Subcultures mar, distort, and limit the full expression and desired, ultimate condition of God’s kingdom on Earth. Thus, while we can, with certainty, say God isn’t destroying the cultures of nations He founds, desires, and redeems, we can also say that cultures in restoration suffer from subcultural divisions foreign to God’s intended outcome.
That is, as cultures experience kingdom influence, move toward God’s original intentions through transformation, subcultures bow and blend into kingdom culture. Some are destroyed and lost forever because God did not find them and lacked any ultimate eternal purpose.
International Ministry Influence
Ministering to more than one nation as an apostolic father intent upon discovering and discerning Father’s original intentions, I run into subcultural conflict at every turn. I see that missiology did not always cooperate with Father’s strategy for redeeming and restoring cultures. I see that dominant cultures are often thought to press existing cultures into their own.
I repent to cultures that God redeems and restores through the influence of international elders for the attempt to Americanize them.
Even when God sends pioneers to influence people and places, He does so to destroy animism–you cannot redeem idolatry as Roman Catholics do with syncretism, you must destroy idols–and that alters the existing culture significantly by uprooting tradition and superstition.
Cultural Disruption When Idols Fall
This process is hugely disruptive to existing cultures. The strategy reveals God’s daily reset of infinite mercy as long as it surrenders to that outcome.
Therefore, to assume God wishes to eradicate the first nation cultures is erroneous; likewise, it is wrong to assume God expects existing cultures to remain enslaved by animism. God isn’t asking us to pioneer places and people by eliminating the people He loved so much that He sent His Son to die to redeem and restore them.
On the other hand, Egypt does not remain in Pharaoh worship. You cannot sanctify Roman Catholic paganism–a religion now more pagan than the pagans. You cannot redeem socialism or Marxism in any political form because it is antichrist. You cannot leave cultures where a man has twenty wives to show his wealth without the teaching of Jesus that “from the beginning of Creation God designed culture for one man with one woman in covenant for life.”
No, you expect Father’s original intentions to face King Jesus’ transformational strategies empowered by Holy Spirit’s ‘alongsideness’ within the kingdom leaders and culture to influence existing cultures toward their ultimate expression of Earth as Father wants it.
American Arrogance
Having obeyed God in the nations for twenty years, I have a unique perspective on how Americans respond to God at work in places “other than.” Having established my kingdom influence elsewhere, I am usually treated with a paternalistic pat on the head as if what is done outside America represents a second-rate kingdom expedition.
“Meanwhile, back at the ranch” as a way of explaining the home base of Heaven on Earth, “what God is doing in America” marks kingdom reality in the minds of most believers here. Share that God is doing something in another land, and all they want to hear about is when God is going to start doing a better job of being God in America.
Or, they have a sense that maybe whatever that might be, when God does something like it in America, we will really be in revival, Awakening, or kingdom transformation. But, if God is doing it somewhere else, it can only mean He is warming up for the real thing in the USA.
We tend to think American culture is kingdom culture. It is not. We tend to think, “When God gets done redeeming and restoring things on Earth, it will be the USA everywhere.” It will not. We operate with the erroneous presupposition that God wants everyone to be like we want to be as we negotiate with God to improve our little American lives. He isn’t interested.
The transformation of every culture begins with the same culture: kingdom culture. It isn’t particular to any one culture, but it redeems all cultures through the discipling of cultures to which Jesus refers in the Great Commission.
Kingdom Culture Destroys Religious Subcultures
Recognize that religious subcultures keep us from experiencing kingdom culture. Nevertheless, you are now propelled far forward toward what God wants for America and you regarding His rule on Earth.
“Do you think, Dr. Don, God will send revival to a specific subculture?” No, because God always sends kingdom culture. When any subculture carries a sound, God sees that sound as part of the redeemed, restored kingdom culture, influencing the sound of the existing culture. When we exclusively demand anyone sound, we fragment what God is blending. We protect what cannot be protected—we wineskin what cannot be bagged up and put on a shelf to age.
We cannot gain identity from subculture or sound because our identity is a kingdom in origin.
Unfortunately, this horrible misstep away from “what in the world is God is doing” was installed as the very foundation for church-growthism. The worship of the homogenous continues to expand doctrinal idolatry and gross deviations from cultural discipling. Add a cup of racism, and you get the most segregated moment of history as “Sunday church in America.”
I do believe strongly in American exceptionalism because America is a fathering nation. However, I also believe in Brasilian exceptionalism, Australian exceptionalism, and Singaporean exceptionalism–for other examples. Fathering nations are Remnant nations strategically originating what God wants all nations to have through discipling cultures.
America is exceptional because Her original intended purposes include the Kingdom Gospel establishing kingdom culture and sending Kingdom Gospel pioneers to other cultures. Ignore that, and you are just an American bigot.
Embrace that, and you are a true patriot among those who love this land for whatever reason. God does want America strong, healthy, and prosperous. He has a good reason.
Finally, as an international kingdom elder, the perspective God asks me to bring to the table cannot be so American that it lacks an international kingdom perspective. Paul says he would die to see Israel restored. Yet, he maintained his patriotism–by its proper meaning–as an international apostolic elder.
I am not equal to the left great toenail of Paul, but I understand the concept.
