How can Christians impact culture? Start with yourself.

Americans live in a culture that has both wonderful and horrible things. You’ll find new inventions, beautiful art, and wonderful books being created in the same country where there are pockets of all sorts of wickedness beyond mention. Our wealth and technology give us an unprecedented life of leisure. This leisure gives people numerous opportunities to contribute to society. One may also use this leisure to destroy our culture.

As humans we should recognize the importance of promoting a good culture. We should educate and motivate people—starting with ourselves—to change the world. We must sound the charge to transform the culture in ways that make all our lives richer.

Teddy Roosevelt once mused about the credit belonging to the man who is in the arena, whose face is marred with dust and sweat and blood. The call is to all people to get into this arena. Creating a culture that leads to flourishing is a battle worth fighting. There must be people creating works of truth and beauty.  Those that think their lives are mundane are called to good and heroic deeds. Truth, goodness, and beauty arise from those equipped and motivated to pursue excellence.

We should recognize that we are all making culture in the way we invest our time. Each one of us contributes to making the culture better or worse. In his sermon, On Learning in War-Time, C.S. Lewis makes the same point. He says,

“Neither conversion nor enlistment in the army is really going to obliterate our human life. Christians and solders are still men: the infidel’s idea of a religious life, and the civilian’s idea of active service, are fantastic. If you attempted, in either case, to suspend your whole intellectual and aesthetic activity, you would only succeed in substituting a worse cultural life for a better. You are not, in fact, going to read nothing, either in the Church or in the line: if you don’t read good books you will read bad ones. If you don’t go on thinking rationally, you will think irrationally. If you reject aesthetic satisfactions you will fall into sensual satisfactions.”

The advice here is practical. Read good books. Think rationally. Pursue aesthetic satisfactions that help you appreciate beauty.

Let us stand firm then in our pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty. Seek these out any place they may be found. Use your influence to create culture, and make it one of excellence. Actively lead others to know the truth that will set them free—a life lived with Christ.