Culture is a man-made environment – as opposed to the natural environment – that surrounds us. Culture determines the air we breathe, the water we drink and bathe in, and the food we eat. If we live in a city the air will be acrid and the water fluoridated. Food will taste processed, frozen or canned. If we live in the country, the air will smell of earth and fertilizer, the water will flow from mountains and be aerated by rapids and waterfalls, while the food will be fresh or rancid. Nomads on the steppes will develop a different culture from pygmies in rainforests; while the ancient traditions of China will filter through a communist political system designed to eradicate the past. We can as much run away from our culture as jump out of our skin, though we should also recognize that culture is dynamic and fluid and is shaped by the ages, by the forces of history, and by the stamp of individual leaders.

We develop culture in adaptation to our physical environments, while we shape the natural environment to meet our cultural needs. Culture can then be defined as a system of life specific to peoples in allotted places and appointed times. Culture shapes a political system of government, enjoys a symbiotic relationship with beliefs, and is expressed through traditions, customs and languages – in effect culture is everything we do. Culture is the seamless cloth that is woven on the warp and woof of life – it is therefore as much unconscious as unperceived, assumed as it is assimilated.

From before our birth and throughout our childhood into adulthood, culture is experienced, taught, and learned, transmitted both consciously and unconsciously, imprinted by mentors and implanted by mimicking, tranferred by parents, siblings, teachers and peers. While culture shapes the way we see, understand, speak and interact with others, it is a meta – knowledge that cannot be explained precisely. A fish can best understand and explain the concept of "wet" when it has experienced "dry."

Though difficult to explain by insiders, culture can be analyzed from the outside. Cultures can best be explained through comparisons, keeping in mind the cultural biases that filter cultural observations through value judgments. The traditions of one tribe can be the taboos of another. Culture is what distinguishes "us" from "them," and what identifies us as unique and distinct, even as we conform to our cultural group.

Whether the world is moving towards an "omega point" of global culture with universal values, or is in the throes of a tectonic "clash of civilizations," or is developing a system of relative tolerance that offers representation to all "ethnie" and cultural expressions, these have become the central metaphysical questions of the new millennium. Certainly we need to understand the processes of cultural formation, the cultural choices made by individuals and groups, and the effect these choices have on neighboring cultures and the evolution of a "global village."

We are in the end what we eat, what we wear, what we believe and what - or who - we worship. In the end it is good to remember that though we may fashion our gods in our own image, the Creator God is above culture and transcends all human distinctions with universal, categorical imperatives of loving, faithful obedience – belief and ethics married in culture. Culture should therefore ultimately determine how we treat our natural environment, how we share limited resources, how we should love our brother and sister, our neighbor and our enemy, and how we should rise to the ethical standards of divine revelation. In this definition we acknowledge that we inevitably reveal our own cultural bias and value judgment, and we must let the cultural critics level their own filters at us.