Andy Crouch on Culture

“If we are known mostly for our ability to poke holes in every human project, we will probably not be known as people who bear the hope and mercy of God.”

@ahcpix from Culture Making

One pitfall I run into here is that I stumble on an author and not only are they prolific but the work I want to quote is not their most recent one. I wonder if Andy would feel here how the Verve Pipe feels when they present a whole new album of music and people just want to hear the freshman…again. So to apologize in advance to Andy (if you ever read this) I’m sorry if you’re thinking “I have all these fresh new ideas to talk about” and I’m over here like “Talk some more about culture!” 

I was listening to Jordan Raynors podcast and he mentioned a quote about culture from Andy Crouch which sent me down the rabbit trail of articles and YouTube videos about Andy’s work in this sphere and wow…is there a lot of it! I feel like being a citizen on the internet has introduced me to the idea before that you can’t stamp out bad culture by censoring* it; you just need to overwhelm it by creating good culture. So is “poking holes” considered bad culture? I would dare to opine that if ALL you create, and ALL that you consume has to do with the critique and teardown of others labored work; then you might be engaging in bad culture. Don’t get me wrong, when a new Marvel movie comes out, I listen to all the videos about the plot holes and the bad writing and the questionable decisions but at some point we should strive to be creators of culture and not just critics. 

So I ordered Andy’s book and if you’ve been here a while you know I have a problem with reading everything I have. There’s just so much amazing work out there!

*Just an aside, there are definitely things on the internet that should be censored. 100%, for sure, no debate.