A conversation between Chad Myers and me on our mission in this culture - based on the latest from The Embassy
Here is an excerpt …
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.
Share this post