Bible and Culture (1967)
Originally Delivered at Urbana 67by Eric Fife
“It is much easier to give as an answer … what your culture says. But it is more spiritual and much harder work to give the answer in terms of what the Bible says.”
Speaking of the biblical and the cultural, I would like to draw your attention to one book that is on the book stand, Hudson Taylor and Maria. I think it's partly through my emphasis that this is now being reproduced economically in paperback at $1.95. It explains in great measure the attempts that one man made to adapt to the culture where God sent him. And he made that adaptation over 100 years ago.
Francis Steele told us that everybody is a witness. This is true. Everybody is not necessarily a missionary. At least not if we take to be true the statement in the Urbana brochure, that a missionary is one who crosses a political or cultural frontier in the service of Jesus Christ, whether that frontier be an urban ghetto or wealthy suburb or a jungle tribe, a Japanese working in Indonesia, an American evangelizing in Britain, an African witnessing to students in the U.S.A. The church in every land needs the church from every other land. England needs the ministry of Billy Graham. America evidently can profit from the ministry of John Stott and John Guest. This is the fact of the missionary enterprise: crossing barriers that are cultural and barriers that are political.
The Apostle Paul had something to say about crossing barriers. He said, "I have become all things to all men that I might by all means save some." He was eager to identify himself with the Greeks, with the Romans, with the Jews. I don't have time to expound the lengths to which he went to make himself acceptable that he might gain a hearing from these people.
A serious missionary is one who takes cultural barriers very seriously. In many ways I find that it is very easy to talk about this subject by making jokes and telling funny stories of failures of missionaries who have gone overseas. I want to avoid that by majoring on my own mistakes. My experience was very similar in some ways to that of George Verwer. I was brought to Christ at about age sixteen from what I suppose you would call a street gang, although it was not a gang that specialized in violence. I came from a pagan home, and evidently, unlike George, I came from a slum home. Immediately I began to witness to Jesus Christ. This was tough to some extent, but at least I understood these people. There was no particular cultural barrier to cross.
I faced my first cultural barrier when I found it necessary to be identified with a church. I went to church, and I was disgusted by the people. They were smug, they were overdressed, and they were complacent. They gave a lot to missions but did nothing to evangelize their own people. I was nauseated. So what was my reaction? They wore black coats and vests and striped trousers. So I would preach to them; I went to church wearing blue jeans.
After a few weeks of this treatment, I got my first audience. A dear old lady came to me and gently rebuked me for coming to church dressed like this. I said to her, "Madam, I'm aware of the scripture that commands us to worship the Lord in Spirit and in truth. If you can show me the scripture that tells me to worship the Lord in a black coat and vest and striped trousers, I'll do that." And I walked away feeling how smart I had been, what a success. It was months before God began to get to me and to say: “Don't you understand that the people in striped trousers need what you have to say? And they'll listen to you far more fully if you wear striped trousers.” If this is conformity, I became at that stage all things to all men in London to win some. I soon found that it was not only the cockneys of London that needed the gospel message, but people in other classes. I had to fight a greater barrier which only my British friends will be aware of – the barrier of trying to cultivate an accent that would be reasonably acceptable in other circles.
All things to all men – I have found that Christ has been making me become this. In a sense, he put me in the Armed Forces, and there I found immense cultural barriers to cross. I can say before God that when I was sixteen to twenty there was no air raid shelter that I was not prepared to preach in, no street corner that I was not prepared to preach on. But, oh, I found that there were some barriers that were extremely hard to cross, and again and again I made a dismal failure at crossing them.
These failures militated against the effectiveness of my presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ. I came to America and found a totally different culture. A friend of mine had been over here eighteen months and had written back saying that he was desperately unhappy. But I said to my wife, "We're going to enjoy America because this is where God has put us. We're going to love it and admire it." It wasn't always easy. And I haven't succeeded very well. But I have tried to understand the American mind and American history. I should point out that, I am a neophyte in American history, but I find I know more American history than some Americans.
Then I found that I had to cross the cultural barrier of the academic world. I was invited to come over here thirteen years ago by the North Africa Mission. One of the missionaries in that mission who is now working among students in Algeria said, "Eric, God is going to give you a mission to students." I said, "I flatly refuse to speak to students. I do not have any Greek." I arrived, and found that Francis Steele had booked me to speak at Penn State University. My first meeting was in a fraternity. And I was so naive that I thought a fraternity – we don't have fraternities in England – was another name for an Inter-Varsity group. I learned the hard way.
A serious missionary makes an attempt to understand the people to whom God sends him, to empathize with them. It is doubtful if he will ever completely lose his accent, although Mike Griffiths and John Stott probably think I have. But it is doubtful that I can ever lose my English accent. That is true of most missionaries going overseas. It is certainly true that we cannot change the color of our skin. But we can at least make an attempt to show that we understand and that we empathize with the problems that are being faced by those to whom God sends us.
Now let me say that for sensitive people this very frequently involves an enormous emotional strain. I find, for instance, that to speak to the students in Atlanta is quite different from speaking to the students in northern California. I could go on enlarging on the fact that to try to understand and to preach to each of their needs is an exhausting business. It may well be that the tension and the pace of modern life will shorten the life ministry of some men today. If so, so be it.
It is, of course, a basic fact of anthropology that religion is always conservative. If a church were to move from the Stone Age to the steel age, the religious people would be the last ones to take to steel knives. We define ourselves not merely as religious people, but as conservative evangelicals.
We are in a strangely dangerous position. I got through one conference where many of the people did not share my theology. One girl said to me, ''You're the weirdest mixture I've ever met in my life." I said, "I can understand that, but just in what particular degree is the mixture so weird?" She said she had never thought that it was possible to be conservative in theology and so progressive in every other area.
And I am convinced that this is precisely what God needs today: People who will be true to the Word of God, who will have absolute standards, and yet will try to recognize that there are peripheral things that are not basic to the truth that they preach. We have much light from anthropology that can help us here. (You should read some anthropology and sociology.) This subject becomes more and more important as people travel so much more and see so many more TV programs.
I got to the West Indies to speak to the students there. One student said to me, "If I'm a Christian, is it necessary for me to be married in a church?" I said, "Well, in John chapter 2 it does say that Jesus went to the marriage at Cana." I knew that was not a very good answer, because Jesus went to a funeral, too, and I don't suppose it means he approved of that. I had to say to the student eventually, "No, I know no scriptural reason why you should be married in a church. I think it is reasonable to gather your Christian friends around you to rejoice with you and pray with you." In honesty I had to say to her that most weddings that I attend – incidentally, I attend as few as I can – do not come in that category. To me, they consist of a spectacle at the front of the church to which a large number of people are the spectators, and that does not seem specifically Christian.
This past summer some students from Denmark laughed with me about a visit I had paid to their university a year before. I had been speaking to this group of students – all English speaking – about how they could win their fellow students to Jesus Christ. They laughed at me because they said they knew that deep down I was so shocked, because right through the meeting five of the girls in the chapter were smoking pipes. But they went on to tell me that that particular visit had changed the ministry of that chapter throughout the entire academic year. I was glad I had not made an issue of their smoking pipes.
Then this past summer, German students were joking with me about the particular view of evangelicals in America on the matter of rock and roll. But let me say this, I want to be sensitive to the spirit of the age, not to write off rock and roll as being wrong without giving any thought to why it originated. To me it is a narrow-minded intolerance that cannot be justified from the Scriptures, I've told my children that I'll defend their right to listen to it just so long as they don't make me listen to it.
Thus far I've given the impression that everything is relative. I become all things to all men. Does this mean I become a chameleon? I blend in with the landscape? There is nothing I stand for? Was that true of Paul? There were things that he would fight for. There were undergirdings for what he believed. I want to do all I can to be sensitive to issues that are cultural. But I will, to my dying day I trust, demand that I be loyal to the biblical.
And there are biblical absolutes. I think that what the Bible says about polygamy is often misunderstood. But the Bible is very clear about fornication and about adultery, and I'll preach it clearly and strongly. It seems that the church today is largely divided into two extremes. One extreme has become fossilized and the young people on the whole are utterly disgusted with it.
Dare I ask you to be more understanding and sympathetic with that group than I was? They need help too. The other extreme says that we're out of date and we must change. "Let's listen to the anthropologists. Let's listen to the psychologists. Let’s listen to the sociologists. Let's listen to the management consultants." And we do have much to learn from all of them.
But in closing, allow me to remind you the acid test is: Where is your authority? Is it the anthropologists? Is it the psychologists? Or is it the Word of God? Even a lot of Christian anthropologists think in terms of anthropology rather than of the Scripture, and would rather try to find scripture to fit their anthropological principles than vice versa. For that I can see no justification in Scripture at all. The Scripture has a great deal to say about leadership and management. Let us be sure we're aware of it. But let us by no means throw overboard the heritage that is ours in the Scripture.
Young people, if you rebel as I rebelled, remember that the Bible has something to say about respect to elders and to those in the church who have oversight of you. Let us, as John Stott has said, be living in obedience to the Scripture, getting our answers from the Scripture. It is hard. It is much easier to give as an answer what your mission board says, or what your culture says. But it is more spiritual and much harder work to give the answer in terms of what the Bible says.
Eric Stanley Fife of England served in North Africa during WWII, where he became interested in Muslim missions. Eventually, as Missions Director of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Fife directed Urbana 67.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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