And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the
earth and subdue it and have dominion… over every living thing…”
Genesis 1:28
After God created man he gave him dominion over every living
thing. He gave man creative freedom to
rule over his creation, to work the ground, to name the animals and by chapter
four we read that a city is built, musical instruments have been made and are
played, livestock are farmed and bronze and iron tools are forged. All this and much, much more began in the
world within the lifetime of Adam! What
an amazing thing it must have been for Adam to see his blank canvas subdued and
transformed into a culture; producing culture is exciting!
And here we are today still in the business of producing
culture.
Whether we like it or not as
humanity works, plays, builds, cooks, travels, and paints pictures we are
producing culture.
Cultures differ
around the world because people differ.
In the 1840s, Thomas J. Smith of London
decided to develop his bon-bon sweets which he sold in a twist of paper.
As sales of his bon-bons slumped, Smith began
to come up with new promotional ideas. His first tactic was to insert mottos
into the wrappers of the sweets like in fortune cookies, but this had only
limited success. Inspired by the crackle of a log as he placed it on the fire,
Smith decided to add a crackle element to his sweets by incorporating a banger
mechanism.
The only problem with this
was that the size of the paper wrapper had to be increased which wasn’t
practical for the packaging of a small sweet.
Eventually the actual bon-bon was dropped and replaced by a small gift.
The new product was initially marketed as the
Cosaque but the
"cracker" soon became the commonly used name as rival varieties came
on the market.
And so was born an
essential element of British culture – the Christmas cracker.
Everything we do churns out new culture which is unique to
our circle of influence. In South
America most people have never heard of a cracker and yet here in Britain it’s
something we assume will appear on the Christmas dinner table. This is true of our music, our sport, our tea
drinking habits; there is cultural diversity all over the world. But we have a choice. We are not mindless machines; we are mindful
human beings. We will inevitably produce
culture but we can choose what we produce.
It might be that we continue to pump into the flow of the culture in
which we live, or it might be that we are counter-cultural and what we do stands
against the current. Whether you are
based in an art college, a university, or an office, they all have a culture of
their own which has been produced by the people of that place over years. Do you ask questions of the cultures you live
in? Are you contributing in a Godly way
to your cultures, or are you just going with the flow? Are you mindful of what you paint, sing,
dance, design? Cultural history is
easily read through the art of the time so we really do have a great responsibility
as the current generation of Christians making art. Let us have dominion, make work and live
lives that produce a cross shaped culture.
