Culture Clash

There’s line in the movie, “The Preacher’s Wife” where Whitney Houston (in the title role) as Julia Biggs is complaining to her mother (Jenifer Lewis as Margueritte Coleman) that her husband (Courtney B. Vance as Rev. Henry Biggs) is doing things and making commitments without discussing them with her; insisting that her father would have never done that. The preacher’s mother-in-law says that “…men ain’t changed since Adam; and he gave up one of his own ribs, just so he could have somebody to keep things from.” That’s a great line. I think it’s important to remember that sin has been around almost as long as people have been. Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit; Cain killed Abel… People really haven’t changed.
Culture has changed. Some years ago, I had a man ask me if I thought that God created all the people in the Middle East just so He could destroy them. No, of course not. He went on to tell me that by maintaining that Jesus Christ was the only way to God, that was basically what I was saying. The logic behind that escapes me. I asked him to explain, and he said, “It’s a different culture.” Sorry, the logic isn’t any clearer. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a country where Christianity is accepted, generally even encouraged, but I don’t see it. Christianity wasn’t accepted or encouraged in Israel when Jesus showed up there, and yet He managed to reach a lot of people, who in turn, reached many more people. I tried to explain to this man that culture is not a barrier to God, because God transcends culture, but I’m afraid my logic wasn’t any clearer to him than his was to me. In the years since, it has come to my attention that in many Middle Eastern countries, they actually have laws that forbid evangelizing. I have mentioned before that one should obey the ordinances of man, unless they clearly go against the ordinances of God. This is one instance where the ordinances of man are clearly in contradiction. I will admit, it would take a brave soul to witness to people, knowing that he could be imprisoned or put to death for his efforts, yet there are people that do exactly that.
My point is that God deals with people on an individual basis, not through a culture, in fact, many times, in spite of their culture. God called Abraham out of his home city, and told him to travel away, to someplace that Abraham had never been before. Why did He do that, unless it was to separate Abraham from that culture? Maybe I’m missing something, but I think that was at least part of the reason. God was revelating to Abraham about Himself, and He wanted Abraham to be away from anyone or anything that might interfere with that; God didn’t want Abraham to be distracted.
Unfortunately, sometimes we have to deal with culture, anyway. Sometimes, even here in the United States, where we like to believe that our nation was founded on Christian precepts, where we have freedom of religion, our culture tends to be a mishmash of whatever anybody finds acceptable. Many entertainers deliberately ‘push the envelope’ because sometimes it is easier to gain an audience with shock value than with substance. Granted, a lot of them quickly find that they can’t maintain the shock value, and have to fall back to providing substance in order to keep their audience, but, in the meantime, they have raised the bar for the next entertainer who tries to use shock value… Unfortunately, our culture has reached the point where it is difficult to attract an audience simply by providing substance. We, as Christians, have to be able to transcend culture, just as our God transcends culture, while at the same time, reaching out to those who are involved in the culture. We must be in the world, but not of it.

Prejudice and Pride

Michelle Obama has taken a lot of heat because of a comment that she made. She said, “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.” I suspect that, not being a politician, merely the wife of one, she didn’t stop to think how that would sound before she said it. Had she simply said, “I have never been more proud of my country,” I don’t think anyone would have taken issue with it.
The Bible talks a lot about pride, but generally talks about pride in a negative way: more or less the first cousin of arrogance (see Job 40:12, Psalms 10:2-4, 59:12, 73:6, 101:5, Proverbs 6:17, 8:13, 11:2, 13:10, 16:18, 29:23, Isaiah 9:9, 13:11, 25:11, 28:1-3, Jeremiah 13:9, 49:16, 50:31-32, Daniel 4:37, Hosea 7:10, Obadiah 1:3, Zephaniah 2:10, Malachi 4:1, Mark 7:22, Romans 1:30, 1 Timothy 3:6, 6:4, James 4:6, 1 John 2:16. Certainly that kind of pride is a negative thing. If I am proud of myself because I think that I have done some great thing, that’s a bad thing. If I am proud of my son because his team won the big game, that’s different. I can only find one place in Scripture where the term ‘proud’ is used that it might even be construed as being a good thing: In Psalms 31:23, it says, “O love the LORD, all ye His saints, for the LORD preserveth the faithful, and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer,” and, to be honest, that could go either way. Is this a continuation of the same thought, as in the faithful are proud to do God’s will (not taking pride in themselves, of course, but taking pride in God) or is this compare and contrast, as in comparing the preserving of the faithful with the ‘reward’ of the proud? We know that rewards are not always good things (see Luke 23:41).
There are places in Scripture where it describes pride as a good thing without using that word. In Acts 5:41, it says that the disciples rejoiced that were counted worthy to suffer for Jesus’ name. That’s a little different than how we normally think of pride, but I submit that it is a form of pride, just the same. Part of the difference here is that they did not take pride in what they did, they took pride in what happened to them as a result of their faithful work. At the baptism of Christ, the Father spoke from Heaven, saying that He was pleased with Christ (See Matthew 3:17, Mark 1:11, Luke 3:22). It seems to me that it was an expression of Fatherly pride. Also, at the Transfiguration in Matthew 17, there was a similar outpouring of Fatherly pride.
Now Jesus was our perfect example, and God would like to be proud of us in much the same way, as a father is pleased with well-behaved children. In Hebrews 13:16 it says, “But to do good and communicate forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” This gives us a hint as to how to make God proud of us. To do good may sound a little vague, but searching through the Scriptures, we can get an understanding of the good that God would have us to do. Communication isn’t difficult, but with whom? With our spiritual leaders, with our brothers and sisters in Christ, but also to those that we would see won to Christ. I don’t mean to suggest that every time you speak to someone that you know if not a person of faith that you should give them a Bible study on salvation, generally that’s just casting pearls before swine, but you should seek to tend to their needs, and try to look out for their best interests (including salvation). If you are at work, unless you work for a church or other religious institution, you aren’t getting paid to evangelize. That doesn’t mean you can’t evangelize, but how much are people going to listen to somebody who preaches all day, and doesn’t get his work done? Or maybe he gets it done, but in a sort of haphazard way. If your coworkers are constantly picking up your slack because you have something more important to do, they are only going to resent your presence, and they aren’t going to listen to anything you have to say. It isn’t that you don’t have something more important to do, you do, but, if you aren’t getting your job done, you aren’t evangelizing, either.

Evangelism

I can access the usual resources again. Not sure what happened to them, but I'm glad that they are back.

Evangelism is a subject that I am perhaps a bit touchy about. I personally don't feel called to be an evangelist. Of course, Apostle Paul admonished us to do the work of an evangelist, and he doesn't seem to be talking to just those that have 'the gift' (some would say that that's just written to Timothy, but it seems kind of silly for it to be in the Bible if it were only intended for one man). Of course, there have been a lot of people who have 'evangelized' without wisdom. It can be particularly difficult to talk to someone about God who has been the victim of an over-zealous, under-compassionate evangelist in the past. The United Sates is generally regarded as a Christian nation, but our founding fathers taught religious tolerance, so all religions are welcome here. On the other hand, if you look around at those of us who call ourselves Christians, there isn't a lot of practicing of the faith (Jesus told us that we could identify His followers by their fruits, and Paul was nice enough to list those fruits for us). I posted last week on the subject of 'What Do You Believe?" Do you believe that you are going to Heaven because you have accepted Jesus as Lord of your life? Do you believe that there are people around you that are going to Hell because they haven't accepted Him? Do you think that they deserve that (more than you do, that is)? Jesus told us to compel them to come in, but that doesn't mean to push them. Pushing them only moves them farther away (in some cases, just telling them that they are going to Hell without Jesus will push them away). Every person is an individual, with their own wants and needs (okay, everyone needs Jesus--but not everyone knows that they need Jesus). On the other hand, there are a lot of people who know that something is missing in their lives, and are very much afraid that whatever it is could keep them out of Heaven, so if you don't tell them, they won't listen to anything else you have to say.

Last night we had a visiting pastor speak at our church. He is from a country that is predominantly Buddhist, and they have laws against converting a Buddhist to any other faith. He has found, though, that if you go in, and find out what people need (and everybody needs something), and help meet those needs (physical needs), then, not only are they more receptive when they finally ask, "Why are you doing this?" and he tells them it is because he is a Christian, even the ones that don't want to even consider converting are less likely to call the authorities. My point is that you can "shotgun" people with the gospel, but you're probably going to do as much harm as good (if not more), or you can spend some time and get to know the person. Find out what they need, where they're hurting. I'm sure that there were a lot of people during Katrina that needed to hear the gospel, but most of them were more concerned with where they were going to sleep that night, what they were going to eat (or when they were going to be able to eat next), what they were going to wear the next day, when would they be able to take a shower... Don't talk to me about where I'm going to go when I die right now, I'm too busy just trying to stay alive. Of course, there were probably also a few that were so convinced that they weren't going to survive that they wanted to hear all about Jesus (or Buddha or Mohammad or Krishna or whoever else might have some impact on where they would spend eternity). We have to be open to what people need right now; that means listening to God because He knows exactly what each of us needs.