The heart of the gospel speaks, I believe, to all people, regardless of culture, creed or race. Because of this, we can make the mistake of thinking that the gospel belongs solely to us; to our culture, creed or race. If it speaks to us, then God meant it for us, right? And if He meant it for us, then you have to be like us to fully appreciate and understand the gospel, right? Then we find ourselves in a position where we assume that being a true follower of Jesus means fitting in with a particular culture – or as Steve Taylor puts it in I Want to be a Clone, ‘if you want to be one of His, got to act like one of us.’
This was perhaps at its most blatant in past missionary eras, where the line between ‘Christianizing’ and ‘Westernizing’ was blurred at best. In the 19th century, the London Missionary Society established a mission in Bechuanaland in Africa, and the Missionary Magazine reported on its progress in the following way:
‘The people are now dressed in British manufactures and make a very respectable appearance in the house of God. The children who formerly went naked and presented a most disgusting appearance are decently clothed…’
Of course, it’s easy to look down our noses at the missionary pioneers of the past, but we’re guilty of the same crime when we insist that there’s only one ‘proper’ way to do worship, one ‘proper’ way to preach, one ‘proper’ way to look and sound. We’re too quick at times to slap the label ‘Biblical’ on things that turn out to just be cultural traditions, and too slow to deny the implied criticism that traditions which differ from our own are therefore ‘Unbiblical’. Our cultural perspectives enable us to share something of the truth of God with others, but not everything of the truth.
In this blog’s first year, I posted a ‘poem‘ (I use that term loosely), suggesting that sometimes an author will write a book about what Jesus is really like and, what do you know, it turns out that Jesus is just like them.
There’s something in our humanity that seems determined to repeatedly recreate God in our own image, to want to turn Him into one us – whatever we are. The irony is, of course, that God has already turned Himself into one of us, through Christ. When we do it, we make God smaller. When He does it, He makes us bigger. We do it to bring God down to our level, to make Him easily digestible. He does it to bring us up to His level, to make us more than we are.
We can’t help but be shaped by our culture and history, but we can certainly try to make sure that it’s God who is shaping us more.
