Pastor Bob Came, and This is What He Said

Pastor Bob and Mrs. Lynn visited Albertville last week, and I was extremely thrilled and very honored to be able to listen in on a McCropder team meeting and hear all he had to say about contextualization of the gospel in Africa. I shall now divulge the information I absorbed at said meeting, so you better pay attention because it's good stuff and who wouldn't want to be privy to the contents of a McCropder team meeting led by Pastor Bob? If you're not a Knox person, you might not get it, but trust me, that is no small thing!

The topic of the meeting was, as previously stated, contextualization of the gospel in Africa, but it also covered the overarching concept of how different cultures and the gospel relate to each other. All too often, missionaries go to the field unprepared to bring the gospel effectively into the culture they enter into, and they spread the good news through detrimental cultural lenses. And all too often, the gospel that you bring to Africa (or any other place) is just an answer to the Western World's questions. In Africa, this is evidently the case because the gospel has in many ways and in many places failed to dislodge deeply embedded and essential African worldviews that are contrary to the gospel (i.e. a person who goes to church on Sundays may very well turn to a shaman for healing and expect alternate spiritual forces at work behind his ailment).

As people coming with a whole lot of cultural baggage, it is important that we try to take a step back from these Westernized perspectives of the gospel, and strive to view the gospel not in a reductionist way, but as a diamond. A multifaceted gospel. Each facet of the diamond represents a the gospel from the vantage point of a different culture. Each facet when it catches the light has equal brilliance and beauty.

Once we understand this concept, the goal then is to figure out what exactly our biases might be as Westerners, and what cultural lense we are stepping into. Although this is in many ways generalizing, the world can basically be broken up into three basic types of cultures:

1. Guilt-Forgiveness cultures
2. Shame-Honor cultures
3. Fear-Power cultures

You can think of these three basic types of cultures as being the three primary colors. No culture is purely yellow, purely red, or purely blue. They are all a combination of the primary colors, because all these tendencies of guilt/forgiveness, shame/honor, fear/power are felt by humans all across history and all across geographic space, but each culture will have a tendency towards one primary color, and that color will be prevalent in many ways. America is very much a Guilt/Forgiveness culture. When we preach the gospel, over and over we preach a guilt and forgiveness gospel. It is almost the only one we know! All the gospel tracks you may come across, all the ways that speakers present the gospel, all the most powerful and life-changing messages, virtually all of them are based on our own personal guilt, our own personal sins, and God's deliverance of us by sending his Son to die in our place and remove out sins. The more I thought about it, the more I was struck by the reality of this truth. How many times have you heard the prodigal son preached as a call for the wayward son to come home? How many times have you been at retreats or mission trips that have opportunities for you to pin up your sins on a cross as a representation of being forgiven by Christ? We focus so much on our own personal sins, on our own guilt, on how our righteousness is as rags, and on how we have been washed white as snow by the blood of Christ, that often we miss other aspects of the gospel that speak just as loudly and just as powerfully and that would, indeed, speak more loudly and more powerfully from a different cultural perspective. Scripture has a huge amount of richness to speak into all three types of cultures, but we are entirely focused on guilt-forgiveness.

Take, for instance, Mark 5:24-34. This is the story about the woman who has been afflicted by bleeding for years upon years and when she touches Christ's garment, she is healed. This story takes place in a shame-honor culture. This woman, according to Leviticus, is not just unclean - she is publicly unclean. Only the pure could enter the temple. She bore her affliction not privately, but in relation to the rest of the community; her position in this community was a position of shame. And what does Jesus do? He publicly heals her. He publicly restores her honor, her position in this shame-honor community is radically changed. When we see something like this, we might think of her bleeding as a sign of her sins that have been forgiven, but it speaks so powerfully to her honor being restored. In the West, we have a gospel for the sinners, but not really for the sinned against. Those who desperately need to be lifted up from the ash heap and restored to dignity and honor. The profound shame that Jesus bore on the cross is not as fully understood by us in a guilt-forgiveness setting.

This is all, of course, not at all to say that the guilt-forgiveness aspect of the gospel is not important - it is! And vitally so! But in other cultures, sometimes the idea of your own personal sin and your own personal guilt isn't even a concept one would be able to wrap his or her mind around! Their primary mode of thinking is not about their sin and their guilt at all. Eventually, the gospel will work its power and transform them to help them realize their guilt, just as eventually we as Westerners will slowly come to step out of our comfort zones and realize what it means that the gospel speaks to Fear-Power as well as Guilt-Forgiveness.

In Africa, they don't really doubt the existence of the spiritual powers in this world. The Apostle's Creed that we profess in America says naught about the three years of Jesus' works and deeds. In fact, it skips right from being born of the virgin Mary to suffering under Pontius Pilate! Some of you Knox people will remember the African Creed that we as a church professed when the McCropders were all in Michigan worshipping with us - in this creed, it takes about how Jesus went on Safari for three years, healing and working miracles. Christ the Healer, Christ the wonderworker, He is largely absent from Western theology. We see his demon excursions and miraculous healings only as proof of his divinity, but it has no day to day relevance for us. In a place with accessible, top-notch medical care, the power of God the healer is greatly minimized. And a God who controls demons not just in the Bible but in every day life here on earth in the year 2013, well for most that's just strange, uncomfortable, and just a little scary. And henceforth our religion becomes a personal experience about our interior stuff, and about us getting a ticket to Heaven for after we die. But for the African where there is great need for healing, where there is great need for the power of a higher divinity to come and dispel the darkness, personal forgiveness of sins may just not be as radically life-changing as it would for someone raised American. For the African, a God with the power to control demons, with the power to give sight to the blind, this is truly a magnificent God who is worthy of our praise! And it's 100% worth it to get on board with the Kingdom of God in all its unfathomable greatness and majesty and power. And of course this is not just a cultural gospel, this is the gospel! It talks a lot about the fantastic power of the Lord all over the Bible actually. A lot! Pastor Bob gave us these scriptures to do as an exercise. Look these up, and match them with one of the three main cultural types:

1 Peter 3:18a (Romans 6:23)

John 12:30-32 (1 John 4:4)

Ezekiel 16:8 (Ephesians 2:11-13, 19)

Matthew 12:22-29 (Luke 10:17, 18)

Isaiah 53:4-6

Psalm 34:4-5 (1 Peter 2:6)

Ephesians 1:7

1 Samuel 2:8 (Leviticus 26:13)

Colossians 2:15 (Ephesians 4:7,8)

Now interestingly, all the scriptures that speak to guilt and forgiveness were scriptures I was very very familiar with, scriptures that are the "go to" scriptures of the West. While few of the other references were ones that have impacted me significantly, or ones that I turn to frequently for encouragement. But if I were living a shame-honor culture or a fear-power culture, that would likely be a different story. Of course we are all believe in God's power, of course we all believe that He will restore us to honor, but that guilt-forgiveness aura is undeniably present in the way we present the gospel.

And so when we go into a place that has yet to hear the good news, what exactly is our starting point? It feels more natural, more comfortable, more powerful and profound to share what speaks to us and what has been central to our understanding of the gospel for our entire lives. But more likely than not, missions overseas will entail spreading the Power of Jesus as Lord, preaching the Kingdom of God as a Kingdom that will ultimately prevail over all others, a God who reigns and who makes all things news. The good news of the poor, the least of these being lifted out of their ruin and misery and into restoration and dignity and honor.

Well that's about it for now. Time to go back to class! Hopefully the information disclosed in this blog post is not confidential, for-McCropder-ears-only, because it really ought to be for all ears to hear and understand!