The Sons of Issachar: Understanding the Times, Part 1

Last week, we began to examine the application of the Biblical model of the Sons of Issachar to the task of the Christian artist today.  1 Chr 12:32 says of the Sons of Issachar that they were men “. . . who understood the times and knew what Israel should do. . .” (NIV).  As we saw before, this meant that they knew both Scripture and their culture’s history intimately, and that they knew how to apply the Scripture effectively to their situation, so that God’s people would know how to proceed in a godly fashion.  The knowledge of both the Bible and our cultural situation are necessary if we are to know how to proceed as today’s Church.  This is especially true for Christian artists in a culture that worships art and entertainment (as ours does).  We begin this week to examine the importance of “understanding the times,” (e.g. understanding how knowing our cultural history is important for the Christian artist in the present).

Many artists today (Christian and pagan) assume that art is a-historical, that it has no reference to culture as a historical process.  Consequently, they don’t put much (if any) effort into understanding how their art fits into their cultural situation, unlike the Sons of Issachar, who took the time to understand their society, people, and history, so that they could wisely assess their own time’s situation in light of God’s Word.  Understanding our time requires study and hard work, and we must understand that this is part of the artist’s calling.  We must remember that art is not done in a vacuum—it is directed to an audience of real people.  Artists must understand the state of their audiences in light of the factors (historical and cultural) that shape those audiences where they are now, and are shaping them toward where they are moving, so that the artists can serve their audiences by helping them see where they should be moving towards in light of God’s Word.  It is necessary, though, to understand what influenced an audience to become what they are before we can either engage them artistically or speak authentically to their situation.

For instance, the Christian artist should not just address the business of spiritual need and holiness, etc., common to every man and generation (though he should and must address those, as well), but also specific issues that illustrate the basic state common to mankind in his audience’s time (this would involve, at present, issues such as the sanctity of human life [in view of the abortion holocaust], racism, political issues germane to our time and place, the nature of true love, etc.), addressing these from a Biblical framework.  This requires knowing the culture around us, so that we can know both how to artistically engage our audience (metal doesn’t effectively engage most country audiences) and what to address in our audience (cannibalism is not a sin much in practice among vegetarians). 

Let me give you a Biblical example of this principle.  In Acts 17 (Stop now, O lazy one, and go and read it), Paul the Apostle addressed a group of Athenian intellectuals and philosophers.  He had studied the Athenian culture and society enough to have spotted the shrine to the unknown god (not a prominent shrine in Athens), and to engage them by opening his talk with the observation that they were very religious, since they had so many idols!  But also most interestingly, when Paul spoke to them, his whole address was arranged according to an extremely structured rhetorical form developed by Quintilianus and used by all the educated pagans of the day, which Paul could only have learned by studying Athenians, their knowledge of the culture pagan classical speech forms.  And, if that wasn’t enough, Paul quotes the pagan poets Epimenedes, Cleanthos, and Aratus in verse 28, and alludes to Homer (Cyclops Polyphemus) and Plato in verses 26 and 27.  Once again, he could only have learned these poets (whom he obviously knew by heart) by studying them!!!  Paul used these fruits of a classical (and therefore pagan) education to establish cultural points of contact with his educated pagan audience on the Areopagus, and these points provided the platform to present the Gospel’s Truth, to the salvation of Dionysius, Damaris, and others (v 34).

This Biblical practice was later used by Ambrose, Augustine, Irenaeus, and others of the early Church Fathers, as they utilized, like Paul before them to engage their culture and present the Gospel to it.  These men (and many women, as well) paid their cultural dues in order to speak intelligently to their society and be taken seriously by the people of their time; they engaged, and thus changed, their culture by the Power of the Spirit. Western civilization became both Christian and a civilization as a result of Christians understanding their times and knowing what the Church should do.

Yet many Christians today think themselves too righteous to pay attention to the culture at large so that they can win it.  Other Christians are afraid that they might be polluted by it.  These brothers and sisters, though frequently motivated by sincere desire to do what is right, are guilty of idolatry—either of pride or of fear (or both).  Thank God that Paul and the early Church didn’t feel that way.  Western culture would have turned out very differently if they had (all you little Christian buckaroos and buckarettes would be worshipping dark gods indeed, had that happened). 

It is not enough that Christian artists today have talent and content alone; if we are to engage our culture and illuminate it with the Light of Christ, we must follow the Biblical example of the Church Fathers, of Paul, and of the Sons of Issachar, and begin to work hard to understand our times.  We will (Christ willing) look at another aspect of this responsibility next week.