Culture

Wow, there's been so much I've been learning about missions and culture, but I haven't had two free seconds to sit down and formulate my thoughts. Right now I really don't have time, but I'm tired of real work, so I'm going to write my thoughts on culture.

Yesterday I had a really awesome conversation with a friend of a friend. She happened to be in the UCup when we were chatting (the friend and I) and sat down. Somehow the topic of missions came up. I started advertising Perspectives, told what it was all about and encouraged both women to take it whether they're in Colorado, North Carolina or wherever they end up. Then, the friend of the friend asked me about what I defined as "missions" so I told her about Perspectives' stance on the terms "Evangelism," "Regular Missions," and "Frontier Missions." [I can tell you too, just ask]. Then the friend of the friend told about how she's not really into missions lately and how she see it as culture ruining. After explaining herself, I explained what I learned from Perspectives. I told her that certainly some missionaries do westernize cultures, but the best form of missions actually enhances the culture by bringing about social action, freeing them from their sins, and allowing them to worship the one true God within their normal cultural practices (given that they're, of course, not sinful practices). It was fun to get her perspective because she's from the church and struggling with the idea of missions. She didn't know that many are being trained in culture-enhancing rather than culture-destroying strategies. She pointed to a few big culture-destroying missions movements from history and it helped me to realize that it may still be quite a problem and that it definitely has been in the past.

With that said, I've been reflecting a lot on how the gospel can naturally spread within a culture that's foreign to me and how I might be able to facilitate that now and in the long run. What does the church look like if it doesn't have a Sunday morning service with a band up front and youth group Sunday night? What if they have Friday services? What if they sit on the ground? What if I don't understand how they worship? What if I don't enjoy the way they sing to the Lord? And those are only the surface-level questions. Here's a deeper one: What if they interpret the Bible differently? What if they have different moral standards than I do (more or less strict - either way)? And at the heart of everything: What if I don't know or am unprepared to know enough about the culture to be able to truly minister to them in the way that they need? I really wish I could articulate myself better...there's so much more than even this, but I just can't formulate it into words. The chapters in Perspectives does much better :-) .

In one book I'm reading it points out how the Eastern worldview can actually help us understand the Bible because the Bible is an Eastern text. For example, Moses (see Deut 3:23-26) shifts the blame from himself to the Israelites. We take this blame shifting as lying, but the Eastern mindset doesn't see it as lying. He just wasn't "accepting public blame," so this book says. The author often asks those in the East to help him understand his Bible - and they do! This intrigues me because it causes me to realize that I look at Scripture with a biased, individualistic American mindset. If I am in a different culture, I need to be aware of their worldviews and strip myself of my cultural biases while I'm there. But this is very difficult and much research on the culture is needed to be able to do this adequately.