Cultural Relativism

"The position of cultural relativism is very attractive. It shows high respect for other people and their cultures and avoids the errors of ethnocentrism and premature judgments. It also deals with the difficult philosophical questions of truth and morality by withholding judgment and affirming the right of each culture to reach its own answers. The price we pay, however, in adopting total cultural relativism is the loss of such things as truth and righteousness. If all explanations of reality are equally valid, we can no longer speak of error, and if all behavior is justified according to its cultural context, we can no longer speak of sin. There is then no need for the gospel and no reason for missions."

I am currently reading a book entitled Anthropological Insights for Missionaries by Paul Hiebert. I have never delved into anthropology, sociology or philosophy in an academic sense, but this book has been great for beginning the learning process of understanding how the gospel and culture mix.

I have long thought about this concept of ‘cultural relativism’, without knowing the name for it. Even from within the church, we tend to justify the actions of every other culture (except our own). We throw the phrase, ‘That is just part of their culture. Who are we to judge the way they do things?’ at situations without thinking about the consequences of such a phrase. In thinking about reaching and engaging another culture, we try to assume that all things are neutral in a culture, whether beliefs, customs or behaviors. This is foolish.

If we embrace cultural relativism, then just as Heibert says, there is no need for the gospel or missions. Since all cultures are inherently neutral or good, there is no need to evangelize or tell about the gospel of Jesus Christ. This mindset is dangerous.

We must have some objective ground to stand on to speak into a culture. This solid ground must be the Bible, since it is the revelation of God to us. To stand on any other ground leads to a disastrous end.

Ultimately, God is about redeeming and reconciling all peoples, cultures and societies back to Himself. He wants to take and redeem all things back to Himself. Cultures are broken, yet beautiful. When engaging our own culture and other cultures, we must remember that within each culture exist the extremes of reality; brokenness and beauty. We must be about redeeming the brokenness and embracing the beautiful.

In reading this book, Hiebert has forced me to think about what is truly essential and what is negotiable. He challenges the decision criteria for deciding what is essential and negotiable. Essentials must be essential to the church across all cultures. Negotiables may or may not be valid in every culture. This was a challenging exercise for me to think about. You might find it to be helpful to think about.

Label each with an E for Essential or an N for Negotiable

1 -	Greet each other with a holy kiss.
2 -	Do not go to court to settle issues between Christians.
3 -	Do not eat meat used in pagan ceremonies.
4 -	Women in the assembly should be veiled when praying or speaking.
5 -	Wash feet at the Lord's Supper (Eucharist)
6 -	Lay hands on for ordination.
7 -	Sing without musical accompaniment.
8 -	Abstain from eating blood.
9 -	Abstain from fornication.
10 -	Share the Lord's Supper (Eucharist) together.
11 -	Use only real wine and unleavened bread for your Eucharist meals.
12 -	Use only grape juice for Eucharist meals.
13 -	Anoint with oil for healing.
14 -	Women are not to teach men.
15 -	Women are not to wear braided hair, gold or pearls.
16 -	Men are not to have long hair.
17 -	Do not drink wine at all.
18 -	Slavery is permissible if you treat slaves well.
19 -	Remain single.
20 -	Seek the gift of tongues.
21 -	Seek the gift of healing.
22 -	Lift your hands when you pray.
23 -	People who don't work don’t eat.
24 -	Have a private 'devotional time' every day.
25 -	Say Amen at the end of prayers.
26 -	Appoint elders and deacons in every congregation.
27 -	Elect the elders.
28 -	Confess sins one to another.
29 -	Confess sins privately to God.
30 -	Give atleast ten percent of your income/goods/crops to God.
31 -	Construct a building for worship.
32 -	Confess Christ publicly by means of baptism.
33 -	Be baptized by immersion.
34 -	Be baptized as an adult.
35 -	Be baptized as a child/infant.
36 -	Do not be a polygamist.
37 -	Do not divorce your spouse for any reason.
38 -	Do not divorce your spouse except for adultery.

What principle or principles governed your decision? Write out the method that you used, in a simple, concise statement. Be completely honest with yourself and accurately describe how you made your decisions. Your principles should account for every decision.

Are your essential items so important to you that you could not associate with a group that did not practice all of them? Are there some essential items that are a little more essential than others? Are there any items that have nothing explicitly to do with Scripture at all?

I hope this is helpful in thinking about how we engage our own and other cultures with the gospel.

Work as Mission

This afternoon, I napped for 3 hours, so I am having trouble sleeping; partly because of the nap, but also partly because of the craziness in my head right now. Tonight our pastor gave one of the most pointed sermons I have ever heard him give.

He began to work out a philosophy of work as mission. He used a lot of Scripture and personal experiences and beliefs to encourage us to begin to see our work and lives differently. He talked about the separation that has happened between clergy and laymen. He talked about the professionalization of full-time ministry. He talked about the Biblical basis for the church doing the work of ministry/mission and the pastors equipping the saints for that work of ministry. He talked about our false views of following Jesus as happening only on Sundays.

His main points centered on the fact that we do not see our work as our mission field. The paradigm that exists in Midland right now during this boom is GET IN, GET MINE, and GET OUT. This paradigm presupposes the wrong purpose as to why we work the job we do. This ‘get mine’ mentality centers on getting enough to live the lifestyle we want or to retire at a certain time with enough. He broke down the idea of retirement and called us to finish the race marked out with endurance, not to strive to get to relax.

A central piece of understanding is the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19-20. ‘Go therefore and make disciples…’ We read it in our English translations as a command or an imperative, but in fact it is not a command. The central verb in this sentence is the make disciples (evangelize or gospeling), not the go. It could be read ‘as you go’, ‘while you go’, ‘as you are going’, ‘as you are doing’, instead of ‘go’. He connected this with Colossians 3:23, which talks about doing all that we do to the glory of God.

So the point is that it does not matter what job or career we find ourselves in. It is not important whether we are happy or even satisfied with that job. What matters is that we see all that we do through the lenses of mission.

This is a hard sermon to hear no matter how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ one is currently doing at making disciples in our workplaces. Although difficult to hear, this kind of reminder refocuses us on what we are to be about.

He poked some fun at our ideas of missions as trips overseas witnessing to the poor African or Asian. He talked about how hard we might work to contextualize the gospel to these people and how committed we will be to devotions and prayer while being on mission. Yet, in our daily lives we hardly pause in the mornings to even reflect on the souls that we will intermingle with that day. We hardly consider how it is we might engage those at work. We hardly consider that we are on mission at every moment, or we are not.

He seemed to negate the need for ‘missions’ in the traditional understanding, yet I know this is not his heart. He understands the need for people to be going overseas to places that will never hear the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. However, it did bother me that he somewhat negated the full-time cross-cultural ministry that is necessary.

I understand where he is coming from. He pastors a church in Midland, Texas and is primarily concerned with the people that will exist here. Most people will not spend their lives in a foreign country or in a professional ministry position. Most people will be normal, average Joes who work in the oil industry out here. He understands this, so in order for him to have the most impact, he has to impact the average Joe and Jane. Most people will be content coming to Church on Sundays and seeing the paid staff of pastors doing the entire ministry. This is neither biblical nor healthy. He wants to see radical, daily commitment from the body to be the hands and feet of Jesus every day in the places we spend the majority of our time.

There will be no great reconciliation movement from more songs, sermons, summer camps, or revival services. We need people to so treasure Jesus Christ that each day is seen as a mission.

It was interesting listening to this sermon and catching eye contact with him throughout. He knows my life course for the time being. We have talked about how God might use my Petroleum background and passion for Jesus for the Kingdom. But I know in my heart of hearts that I have not been the missionary at Chevron that I so desire to be at the ends of the earth. I have engaged some and seen some fruit from being faithful, but not near to the extent that I could have.

This sermon really challenged me in two areas. The first is to be fully engaged with the people around me for the next 2.5 months at Chevron. The second is to continue to pursue how God might use Petroleum Engineering and Seminary as mission. I pray that we would be challenged to see work/life as mission. 

To the Fields

I realize that I have been absent from writing for a while. I’ve encountered a season of dryness in my writing, reading and thinking. I am not real sure what has brought this on, but I hope that it ends soon.

Thursday of this past week will be a day that lives in infamy in my mind for a while. Granted it’s not the end of the world, but it was a monumental moment in my life thus far.

Two weeks prior, my boss had asked me to schedule some time with him to discuss my Career Development Plan. This is a normal refresh, so for him nothing out of the ordinary was happening. However, I knew that I couldn’t not tell him the news. To call myself a Christian and go in there without revealing what’s going on in my life, would be very inconsistent.

So I began to prepare mentally, physically, spiritually for 3:00 on Thursday. For me, this consisted of refusing to think about this until the last possible moment. My boss walked in about 9:30 and asked if we could move our meeting up. I asked for 30 minutes, so that I could breathe and pray, knowing that I had refused this conversation any room in my thoughts.

Many have asked me if I ever thought about going back and just not following through my plans. The reality is that I never allowed that to be an option. Sure, thoughts of doubt and hesitancy entered my mind, but never to the point that I felt like I was making the wrong decision. Too many times this calling on my life has been confirmed and encouraged. For me to turn back now, would reveal a severe distrust and lack of faith in God who has brought me here.

So I walked down there at 10 and shared my heart. I told him about what God has been doing in my heart and that He is taking me a new direction. I told him about my desire to be in full-time missions of some sort. I told him that I will be walking away from Chevron in August to go to Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky to enter into a season of being prepared. I told him about my lack of a clear plan right now as to what that full-time mission might look like. (Chevron international, Chevron stateside, IMB Missionary, Living Water, Local Pastor, etc.) I told him that I will continue to work hard until my final day. I told him that I wanted to talk with as many people individually about this decision, before we told a big group.

In all fairness to my boss, it would be hard not to be shocked by this news. Who walks away from a bright future and a cushy career to a possible life-threatening career? He was very supportive and happy for me to be choosing to follow God. He did call my move bold and risky, which I am choosing to count as a compliment, not an underhanded shot at me. He also said that even though it was shocking to hear, it fit right in with how I have lived my life up to that point. This was very encouraging for me to hear.

Most people don’t reveal how they view you until a moment of loss or frustration. So we operate not knowing exactly how we are representing Christ in everything, but in hopes that others might see Him in our lives and hear Him in our words. We chose to be faithful and fruit will follow as God sees fit. We can only control our faithfulness not our fruitfulness. We often do not even recognize fruit as God recognizes fruit. The farmer tills up the earth, plants the seeds, and waters the ground, but God is the one who causes the fruit to grow.

I have talked about this for what seems like decades, although has only been about 2 years. I am finally making good on some action to follow those words. I am opening up my hands and releasing my grasp on my career, life and success. I am choosing to trust that God’s Word is the Truth and I am banking my life on it. I am choosing to be faithful to the One who has been Faithful to us. I know not how the fruit will grow, but I am ready to labor in the fields.