Principle 3: A HARDENED HEART IS THE SAME AS REBELLION (v8, 9) We need to be good stewards of what God has given us – including our bodies. If we disregard this, we are hardening our hearts towards God, and what He has shown us, and that is same as rebellion. If we test God in this, we will suffer. God has created a cause-and-effect world, establishments that He has put into place and He will not override them. If we do not look after our bodies, we will reap effects of that, for example, sickness, burnout and disease.

Principle 4: GOD HAS PROVIDED THE KNOW-HOW TO OBEY HIM (v10) God has given us knowledge – through Bible and science and, believe it or not, common sense – to know what we should and shouldn’t eat. We also know how regularly to exercise, and we can definitely tell when we need to rest. All we have to do is listen to our bodies. I read this book “What Bible Says About Healthy Living” by Rex Russell MD. He studied what Bible says about food, what science says about food and what he has seen himself, for example when patients are told to follow a specific diet in order to get well again.

His conclusion was simple: - Principle 1: Eat only what God intended us to eat Principle 2: Eat it only in form he intended it to be eaten Principle 3: Fast regularly

Amazingly, scientific research (independent of himself) gave evidence to support why God told Israelites not to eat certain foods and why they should eat others. (I highly recommend this book. It can be bought on Amazon.) So we have no excuse. God has given us knowledge we need, but it is our responsibility to put it into practice.

Principle 5: REST God didn’t only intend for us to experience spiritual rest. He is a holistic God. He intended for us to experience rest physically, emotionally and spiritually. If we look after our bodies, and get rest we need – however much that might be – we will be able to more fully enter rest that God intended for us. We won’t get as sick as often, we won’t get as tired and we won’t get as stressed – result - we will be much more rested and able to cope with stresses of living life.

We have a holistic God who is concerned with our physical and emotional being as well as spiritual. He created all of us – and said, “It was good!” So work with Him on this. He didn’t create our bodies to be a hindrance to us. He created them for our enjoyment as well as for us to know what our limitations are so that we can more fully enjoy and experience a supernatural God.

God knows your body best. Ask Him to show you how much rest you need, what is okay to eat and in what proportions and how much to exercise and even what exercise. He will help you – He helped me.

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In order for culture to be rejected in favour of Christ, logic requires that God Himself is not a part of culture. This would make sense if we only knew God as solely spiritual, but we also know Him as incarnate. He shows His nature in creation, which expresses His attributes, in Jesus by incarnation as a specific and very cultural human being (Hebrews 2:14-18), as well as in believers today through indwelling Spirit of Christ in every believer. Since we are to follow Christ in all things, we should follow him in cultural dimension as well.

2. Christ is of Culture Cultural Christians claim that Christ is to be understood as highest aspiration and fulfilment of culture. So it is possible to affirm both Christ and culture and to deny any necessary opposition between two.

Culture can be interpreted through Christ, where elements of culture that are most complimentary to Jesus' work and person are best; as are those things that can be understood of God through culture.

In this way they are most accommodating, reconciling Christianity with what appears to be greatest achievements of culture. The early church had it's share of Hellenizers, Judaizers and Gnostics who joined Christ to their mystical philosophy, and in same way today there are many who attempt to reduce Christianity to practical morality and Jesus Christ to one of many great moral teachers.

The error of this option is equal to, but also in direct opposition to separatism in that it is so concentrated on world that while focused on horizontal dimension it ignores vertical dimension. Thus putting very little emphasis on grace or eternity aand afterlife, and producing a self-reliant form of humanism.

Ultimately this deifies man and humanises God, creating theology in man's image through connecting Christ with some cultural movement one wishes to endorse. So we have Christianity AND homosexuality, Christianity AND new psychology, Christianity AND Veganism, Christianity AND political correctness or Christianity AND any other syncretism you could care to mention.

So we end up thinking that some aspect of God can be found in a same-sex relationship and acceptance of homosexual rights. Political correctness in a culture takes preference over what Bible may say about a subject. And we find that as horizontal dimension gets distorted vertical dimension gets ignored. We listen to spirit of age more than Holy Spirit.

There is one aspect of accommodation that is relevant to us. When communicating gospel we do need to adapt it to our audience, that is, while not compromising message of gospel we should present it incarnate so that it translates into understanding of people-group. We need to present a contextualised Christianity, not syncretism. Paul adapted his delivery dependant on whether his audience was Jewish, gentile, Roman or Greek in order to make it relevant to their way of thinking. Jesus did same with His parables. By being cultural chameleons we can take gospel message and find culturally relevant clothing to make it relevant. This is incarnation of Christ in prevailing culture.

3. Christ is above culture In this view Christ and culture are synthesised. This option says that culture has good in it since God created world and though it was distorted by fall it is not entirely evil, it still has attributes of God in it. So in this view we cannot say "either Christ or culture" because we are dealing with God in both cases and we also must not say "both Christ and culture" as if there was no distinction between them.

Thomas Aquinas believed that church is simultaneously in and beyond world, leading people to salvation in heaven, while affirming best in this world's culture. He believed that God has purposes in temporal as well as eternal realms. This option affirms a stable relationship between church and state as well as encouraging conservation of values and authority. The church should back up government's authority to maintain order. So in earthly as well as in Heavenly realms there is a hierarchical organisation in church and state.

There is one King over temporal and eternal and we have practical solutions for living Christian life within culture and gives incentive for government and education as well as encouraging academic principles. The danger is that church will socially stagnate and fossilise with it's emphasis on values and authority, it may perpetuate dictatorships and prevent legislative reform. If respect for temporal authority is too great, there is a danger that man made laws will undermine God's law.

There is also no separation of church and state, leading to prohibition or evil of forcing people to change their beliefs by relying on sword rather than word. The integration of church and state to make people believe things is evil and pretty impossible because changing someone's behaviour produces a hypocrite, and even though you can change someone's behaviour through force, it still does not mean you have changed their belief.

Please see other parts of this article..... Christ and Culture