Stepchild writes in this post about the immigration problem in Western Europe, where the flood of immigrants threatens the extinction of traditional European cultures:
Gone are the days of leaving one’s home culture to adopt a new way of life in a new place. Turks are moving to Frankfurt and living as though they were still in Turkey. Moroccans in Paris are setting up Muslim prayer rooms and markets. The Chinese in Barcelona aren’t bothering to learn the local language.
These issues are not new in North America. The number of Mexicans (among others) immigrating to the United States and Canada is astounding. Those of us from the U.S. know this is causing a great deal of angst in our country. Many share the fear of Western Europeans that our culture will be diluted with the tide of immigrants from Mexico and other countries who are keeping much of their own culture. I am often amazed, though not surprised, at how often I meet Mexicans who know very little English, even after living in the U.S. for 5 or 10 years. The reason is simple – they live and work with other Mexicans, thus preserving their culture.
Stepchild’s post got me thinking more about our missionary methods as Westerners in other cultures, though. We missionaries are also immigrants, aren’t we? Here’s the problem: Missionaries in Mexico are building U.S.-style church buildings. Equippers in India are opening Western-style Bible schools. Church planters in southeast Asia aren’t bothering to learn the local language. Cross-cultural workers everywhere are holing up in compounds, preserving our cultures. And the more we preserve our own culture, the less we adopt the local culture. (My family and the missionaries we work with are not immune to this accusation, by the way. We have a problem on our hands, which we have recognized and are taking steps to correct.)
We as cross-cultural missionaries have good intentions, but do we threaten the extinction of indigenous cultures in the Body of Christ through Western dilution? To the extent that a valued cultural distinctive is lost in favor of Western practices, an ethnic group will never be a complete expression of responding to and following God in their own, unique way. Maybe this doesn’t seem like a big deal, but that’s because we can’t possibly conceive what it is like for a non-Westerner to try and relate to God in a Western way. I have seen Christians in nearby villages struggle through services in Spanish, though their first language is a tribal language very different than Spanish. This is because those who brought them the Gospel never learned the heart language of the villagers. They brought the gospel in Spanish, and now the people think that Spanish must somehow be God’s language.
The great danger here is an underlying sense of superiority that we Westerners tend to have towards other cultures. We are pretty convinced that we have figured out the right way to do things. I know I was. It has taken living in and being exposed to other cultures over a period of time to slowly begin to be broken of this attitude. This attitude is so engrained in us, that I think we often hardly recognize it’s there. We need to be oh-so-careful when we relate to people from other cultures if we are to be effective ambassadors of Christ. This is a big deal.
