I’ve started reading Andy Crouch’s new book, Culture Making.  I’m only about 100 pages in, which can be read for free (Chapters 1-2 and Chapters 3-5).  Andy Crouch will be speaking in San Diego at UCSD in October (more info about that event can be found at this link).

Andy describes the idea of gestures and postures in Chapter 5 of his book.

“Our posture is our learned but unconscious default position our natural stance.  It is the position our body assumes when we aren’t paying attention, the basic attitude we carry through life.” p. 90

Crouch defines gestures as the wide variety of occasional action and response towards particular opportunities and challenges.  He connects the two in that

“Over time, certain gestures may become habit–that is, become part of our posture.” p. 90

Four gestures toward culture that Crouch analyzes include, condemning culture (like condemning the Nazism), critiquing culture (like critiquing the fine arts), consuming culture (like enjoying a piece of bread or tea “in there ephemeral goodness”), and copying culture (”like borrowing the form of mainstream culture and infusing them with Christian content” p. 92).

Instead of trying to summarize Crouch’s conclusion myself, let me just quote him once more,

“The problem is not with any of these gestures–condemning, critiquing, consuming, copying.  All of them can be appropriate responses to particular cultural goods.  Indeed each of them may be the only appropriate response to a particular good.  But the problem comes when these gestures become too familiar, become the only way we know how to respond to culture, become etched into our unconscious stance toward the world and become postures.” p. 93

So what is a valid biblical posture from which to engage our world?  Crouch suggests two biblical postures of artist and gardener; creator and cultivator.  This insight is really exciting, refreshing, renewing, and life bringing. Expect more quotes from this book in later posts.