Christian Culture

Ms. Farida Lim
Ipeka Integrated Christian School

Dear Mrs. Farida Lim,

This letter is written to give you more insight on Christian cultures I’ve learned in this school for the past 2 months. I noticed that IICS has done a lot to implement Christian values in all of the subjects. However, I do have suggestions on how IICS can improve their Christian values in their teachings and in cultural context.

In our English class with Sir Michael, we’re currently learning about Christian cultural context and the five classical Christian Culture positions from Richard Niebuhr. I learned that Christian culture is following God’s Word and spreading the Gospel while reflecting Christian beliefs through our actions. Richard Niebuhr's five positions include Christ against culture, Christ of culture, Christ above culture, Christ and culture in paradox, and Christ the transformer of culture. I personally believe our school focuses on the third position, Christ above culture.

In IICS, we’re taught to follow what the Jesus Christ has taught us, but to never forget our own culture. I applaud this school for teaching the students on how to differentiate between what goes along with Christian culture and what doesn’t, and how to deal with those cultures that doesn’t fit with Christian culture. We’re taught to respect others and help each other out, which is an important value in Indonesian culture, but are also important in Christianity. A major example of that is how highly we respect those who are older than us. In Asian culture, we’re expected to be respectful to our parents and the elderly. The bible taught us to respect our parents in the fifth commandments so our cultures does correlate. IICS allows us to also makes ur follow this at school. We must be respectful to all of our peers and our teachers. I enjoy the fact the school tries to enforce the idea of Christian culture in our everyday life.


This school has exceeded my expectations in how the implementing Christian culture, specifically in the position of Christ above culture. However, like everything, there are always something to improve. I understand that IICS wants their students to believe in God and there’s nothing wrong with doing so. However, it do feel that it’s suffocating sometimes. As good as this teaching is, I feel that it’s too forced on students. People who believe in God because of themselves tend to actually believe in Christ more than people who were raised in a very strict environment feels pressured to believe in God that they don’t feel any attachment to God as it’s not built by themselves but through the pressure of parents and peers. So even though IICS does a good job in teaching us about the Bible and connecting it with our culture, the school should also let the students discover more about Jesus themselves. The school can give us a push into the right direction and that may be enough. This way, some students will actually believe God by their own will, instead of feeling obligated to do so. When a student needs more push, the school must also be prepared to help them. When a student also wants to learn more about Christianity, the school must also be willing to help this, In doing this, our school would become more compatible with Christian culture because it lets the students follow God’s Word and do what the school taught us regarding Christ above culture wholeheartedly.

I hope this letter gave you a insight from a student’s point of view on Christian culture in the our school and how IICS can improve in their teachings.