What do you mean by "culture?"

There are many definitions, I tend toward these:
1. Clifford Geertz argues for a “semiotic” concept of culture in his work, The Interpretation of Culture (1973): “Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretative one in search of meaning.

2. I also like the metaphor of the biological definition of culture as applied to human society.

In biology, a culture is made by the scientist inside of a controlled environment, a petri dish for example. The dish is then filled with some form of a living organism (usually cells, tissues), a medium (often water), and finally a test substance, either to see if it has the ability to feed the organism for growth, or to test its danger to the organism, either through decline of life or even to the point of death.

If we use this as an analogy to human society as a culture, humans are the living organisms that take in, engage, and live in the medium.  "Culture" in this sense is the interaction that the humans have with each other and the parts of the medium that we are co-creators and stewards of. Because we live in a beautiful, yet fallen world, the medium contains both things that are nourishing as well as elements of sin that are dangerous and can lead to our destruction.

Thus, a culture of life is where communication and engagement with the medium is nourishing and encourages human flourishing. A culture of death is where sin, working like a cancer, infects our ability to take in the correct nourishment in helping us become fully human and severs our relationships with others.