discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 90
90 How Culture Affects Mission
In Christ there is no East or West,
In Him no South or North;
But one great fellowship of love
Thro’out the whole wide earth. 1
What do the words of William Dunkerley’s classic 1908 hymn really mean?
Is it true that for those who are in Christ, there is no east or west or north or
south? Paul clearly said that in Christ there was to be unity, “There is neither
Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all
one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). While believers must affirm the truth of
that biblical passage, there is danger that saying, “In Christ there is no east or
west” really means, “Well, in the end, everybody is just like me.” Clearly, everybody
is not “just like me.” To be sure, both science and the Bible say that the
human family is one race, the human race. However, while human beings are
one family biologically, they are very different culturally and linguistically.
Defining Culture
Definition
Culture can be used in a narrow sense to mean good manners and a taste
for classical art and music. The word culture broadens in meaning when it
refers to a people’s way of life in phrases such as Mexican culture and Indonesian
culture. Utilized in this way, culture means the customs, ways of thinking, and
material products of individual societal groups. As missionary Bob Sjogren put
it, culture is what makes people think of us as us and them as them. 2
Englishman Sir Edward B. Tylor was a 19th-century pioneer in the scientific
study of cultures. His 1871 definition of culture remains very usable, “Culture
is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals,
custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of
society.” 3 Because none of these things are passed on biologically, the word
learned is a key in defining culture. Take, for example, a Chinese newborn
adopted by American parents of European origin. Because there is nothing inborn
about language or culture, that child who is genetically Chinese will grow
up speaking English rather than Mandarin and will eat with a knife and fork
rather than with chopsticks.
To really know a culture, one must look at far more than how people dress
and what they eat. Culture includes all of a society’s material products from
furniture to perfume and from art to toys. Culture includes ways of seeing and
evaluating things. For example, what will be judged as unforgivably late by one
culture may be seen as exactly on time in another. Culture determines the ways
in which groups make decisions, and it shapes leadership styles. Roles and sta-