No Place Like Home
Thoughts about our home, our mission, and the culture we are in. Part 3 in a series on culture.
About twenty years ago or so, my wife and I led a group of high school students on a trip to Germany. We were supporting a church we partnered with in Leipzig by interacting with local young people in high school English classes and basketball games in public parks, things like that. On the first or second day of our stay, we were all walking I don’t remember where and came to a street crossing, which the Don’t Walk sign lit up. Our guide, the wife of the local pastor, stopped, not thinking that any of us would do anything differently. All of the Americans, seeing no cars within a mile in any direction, barely broke stride and continued in conversation as we crossed the street. Our guide was confused (perhaps we didn’t understand the sign? that seemed unlikely) and/or scandalized - why would they cross against the light? We crossed against the light because that is relatively common on a street in the evening with no cars - common in our culture, at least. It was never done in her culture. That is because, and here is the obvious point, things are different in a different culture. Things are different - done differently, thought differently, understood differently, felt differently - that is a working definition of “different culture.”
I have had the opportunity to travel to places like Germany, Malawi, Bolivia, Zimbabwe, Nepal, and Ethiopia. Last year, I reflected on the strangeness of recognizing the obvious - Everything is Different Here. We know we are in a different culture and we are still surprised at the particular differences. Along the way, I have had the chance to think about what makes for a successful stay in a place that is far from home in both distance and culture. You can probably guess some of what I will say when it comes to getting the most out of one of these far from home places. Curiosity and humility can be combined to uncover what we didn’t expect and what we wouldn’t have guessed about this new place. In much of Africa and Asia, grasping your right forearm with your left hand when shaking hands is a sign of respect. That is a useful picture as we shake hands with a new culture. Respect and appreciation can be applied to see the dignity and beauty of a new place and culture that we wouldn’t have guessed to be so profound.
Many of these trips have involved a mission or a purpose beyond simple discovery - we were there to prepare to serve in some way an effort already underway, to equip and encourage perhaps, or simply to gain and give perspective on what might be possible in partnership. If any kind of training or equipping is on the agenda, these principles - curiosity, humility, respect, and appreciation, are essential for any kind of progress. We have some insight, some learning, some experience that has been mediated through our own culture to us that we need to translate to those in a place with a different cultural framework and experiences. We seek to carry our message while avoiding any pitfalls that we don’t recognize as pitfalls.
In order to put you, dear reader, in the mind and heart space for carrying this idea further, I have a question: If you were given the opportunity to be named Ambassador from the United States to any country in the world, what would it be? Some people, more practical, or more fearful, pick Canada or England or Ireland or Australia - places with which we share a language and (we assume) have significant cultural overlap. Others, more fearless (and there might be an issue), pick a place more exotic. Let’s say, for our purpose here, we pick somewhere in the middle - say Sweden or Norway or maybe Germany - different language, but still in the West, and maybe we think they aren’t too different from us. We would be more wrong about the last part (see crossing the street above) than we think, in any case - welcome to your new country, Ambassador (Reader’s Name Here)!
I am not here to tell you how to be the Ambassador from the United States to (Sweden, Norway, Germany …). But let’s reflect on what the job is - on why we are there. We, as ambassadors, are there to represent the interests of the United States and to represent the U.S.A. in that place - to exemplify “American” and to represent the policies, concerns, and presence of our country in that place. Now everything before the last three words of that description is roughly the same for all ambassadors. We have to learn those things and we have to, within our own uniqueness, embody a good representation of “American”. It is those last three words - “in that place” - that make what that looks like so different. We would need to learn the language, customs, stories, ambitions, interests, fears … of this new place. We would have to understand how to translate the first part of our Ambassador training into a different culture in such a way as to ensure the message is not lost or undermined inadvertently. How do I understand what they are communicating? How do I communicate effectively? What is unspoken? Can I tell if they understand? If I am offending? … all of those things change from culture to culture.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:17-21
You may have guessed I am not belaboring this ambassador illustration randomly. That is the mission of all Christians. We are to represent the Kingdom of God - the message and truths and paradigms and priorities of this kingdom - our home kingdom. We are to exemplify what a citizen of this kingdom should look like - a part of a transformed community of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And we are to do all this in a way that translates into this place we live. In my opinion, we can tend to neglect the first part to some degree and completely ignore the second part - the “translate into this place” part. Instead, the danger is that we - if I am not being overly harsh - fail to recognize how much we distort the first part because of a lack of awareness of how much we are impacted by the culture we are in. We may risk becoming strangers in our home kingdom - God’s Kingdom - because we have been co-opted by a cultural agenda we don’t see because it has become invisible to us. We confuse winning a culture war (for example) with the agenda of home country.
Avoiding that pitfall is vital, but it doesn’t guarantee success. Success comes only as we combine this fundamental faithfulness with a sympathetic entrance into an ongoing process of understanding this culture in which we live and to which we have been called. Hating this culture (and inevitably the people in it) not only isn’t a virtue, it is an obstacle to fulfilling our mission. It is hard to explore and understand what you have already decided has no virtue and no redeeming qualities. It is hard to live successfully, redemptively, lovingly in a place you are taught to hate. We have been given the ministry of reconciliation - which is a bringing together. If we retreat instead of taking two steps forward (see the previous installment in this series), we can’t bring anything together.
Over 2500 years ago, the nation of Israel was going into exile in Babylon. They had been defeated by their enemy and were being forced to repatriate into that land - into that new culture. A culture that embodied much of what Israel would have been opposed to. What was their instruction before embarking into this exile?
This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the Lord.
Jeremiah 29:4-9
Live. Seek the good of this place to which I have sent you. Pray for it. Also - pay no attention to the prophets and diviners among you who say that you will quickly go home or that you will overthrow Babylon or anything else. Their message of false prosperity from cultural opposition is a lie.
Combine this message with our “Ambassador” job description, and you get a good picture of a Christian cultural stance: Be true to your kingdom identity within a transformed community, love those you live with and around, bring a picture of what reconciliation to God looks like and offer that reconciliation, seek their good, rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, forgive those who harm you and work for the good of your community. Just like the Israelites entering a seventy year exile in Babylon, you probably won’t live anywhere else. Live here well.
Take
We are already long, but I thought I might take a short side road and explore the definition of what we are talking about - culture. You may see the word used to describe the aggregation of human intellectual and artistic achievements. You may see the word used to describe the artistic, linguistic, culinary, and narrative expressions of particular group. But for our purposes, I want to use a more basic, or perhaps more theological, definition I think I first heard from Dr. Esther Lightcap Meek - culture is the intersection of humans with creation and other humans. It is what happens when those bearing God’s image interact with other image bearers in God’s creation. It was present in the Garden of Eden - it is not sinful, it is a good, fallen expression of those made in God’s image (“very good”) who are fallen. It is, therefore, redeemable and almost always expresses something of God’s image, as we would expect from image bearers.
Links
