That’s Not God — That’s Just Culture

Some of what you were taught as biblical truth was never in the Bible. Here is how to tell the difference.

Scripture: Romans 14:1–4; 1 Corinthians 9:19–23; Galatians 5:1; Colossians 2:16–23

There is a category of church teaching that is not quite doctrine and not quite heresy. It’s not drawn from Scripture — or at least not drawn carefully. It doesn’t represent the historic faith of the church across centuries and cultures. It is, when you look at it honestly, the assumptions of a particular group of people in a particular place and time, dressed up in theological language and handed down as if God Himself had signed off on it.

A lot of people in deconstruction are actually here. Not questioning the resurrection. Not abandoning grace. Questioning whether God really cares what translation of the Bible they read, or whether mixed-gender small groups are a slippery slope, or whether the particular expression of Christianity they inherited is actually Christianity, or just one cultural flavor of it.

That’s a legitimate question. And the answer, more often than people expect, is: that’s not God. That’s just culture.

What this tier actually is

The theological term for this category is adiaphora — things neither commanded nor forbidden by Scripture. It’s an old word for an old argument that the church has never quite stopped having.

The early church fought about it constantly: which foods, which days, which practices were required. Paul’s answer was essentially: these are not the hill to die on. “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Romans 14:5). What he’s establishing is genuine Christian liberty — freedom in areas where God has not spoken a clear word. In those areas, a church preference does not become divine law just because enough people repeat it.

The problem is that churches do this constantly. And they often do it with complete sincerity, which makes it harder to name.

What it looks like in practice

Here’s a range of what actually lives in this tier — across different church cultures and different eras.

Worship style. Somewhere along the way, a significant portion of American Christianity decided that the style of music used in worship was a matter of faithfulness. Traditional hymns were reverent. Contemporary music was worldly. Or, in other streams, the opposite: traditional worship was dead religion, contemporary worship was authentic expression. Neither position has a syllable of scriptural support. The Bible commands singing. It does not specify instrumentation, tempo, or whether the lyrics rhyme. The worship wars are, at their root, a disagreement about aesthetics conducted in theological language.

Dress and appearance. The idea that modesty means specific hemlines, necklines, or sleeve lengths — universally, regardless of culture or context — owes far more to mid-century American middle-class norms than to Scripture. The biblical call to modesty is about not making a display of wealth or status. It’s not a dress code. The dress code came later, from people who confused their cultural comfort with divine instruction.

Political alignment. No political party is the Christian party. The identification of Christian faithfulness with a particular political platform — whichever one — is a cultural preference that has been enforced with the weight of doctrine. That combination is where real damage happens. Christians across the centuries have held wildly different political views while sharing the same confession of faith. When a church presents political alignment as a matter of faithfulness, it’s not speaking for God. It’s speaking for itself, and dressing it in language God did not authorize.

Gender roles and family structure. Some of what gets taught as the biblical model for gender and family turns out, on closer examination, to be the 1950s American suburban family structure with proof texts attached. That doesn’t mean Scripture has nothing to say about gender or family — it does, and the conversation is worth having carefully. But there’s a significant difference between what Scripture actually says and what a particular cultural moment decided Scripture must have meant. The conflation of the two has done serious damage, and the damage is worth naming as such.

Eschatology as identity. In some church cultures, a very specific view of the end times — rapture theology, dispensationalism, a particular reading of Revelation — was presented as simply what the Bible teaches. It isn’t. These are relatively recent frameworks, developed in the nineteenth century, representing one reading among many in the long history of Christian thought. Treating them as the obviously correct reading, and treating disagreement as compromise, is a preference being enforced as if it were a load-bearing wall.

Why this keeps happening

Churches don’t usually set out to confuse their cultural preferences with Scripture. It happens because culture is invisible from the inside. The assumptions of the water you swim in don’t feel like assumptions — they feel like reality. And when something feels obvious, it’s easy to assume God agrees.

Culture becomes dangerous when it starts speaking in God’s voice.

This isn’t unique to conservative Christianity. Progressive Christianity does it too — importing the assumptions of a particular cultural moment and presenting them as the obviously faithful reading of the text. The mechanism is the same. Only the assumptions differ.

Paul saw this clearly. Writing to a church fighting about food and holy days, he didn’t declare one side right. He said: stop using your freedom to judge your neighbor, and stop using your neighbor’s freedom to feel superior. The Christian liberty he’s describing cuts both ways — protecting the person who keeps the old practice and the person who sets it aside.

What it doesn’t protect is the person who turns their practice into a requirement for others.

When Tier Three does Tier Four damage

Most Tier Three material is generally harmless. Whether you observe Lent or not, whether you prefer organs or electric guitars, whether your church has a dress code — none of this causes lasting harm. It’s, at worst, mildly annoying.

But some Tier Three teaching causes real damage. And it’s worth naming that directly.

When a cultural teaching about gender roles is used to keep women in situations of abuse, that’s Tier Three doing Tier Four damage. When political alignment is enforced through shame and shunning, that’s Tier Three doing Tier Four damage. When modesty culture is used to control young women’s bodies and blame them for male behavior, that’s Tier Three doing Tier Four damage. When eschatological certainty is used to discourage education, financial planning, or engagement with the broader world, that’s Tier Three doing Tier Four damage.

The teaching itself may have originated as a cultural preference with no particular malice behind it. But when a Tier Three teaching is enforced with Tier One weight — when genuine freedom is treated as sin, when dissent is treated as apostasy, when harm is done in the name of what was never actually required — it crosses a line.

The category still matters. It’s worth knowing that these teachings had no authority to begin with. But the damage they caused is real, and it belongs in a different conversation — one we’ll have in the next post.

What to do with this

First: let yourself be a little angry, if that’s where you are. Some of what was presented to you as God’s design was a human construct. That’s worth naming, and the frustration that comes with naming it is legitimate.

Second: resist the move from that was cultural to therefore none of it was real. Those aren’t the same conclusion. The fact that some of what you were taught was Tier Three doesn’t mean everything was. The load-bearing walls are still standing. Identifying the wallpaper doesn’t bring down the house.

Third: use the freedom. That’s what it’s for. If you were told that a certain translation, a certain worship style, a certain political position, a certain way of structuring your family was required — and it turns out it wasn’t — you are free. Not free to do whatever you want regardless of consequence, but genuinely free in the areas where God has genuinely not spoken.

Paul’s language in Galatians is worth remembering: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). He’s not talking about moral license. He’s talking about the specific slavery of being told you must perform requirements that were never actually required.

That freedom is yours.

Fourth: ask the question underneath the question. When you find something in this tier — when you realize that a teaching had no real authority behind it — the follow-up question is worth asking: what did this teach me about God? Because if it taught you that God is primarily concerned with your compliance, your appearance, your political alignment, your family structure — then the teaching may be gone but the picture of God it left behind may still be running in the background. That picture is worth examining too.

A note on what this tier is not

Tier Three freedom is not permission to dismiss everything that costs something, or everything that makes a serious demand, or everything that doesn’t fit comfortably with the surrounding culture.

Some things that feel like cultural imposition are actually the Gospel making a genuine claim. The call to forgiveness is demanding. The call to enemy-love is countercultural. The insistence that money and power are not ultimate goods runs directly against most of what contemporary culture assumes. These aren’t Tier Three. These are what the faith actually requires, and they feel uncomfortable because they are meant to.

The test is not does this make a demand. The test is where does this demand come from. If it comes from Scripture, carefully read, it deserves to be taken seriously regardless of how it feels. If it comes from the cultural preferences of a particular community, dressed in theological language, it can be set down — respectfully, clearly, without drama.

God did not design your worship style. He is not invested in your hemline. He did not endorse your denomination’s political platform.

But He did make a claim on your life — and that claim is worth finding beneath all the things that were added to it.

Next in the series: Some of It Was Just Wrong — A closer look at Tier Four

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