You know, I do not care much for culture in general. I have traveled to Africa and experienced no culture shock, so I am pretty numb to cultural shifts and changes. Maybe I am borderline autistic, but I have never seen a need to conform to one culture or another. At the very least, I like to be the person I choose to be and do what I like, even if the rest of the people around do something different.
It is not part of my religion to do this either. The cliché is that Christians are always swimming against the tide when it comes to society and while that analogy does hold true in terms of moral conviction, it does not apply anywhere else. The Apostle Paul even said that he conforms to the cultural standards of the people he is ministering to in order to win them over. Naturally, he does not violate the law of Christ in the process, but he makes it clear that he adapts to whatever culture he happens to find himself in.
When it comes to my libertarian beliefs, I have no problems with the cultural aspect as well. Where I am strong political libertarian, I am also very cautious of the cultural trends that inhibit individualism. I believe that being an individual, that embracing who you are, is the greatest gift God has given to man. It means that you are free to choose Him or not. He does not coerce you into loving Him one way or the other (belief is not enough, He wants us to want to love Him).
As such, I think that a cultural libertarian set of beliefs is perfectly OK with Christian beliefs. From what I understand, Jesus never played favorites politically or culturally when He was here on Earth ministering to all those people. He treated everyone as an individual and regarded them with the love and respect that He wanted us to give to those around us.
In many cases, he openly ministered to women, to foreigners, to oppressors, and to known sinners. He also affirmed that we are all equal in terms of who gets salvation by having two women be the first witnesses to His resurrection. While women were treated much better under Mosaic law than the rest of the world at the time, they still were not given as much equal standing as men. They were not considered to be reliable witnesses in a court of law.
I believe that people should be allowed to figure things out for themselves. If that means the hard way, through personal experience, or the easy, through understanding the experiences of others, so be it. If that means they end up dying in a ditch, well it is a shame. But at least we could say that they were only a victim of themselves, which usually still holds true even in our current cultural climate.
I really just do not care what other people do with their lives, so long as they do not take away another individual’s life, liberty, or property through force or fraud. In a free society, we are free to associate with whoever we please and if we find a person lacking in integrity, then we are free to shun them or leave them be. Most of the time, people who lack integrity do end up impoverished anyway, although it is not always the case.
As for me, I will continue to do my best to follow Christ, however that may turn out. If you wish to follow another path, I will not stand in your way. While we Christians were given a command to go and make disciples of all nations, we were not told to be complete jerks about the process. I will not shove my beliefs down your throat. Most evangelical Christians do not do this anyway, despite what Hollywood and others may tell you.
If you wish to debate God’s existence with me or debate your own views on your particular beliefs, I am more than willing to answer a few questions. I enjoy rational debates from time to time. But I never expect anything productive to come out of them. Debate is really just pure entertainment. At best you and I may gain insight into each other’s beliefs and have a better understanding of each other. However, I doubt either one of use will change each other’s mind. There is only one man I know of who came to Christ through debate and reason (C.S. Lewis) and I suspect that there was much more to that story that I have never read except on Wikipedia (I will get to it someday or just ask him about later).
The bottom line here is that I do not see anything wrong with cultural libertarianism and Christianity. Christianity, I believe, is versatile enough to include the best of all cultures and still maintain its most basic tenets. The most successful missionaries in our history were the ones who did not try to make their culture into the ones they were evangelizing to but rather adapted and then preached. Cultural libertarianism is no exception to this and I believe that a society could evolve to utilize the two in mutual harmony.
You just cannot force something like that though.