Every culture is shaping behavior. The real question is, who or what is shaping ours?
Nobody drifts into beliefs, values, or behavior by accident. Culture is always teaching. It teaches us what to celebrate, what to condemn, what to normalize, and what to reject. The voices may come from media, schools, entertainment, institutions, or social pressure, but make no mistake, somebody is always discipling the culture.
As Christians, we are called to be salt and light in the world (Matthew 5:13–16). Salt preserves. Light exposes and illuminates. That means we are not called to simply absorb the values of the culture around us, but to influence it with truth, grace, wisdom, and conviction. If culture is shaping people every day, then followers of Christ must be intentional about helping shape it toward what is good, right, and God-honoring.
One of the clearest ways I’ve heard this explained came from a personal conversation I had with John Ashcroft, former United States Attorney General during 9/1. He told me there are two primary ways a culture shapes behavior: stigma and affirmation.
Stigma is the way a culture says, this is not okay. It creates boundaries around behavior. For example, there used to be a healthy shame connected to lying, cheating, abandoning your family, or acting without integrity. Those social boundaries helped guide people toward what was right. Today, some of those boundaries have disappeared, while other labels have become tools people use for power and influence. Instead of helping people grow, labels can sometimes box people in or divide people into groups. That makes it harder to see people as individuals and easier to judge them by categories.
Then there is affirmation, what a culture rewards, applauds, and celebrates. Healthy affirmation should reinforce truth, discipline, courage, sacrifice, and personal responsibility. But when affirmation becomes universal approval, it loses its power to shape character. If everyone gets the same reward regardless of growth, effort, or integrity, then affirmation stops forming virtue and starts feeding entitlement. Worse, disagreement itself is now often treated as rejection, which means truth becomes harder to speak and harder to hear.
This is where the danger of collective demonization enters the picture. As author and pastor Erwin Lutzer has warned, cultures can move from evaluating individuals to condemning entire groups. Once that happens, nuance dies. People are no longer judged by their actions, convictions, or character, but by the tribe they are assumed to belong to. That is not discipleship, that is distortion.
From a ministry standpoint, this is why the Church cannot afford to be passive. If culture is discipling people every day, then the people of God must be even more intentional in shaping hearts and minds through truth, grace, wisdom, and biblical conviction. The goal is to form people who think Christianly, live faithfully, and reflect Christ clearly in a confused world.
So I’ll ask the question again: who is discipling the culture?
The answer should be us. As followers of Jesus, we are called to be salt and light. That means we enlighten people to who Christ is, inform them about His teachings, and preserve the truth He gave us. Christians should be the ones helping shape culture, not by copying it, but by pointing people to Jesus and living out His truth in a way the world can clearly see.
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
Romans 12:2
Alex Bryant is a pastor, author, and speaker who writes about race, faith, and culture in America.
