtle fashion on the first day of school when everyone assembles for an opening ceremony that starts with a Pledge of Allegiance that seems optional—if the barely-audible, dyssynchronous muttering is any indication—followed by a loud and enthusiastic Pledge to the Earth, something about allegiance to the flora and fauna which jumps to world peace. Mothers around me claim they are tearing up and feeling shivers while I suppress a traitorous urge to roll my eyes. And we’re off to a new school year!

There are lots of things I love about our school. It takes the memorization-based, competitive, compulsorily programmatic structure of traditional schooling, and turns it into a problem-solving-based, collaborative, experiential learning experience, complete with an emphasis on growth mindsets, socioemotional skills, and a full-out farm. In short, it is Bay Area elementary educational philosophy at its finest—but the interesting thing to me is how much all of it is steeped in a system of values that is essentially a worldview and religion unto itself. 

It goes something like this: we worship kindness and inclusiveness at all costs; we practice the liturgy of mindfulness through meditation, self-awareness, and yoga; good living is to have zero waste and avoid using gasoline whenever possible. Ellie does mandatory daily eastern-style meditation and regular yoga. Eric hears guest speakers share about every religious holiday except the Christian ones. 

One Christian mom told me she complained to the principal and withdrew her kids from school when she learned they were doing meditation. I understand that impulse, but on the spectrum of protectionistic versus exposure parenting, we’ve chosen to engage the culture with our kids instead of withdrawing from it. Living it out, though, can feel uncomfortable, and involves constant, intentional dialogue. What does the Bible have to say about these topics? What do we fully embrace, what do we participate in but with a different perspective or motivation, and what do we choose to not as fully engage in? Ultimately, how do these world views inform what we functionally believe about our identity, values, and how we live those values out? 

Functionally this looks different for each situation and issue. The kids and I agreed that mindfulness if it means introspective reflection, or awareness of one’s emotions, is a wonderful skill to cultivate and entirely Biblical (in fact, the Bible takes an understanding of the self to new levels); mindfulness if it points solely to a self-help paradigm we may approach more critically. We agreed that meditation if it means filling the mind, posturing the soul, towards God and his word is a valuable discipline; meditation as an emptying of the mind to find centeredness is not (so I slip Ellie verses that she can memorize instead of following the teacher’s meditation instructions). And so on.

Today we were listening to “True Colors” from the Trolls soundtrack in the car, when our four year-old suddenly asked, “Is this true?” I stopped the song and asked him what he meant. “Is this from God?” he clarified. I had to stop and think (so of course, I asked him, “what do you think this song is about?” but he just replied, “I want to know what you think”). And then we had a discussion about identity, love, being understood or not by others, and whether it’s always right to decide what we want to be and let it out, or whether we sometimes don’t if we’re following Jesus and love him first. We decided the song was partly right and partly wrong. He felt it was still okay to listen to it (though by the time we got to that part, we had stopped driving).

I suppose this is the dialogue we should always be having. It’s not about labeling or fear, as much as thoughtful engagement with cultural subtexts. Because everything our kids are exposed to has one. Take Disney, which most Christians automatically label as fine for their kids. Disney movies teach our kids to follow their hearts, to seek individual dream-fulfillment over communal wisdom for self-actualization—is that entirely Biblical? Do we question that, and why not?

Culture is never neutral. But it is often transparent. As a recent transplant, I feel it, and sometimes going to this school feels lonely and jarring, but it’s teaching me to see and be thoughtful more than I ever have before. And somewhere in that is the gospel. Jesus came into the world, after all; he came from an entirely different dimension of reality and functional authority—talk about culture shock! He came to live out inclusivity and kindness and self-insight, ironically, in a way that was completely radical to the culture he lived in. He came to humbly engage. We can do no less.