It’s a catchy title but in reality, a Cultural Critic is not who you are, it’s not your identity but it is a mindset that you can display in a variety of situations. Some display it often and very strongly, others very rarely. However, “Did Peter have a Cultural Critic or Cultural Learner mindset?”, is too long of a title and not as provoking.
A Cultural Critic mindset interprets and judges the intercultural situation in front of them through their own cultural lens. A Cultural Learner mindset tries to interpret and judge the intercultural situation in front of them through the other person’s cultural lens. A great article on the Cultural Critic versus Cultural Learner mindset can be found HERE.
What was the Apostle Peter’s Mindset?
A very interesting story is found in Acts 10. It tells the story of God bringing the gospel to the Gentiles. Though God chose the Israelites to receive his revelation and be the primary carrier of his salvation plan to the world, salvation of the Gentiles was always on his mind.
The Jews (1) stood out from the general population in the Roman Empire by quite a few unique customs and rules, many of them given directly by God through Moses and the prophets. Their male circumcision was not unique, but it was abhorred by the Greeks and looked down upon by the Romans. The Sabbath was unique, especially since it also applied to servants and animals. Their food laws made them stand out and, in the Roman world, pretty much all meat was part of a sacrifice to an idol. Because of these differences, there was quite a bit of cultural pride and animosity between the Jews and Gentiles in the Roman Empire.
When God poured out his Spirit on the (Jewish) disciples, they proclaimed the gospel to many people in different languages that the Spirit gave them. However, these people were all Jews who lived in other parts of the Roman Empire for generations and used those languages as their daily language. Even the Ethiopian eunuch that Philip witnessed to (at the prompting of the Holy Spirit) was a convert to Judaism, not a gentile who worshiped pagan gods.
God allowed the Jewish church to be established first, but He also knew that it would take a miracle for the Jewish Christians to give up their Cultural Critic mindset towards non-Jews. So He did a few miracles.
First, an angel of God appeared to Cornelius telling him to invite Peter to his house and where he would find him.
Then, as Cornelius’ servants were approaching the house where Peter stayed, God put Peter into a trance and showed him a collection of all kinds of unclean animals. (Animals that God had forbidden the Israelites to eat.) Then God commanded Peter to kill and eat one of those animals. As a devout Jew and a follower of Jesus, Peter refused three times to do so and three times God rebuked him saying, “Do not call anything unclean that God has made clean.”
God did not tell Peter the meaning of the vision. He left him pondering about it for a while. Only when Cornelius’ servants came to the door did God tell him to go with them without any hesitation.
So Peter walked with them (for more than a day) to Cornelius’ house. There, he reiterated once again that it was against the law for Jews (and in Peter’s mind also for Jewish Christians) to associate with Gentiles or visit them in their home. And then he said that God had told him he shouldn’t call anyone impure or unclean and that he came without hesitation for that reason. Peter valued God more than the religious and cultural norms of devout Judaism. Norms that he knew where shaped by God. Thus he chose to let God’s voice overrule them
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Peter’s Heart and Mind are Changing
Cornelius tells Peter about his vision and how God spoke to him through an angel, telling him that God had heard his prayers and gifts to the poor. Peter had already started to lose his Cultural Critic mindset, and says, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right. You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all…” (Acts 10:34-36, NIV)
He started to realize that Jesus being “Lord of all” is more than Jesus having power and authority over all (and the ability to destroy all enemies). It also means that Jesus wants all to receive salvation and become part of his kingdom.
Peter then went on to explain to them the good news of peace through Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of sins that is in his name. As he is sharing this message, God pours out his Spirit on Cornelius and the other Gentiles that were gathered in his home.
As he sees God at work, his mindset keeps shifting and Peter tells the other Jewish believers that were with him that these Gentiles should be baptized into the body of Christ without becoming Jewish proselytes first. This was a huge step that went beyond accepting that a Gentile could have faith in Jesus and be saved by Him. This step indicated that Peter was convinced these Gentiles should be one with him, (that is with Peter,) members of the same family, the same church.
Then Peter stayed a few days at Cornelius’ house, enjoying his hospitality. This was another sign that Peter was convinced and that he identified Cornelius as one of his own. Jews would normally not enjoy the hospitality of Gentiles to avoid the risk of eating food that was forbidden or violating their ritual purity in other ways. Receiving hospitality also meant giving your host your seal of approval. (In the next chapter, the other apostles are complaining that Peter did exactly that, receiving hospitality from a Gentile (Acts 11:1-3).)
The Continued Struggle
This event did not permanently silence a Cultural Critic mindset in Peter. Fear can be a powerful monster that doesn’t die easily. Years after his encounter with Cornelius, in Antioch, Peter separated himself from fellowship with Gentile believers out of fear of other Jewish believers with a Cultural Critic mindset. The apostle Paul publicly rebuked him for this (Galatians 2:11-14).
A few years after that, the apostle Paul got into a clash with zealous Jewish followers of Jesus who told him that he should teach new believers that they should become Jews too in order to be saved from sin and judgment. This clash ended up in the council of apostles in Jerusalem and there, it was Peter defending Paul and reminding the attendees that it was God who chose the Gentiles to be included into the body of Christ without making them become Jewish first. (Acts 15).
Being a Christian doesn’t mean you can’t have a Cultural Critic mindset. Peter had to unlearn his Cultural Critic mindset and to decide not to give in to his fear of what other Jewish believers would think of him. He did so by valuing and listening to God’s voice over all the other voices.
We too have to unlearn our Cultural Critic mindset. It takes effort. We need to learn to listen to and to value God’s voice over our own and over the voices of our culture.
Having a Cultural Critic mindset doesn’t mean you hate others. It first and foremost means you think those others are not equal and only will be equal to you if they become like you.
How About Us?
What is the significance for us? What happened to Peter proves that you can be a Christian, full of the Holy Spirit, and still have a Cultural Critic mindset that stands in the way of what God wants to do through you in the lives of others. We all have moments and areas of our lives where we have a Cultural Critic mindset and we need to deal with that. Deal with the pride and fear that fuels it. Just like with Peter, it takes God’s help and power to overcome it.
Loving people who are different is hard and seeing them as equals is harder and requires humility from our side. When you continue to read in Galatians 2, you’ll read that Paul realized and confessed that his superior Jewish heritage and upbringing did not bring him salvation. That came by accepting he was just as much a sinner as any Gentile and just as much in need of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ as any Gentile was (and is) in need of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.
Let’s work on acquiring that Cultural Learner mindset, on allowing the Holy Spirit to transform and renew our minds, and let’s not give in to fear or pride.
1. Jew is originally a designation for the descendants of the Southern Kingdom, the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, who went into exile and returned under king Cyrus. Israelites could either mean the 10 tribes of the Northern Kingdom or all 12 tribes of Israel. The Bible only starts using the term Jew after the Northern Kingdom went into exile. In the New Testament it is used as a generic term for Israelites but many times it is used to contrast the Galilean Israelites (Galileans) living in the northern half of the country with those living in Judea (Jews).
Published September 27, 2026
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