The Clash of Culture, 2
Posted by: richman in harold sala, tags: clash of culture, inspirational, Jesus loves you, spiritual“If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.” -Joshua 24:20
Let’s face it, culture is what makes different groups of people what they are, and subsequently, different from other people. It’s passed on from generation to generation as a legacy of uniqueness and individuality.
In World War 2, fighting on the Australian side of the trenches stopped at 4:00 P.M. as the Aussies stopped for a tea break. Many European shops close promptly at 12 noon and reopen at 2:00 P.M., the very time that other shopkeepers do a land office business as people have time to shop on their lunch hours.
Stand on a corner in Tel Aviv and notice how people are almost nose to nose in deep conversation, but stand that close to an American when you carry on a conversation and he’s quite uncomfortable because Americans usually want a comfort zone of about 24 inches, at least when they are talking with strangers.
Europeans and Americans shake hands, while their Japanese counterparts bow when they meet each other, and even in that act of greetings there are marked differences in how it is done. An individual of great importance merits a much deeper bow than a person of low social status and rank. A stranger in the Middle East is afforded hospitality even by an enemy, whereas that same hospitality among the Sawis of New Guinea would be treacherous and surely bring danger with it.
It’s called culture, and in a very real sense culture is neither right nor wrong in itself; it is only right or wrong in relationship to the revealed Word of God, the Bible. We tend to think that anyone who is different from ourselves is strange or wrong, but not so. But there are a couple of observations which I’d like to make and then continue our discussion on the next edition of Guidelines.
Observation #1: The Bible is cross-cultural, cutting across the differences which separate us.
Another way of putting it is that God never gave one set of guidelines for Asian families, another for Europeans, and a third for Hispanics. He gave us a book and said, “This is the way to life!” This book is a dynamic book which changes the lives of all who will read it. It has survived the test of time, and in so doing crosses those idiosyncrasies of human nature which we call culture.
Observation #2: This great book for living, the Bible, is not only cross cultural; it is counter cultural as well.
Hundreds of times I have heard people rationalize, “It’s our culture here,” excusing some act of unfaithfulness or dereliction. I should expect that God’s counsel should cut across some of my culture as well as my old nature because the heart of man needs to come into tune with God’s plan and purpose for living.
It is not cultural for me to forgive my enemies, to do good to those who hate me, or to learn to live with those whose ideas are different from mine. Culture demands an “eye for an eye” and a “tooth for a tooth,” but the principles of Scripture focus on love instead of hatred and grace instead of hatred and revenge.
There was no shortage of culture prior to the coming of Christ to earth; part of their culture was offering children as a sacrifice to heathen gods, and practices which we think of as pagan today, but the culture needed to be remade, regenerated, and that is why Jesus Christ set aside the splendors of a heavenly palace and came to our earth.
Whether you live in a large city or in a rural village somewhere, your family is impacted by the culture which surrounds it. But is culture greater than the impact of your home and family? That’s our topic on the next edition of Guidelines.
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