Jesus Connected to His Audience with Cultural Cues

Have you used cultural cues to share God’s truth? Our Lord did.

Jesus frequently used the term “hypocrite,” a word describing actors and familiar to His listeners because of Greek theaters. (e.g., Matthew 6:5,16). Jesus also told parables using imagery from wedding banquets, fishing, agriculture, taxation, debts, and more.

Jesus spoke the language of the culture to the hearts of the people. Have you seen secular topics as avenues to share the gospel on social media and in your blog? In two recent posts on evangelism for the Internet and in blogs, I gave ideas on how to go about this. This article relates to those posts, focusing more on finding topics or points of discussion.

Finding Cultural Cues for Online Conversations

Here’s some ideas I have on topics for online conversations. Can you draw verbal images to touch people’s hearts using something from these general guidelines? Have you seen a compelling photo or video that illustrates one of these that you could share on social media?

Events and Day-to-Day Living

• All current events
  • Check out TrendsMap.
• Business and occupations
• Entertainment and fine arts
  • Literature
  • Music
  • Dance
  • Film
• Sports
• National holidays and traditions
• History
  • See This Day in History
• Politics
  • Avoid polarizing comments or aligning yourself with a certain political viewpoint. Instead, look for what your readers would be drawn to, such as, a scriptural view of honoring agreements, looking at the inner person, “giving unto Caesar,” and other topics.
• Scientific discoveries

Cultural Themes

And here’s another lens to look through for cultural cues:

• Fairness
• Equality and opportunity
• Freedom
• Individualism or community
• Effects of globalism and pluralism on society
• Countercultures and merging of cultures
• Consumerism
• Family
• Social structures

The audience you’re reaching may not understand “religious” topics, but they would understand current events and topics that relate to their daily living. Admittedly, I’m writing as an American, so I invite my special readers from other countries to add your specific recommendations in the comments, too.

Dip your toe or plunge head first, but don’t avoid the cultural pond if you want to be a fisher of men and women on the Internet.

NOTES:

• Inspiration for this post comes from “Language of Culture” on Ray Van der Laan’s Follow the Rabbi website.
• Ray Van der Laan’s bio.

The photo of the search and rescue team, available on Wikimedia Commons, is in the public domain.  I thought it was an appropriate image since we do “search and rescue” in evangelism.