What's Culture Got to Do With It?
by Jim ThomasIf you want to know the fullness of life that Jesus offers, you need to escape the gravitational pull of your own culture. Or, to put it more forcefully, being a Christian is inherently cross-cultural. John reports in his account of Jesus’s life that Jesus said,
“My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place” (John 18:36).
Jesus did not ask his followers to closely follow the culture of the Hebrews or the Romans. In fact, he was often criticized for not doing what people of those cultures expected. His allegiance was to the kingdom of God; a kingdom not bound by any human culture, though partially reflected in each one. That kingdom has a culture of its own, with many values that our own cultures do not share. For example, the kingdom of God values sacrifice to the point of death, and reconciliation with God through Jesus’s death and resurrection. These are values that are considered foolishness by those who are not part of God’s kingdom.
The culture of the kingdom of God is the one culture to which all Christians belong. As Paul said in his letter to the Galations (3:27-28), “All who have been united with Christ in baptism have been made like him. There is no longer Jew or Gentile...” Culture is no longer to divide the followers of Jesus. Yet while we remain Christians in this world, we will always know at least two cultures: the one of our country of our first birth, and the one of our second birth – God’s kingdom.
God spoke through a particular people
God chose to give his word to a particular people in a particular time. From the early days of his covenant with the Hebrews, they had to learn that what he had given them was not theirs alone. And people of other cultures had to struggle with separating what was truly of God’s kingdom from what was only the Hebrew packaging of God’s good news. One of the places we see this clearly is after Jesus’s death, when some non-Jews were becoming followers of Jesus. The apostle Peter had to learn that it was part of his Hebrew culture but not part of the Kingdom of God to never enter the house of a gentile (Acts 10). We still engage in this cross-cultural task today. Wrestling with such issues is why some Christian women wear head covers to follow Paul’s prescription in 1 Corinthians 11:3-10, while others do not.
With the spread of the church into many cultures, the Bible needed to be translated into new languages. Because word-for-word and meaning-for-meaning translation is seldom achieved, Bible translators have had to struggle with the emphasis to give to the exact words of the original text, the intending meaning of that text, and the readability of the translation. The New International Version of the Bible that we most often use in my church leans towards preserving the meaning and readability of the text rather than the exact Hebrew or Greek wording (the Greek of our gospels is already a translation from the Aramaic which Jesus and his disciples spoke).
God’s kingdom is expansive
Although God spoke through a particular people, his message was for all people. He said to Abram (Genesis 12:1-3) “I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” This same truth was later revealed to the prophet Isaiah (49:6) when God said to him, "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."
If God’s salvation is to reach all nations, yet he spoke through just one of them, it follows that the one he spoke to had be to be cross-cultural in their witness of God’s kingdom. And it follows for believers today that our access to the kingdom of God is not for us to just “sit on.” To truly experience that kingdom and reflect its values, we will seek those who have not entered the kingdom and pray for the Holy Spirit to reveal the kingdom to them through the lives we live and the words we speak. Often this will bring us to reach outside of our own clique or culture.
Every culture has insights and blind spots
No single culture truly reflects the kingdom of God. Rather, every human culture is flawed by hearts that run from God. But not all is lost. Every culture also provides some insights into God’s kingdom. From the Christians in China, for example, we in the west can learn about living sacrificially, for many of them are willing to suffer prison and abuse in order that word of God’s kingdom might spread.
From a Christian in Kenya I learned a lesson about God’s extravagant generosity. My wife Gayle and I lived in Kenya for year when I was doing research for my PhD in epidemiology. We lived in a small house with a bit of land around it and hired a young Christian man to tend the garden for us. When my parents came from the US to visit he insisted on having them to his house for tea. His house was a mud hut with a thatched roof. It had two rooms: one for hosting guests, the other for sleeping. In the public room the only furniture was a few chairs and a side table. After the tea, as we were leaving, he wanted to give my parents a gift. He offered them the side table. I don’t know what the equivalent would be for me here in the US – maybe giving one of our cars to the parent of one of my friends? Although deeply impressed by his generosity we explained that my parents could not take the table on the airplane, and thanked him for his tremendously generous heart. This picture of African generosity continues to speak to me; it offers me a glimpse of the generosity of my God.
If we are to more fully understand and experience God’s kingdom, we need people of other cultures to challenge our cultural assumptions and identify our blind spots. We also need to learn from them their insights into God’s kingdom.
The unity among believers is a witness of God’s kingdom
Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13.25). Too seldom do we remember that the way Christians get along with each other is a powerful witness, for good or for ill. Jesus also prayed that his followers may “be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:23). The world is awaiting the witness of unity between black and white Christians on Sunday morning; the good word spoken by one Christian denomination of other denominations; and the unity that overcomes an ocean of distance between Christians who are dying of AIDS on one continent and others who are healthy on another.
Cultural differences can be manifest in language, skin color, income, and more – sometimes even denominational differences. God’s kingdom knows none of these divisions. And to reflect his kingdom, we are to reach across those divisions in love. We are to learn from our brothers and sisters in Christ and serve each other. More than that, we are to seek to reconcile with each other. To do this, we need to step out of our comfort zones and seek to love well people who are different from ourselves. That might mean learning another’s language, attending another’s church, or visiting another’s neighborhood. In doing this, we follow in Jesus’s footsteps.
Crossing cultures is inherent to our faith
Being cross-cultural is inherent to being a Christian. If that is so, then we’d best be serious about learning cross-cultural skills and exercising them. We need to learn how to distinguish God’s kingdom from our culture; how to learn from people who are different from us; how to speak languages other than English; and how to talk about God’s kingdom without clichés, which are often borne from a particular cultural perspective.
In my church we want this expectation to be modeled in the leadership. Increasingly, it has become an expectation that our pastors and ministers have a significant cross-cultural experience every few years. In recent years they have all done this internationally, though there are also many local opportunities. Our elder and deacon boards and worship teams are also intentionally multi-cultural in composition.
When we look for cross-cultural experiences, we often think first of traveling to another country. But most of the opportunities to gain cross-cultural skills are actually right in your backyard, in your city. This is especially true because the most meaningful cross-cultural insights come through relationships that are developed over an extended period of time.
The opportunities to develop cross-cultural relationships and skills are within reach of everyone in the church. As we develop those skills we will grow in our understanding of the kingdom of God, we will experience more of the fullness of life that Jesus offers, and our demonstration of love that is not bounded by culture will be a witness of the unity of God’s kingdom.
Jim Thomas is seeking to live out God's mission in the context of the university. As a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, he teaches and studies epidemiology and ethics. He is also a part-time pastor for cross-cultural mission at the Chapel Hill Bible Church, a husband, and a father of two sons who will soon be taller than he is.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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