THREE INTERSECTING ASPECTS OF THE WILL OF GOD
SOVEREIGN WISDOM MORAL
So how does a contextualizer differentiate between what is a moral absolute and what is a cultural ideal that runs contradictory to God’s standards? It seems that the solution is found through discrimatorily discerning what are God’s essential principles in their original context. Second, a contextualizer needs to distinguish the ways in which those principles were communicated in their original cultural context. Third, the contextualizer should consider which elements are cultural values that are supracultural and which are expressions of cultural specifics that are non-essentials. For example, Paul told the Corinthians that a woman should have her head covered during worship services. This aligned with the principles of women demonstrating meekness and submission to the church authorities as representatives of God’s leadership. The Corinthian culture understood that wearing a head covering best expressed this in their culture. So Paul encouraged this practice, but today, many western families look at headcovering as a non-essential or culturally specific directive to the people of that time and context. So a western woman would demonstrate her submission to the church authorities by other means, but with similar attitudes of humility. This gentle and quiet spirit is what God is looking for as Peter reminds us in his letter, not the great attention to externals.
Therefore, a contextualizer seeks to be able to discerningly pick out the ideals of scripture and the ideals of culture and look for parallels. Don Richardson has made popular the redemptive analogy style of contextual evangelism in his book called Peace Child. In working with the Sawi tribe of Papau New Guinea, he discovered the value of analogizing the peace child between two warring villages and Jesus Christ, our chief reconciler between God and men. With this concept he has written numerous articles and books like Eternity in Their Hearts, encouraging others to think in terms of drawing bridges between the ideals hidden in the cultural consciences of people and those of the scripture. Take for example the following instance of a redemptive analogy from Perspectives on page 416 in an article called Concept Fulfillment he writes:
``When a missionary enters another culture, he is conspicuously foreign, and that is to be expected. but often the gospel he preaches is labeled foreign. How can he explain the gospel so it seems culturally right? The New Testament way seems to be through concept fulfillment. Consider:
The Jewish people practiced lamb sacrifice. John the Baptist proclaimed Jesus as the perfect, personal fulfillment of that sacrifice by saying, ``Behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.’’ This is concept fulfillment.
Nicodemus, a Jewish teacher, knew that Moses had lifted up a serpent of brass upon a pole, so that Jews when dying of snakebite could look at it and be healed.
Jesus promised, ``As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’’
This too is concept fulfillment.
A Jewish multitude, recalling that Moses had provided miraculous manna on a six-a-day-week basis, hinted that Jesus ought to repeat His miracle of the loaves and fishes on a similar schedule.
Jesus replied, ``Moses gave you not the true bread from heaven. The true bread from heaven is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world . . . I am the Bread of Life.’’ Once again concept fulfillment.
When some charged that Christianity was destroying the Jewish culture, the writer to the Hebrews shoed how Christ actually fulfilled all the central elements of Jewish culture - the priesthood, tabernacle, sacrifices, and even the Sabbath Rest. Let’s call these redemptive analogies - looking for their fulfillment in Christ. Their God-ordained purpose was to pre-condition the Jewish mind to recognize Jesus as Messiah.’’
How wonderful it is that our God works within and through human cultures. He bends over backwards to communicate His truth in terms that we not only can understand, but value. His will is best discerned through our experiences as the writer of Hebrews so aptly put it in Hebrews 5:12-14 when he wrote:
``Some of you ought to be teachers by this time but you stand in need of someone to teach you the elementary principles of God’s lessons; you have come to need milk and not solid food. Of course, anyone who feeds on milk is inexperienced in the matter of righteousness, for he an infant. But solid food is for the mature person, for those who faculties have been trained by practice (Several translations use the word experience) to distinguish between good and evil.’’
In other words, the Lord’s methods and message is affected by how the respondent culture will most effectively understand the truth. Therefore, it would be presumptuous for contextualizers to assume that ``God’s word will not return to Him without accomplishing its purposes,’’ (Isa. 55:5-10) and sit and fold their hands fatalistically claiming that the people are just too hard hearted to receive the message. God’s ideals are usually written in supracultural terms such as loving the Lord with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind and our neighbor as ourselves. (Luke 10:27) This leaves room for each culture to work out the meaning of that command in terms that makes sense to them. For an American that may means exhibiting an exuberance for understanding systematic and Biblical theology textbooks so that he can be a better preacher. But an African may interpret that to may that he needs to spend more time visiting his members and entertaining visitors while listening patiently to their problems. The American preacher may look at the African Pastor as lazy and undisciplined if he is judging another in terms of his own ideals. While the African Pastor may view the American Pastor as cold, unloving, and inconsiderate of the real problems of people. Both judgments would reflect an ethnocentric bias that belies the ability to see each cultural perception as valid.
Dye shares his insights about this problem of judging wrongly across cultures when he writes:
``Back before they had Christian teaching, I tried to translate Jesus’ list of sins in Mark 7. As each sin was described, they gave me the local terms for it. They named other sins in their culture. What did your ancestors tell you about these things? I ask them. ``Oh, they told us we shouldn’t do any of those things.’’
``Do you think these were good standards that your ancestors gave you?’’ They agreed unanimously that they were. ``Well, do you keep all these rules?’’ ``No,’’ they responded sheepishly.
One leader said, ``Definitely not. Who could ever keep them all? We’re people of the ground.’’ (Dye, 1976:39)
In other words a contextualizer responsibility is to look for the areas of frustration to live up to the people’s own ideals first. This then allows the people to see that you are working through what they think they need rather than what the outsider does. It is a matter of where you begin and what you begin with as well as how you begin that makes the difference in contextualization ministries. The sharp interpretative edges of each verse are best interpreted in the light of Biblical culture and then the receptor’s context. Try to begin with the context of the author of scripture, the respondent’s of that letter and then relate the truth to the needs, problems, and world views of the culture you seek to communicate the message to. As Paul once wrote in Romans 2:15,16:
``For when Gentiles who lack the Law do naturally practice it, they are for themselves a law, though they have none. They show that what the Law requires is written in their hearts, while the conscience also bears witness and their thought accuse or defend one another.’’
William Barclay explains this passage in his commentary of Romans by writing:
``Paul goes on to say that we would call this unwritten law in their hearts as the instinctive knowledge of right and wrong. The Stoics said that in the universe there were certain laws operative which a man broke at his peril - the laws o health, the moral law, the laws which govern life and loving. The Stoics called these laws which govern life and living . . . It is Paul’s argument that in the very nature of man there is implanted an innate, inherent and instinctive knowledge of what he ought to do . . . Aristotle said, ``The cultivated and free-minded man will so behave as being a law to himself.’’ Plutarch says, ``Law, the king of all mortals and immortals, as Pinder calls it, which is not written on papyrus rolls or wooden tablets, but is his own reason within the soul, which perpetually dwells with him and guards him and never leaves his soul bereft of leadership.’’
In other words God uses a variety of combinations of shame, disgrace, and anxiety to make men of every culture of their inadequacies to live according to His inherent laws. This is not only through the role of the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, but also through the negative sanctions that each culture places on its peoples. People can harden their consciences through habitual disobedience and disregard the prompting of this inner law. But, each person, through their culture, experience, gifts, callings, goals, aptitudes, interests, friends, and vocations shaped their senses of what is the best, better, good, and wrong ways to carry out the will of God for their lives. Listen again to what Wayne Dye has to say on the subject:
``It therefore cannot be exactly the same as the Holy Spirit’s voice, nor can it be a reliable guide to God’s ultimate will for an individual. ON the other hand, it is each person’s point of awareness of right and wrong, and the principal channel through which the Spirit convicts and enlightens (Prov. 20:27). Knowing this, Jesus appealed to the consciences of the hypocritical Pharisees. As a result they couldn’t bring themselves to condemn the woman taken in adultery (John 8:7-9) It is the same way today. Preaching which results in conviction must deal with the issues which are already bothering the consciences of one’s hearers. (Dye; 32-33)
For an African it will be right to spend a great deal of time visiting friends, family members, and connections throughout his lifetime. However, a western professor may feel convicted that he needs to research, write, and prepare thoroughly for each lecture before hand, thereby limiting him from spending much time with the people. The difference is that African culture tends to reward someone who is highly sociable and outgoing, where western professors are rewarded more for their individual research and private writings. Each professor is responding to the positive and negative rewards systems that are most strongly reinforced by their respective cultural value systems.
Many missionaries struggle with this as they continue to judge their African peers as well as their missionary colleagues according to their own standards rather than by God’s. They forget that when we compare ourselves with ourselves, Paul says we are lacking understanding. (2 Cor. 10:12) Dye writes additional insights into this matter as he explains his approach to verses like I Cor. 8:4 which says, ``where the man who perceives an idol as alive sins if he eats sacrificial meat, but only the person who understands this would be free to eat such meat . . . It is not the act itself which is important, but the underlying character of one’s relationship to God (Rom. 14:17). A man must do what he believes pleases God or be condemned (Rom. 14:12,18,22,23). Different people will do different, even opposite, things to please God (Rom. 14:2,3,5,6)
God not only judges each of them differently, but actually makes each one succeed in pleasing Him (Rom. 14:4). Therefore, we must not be contemptuous of those who feel obliged to follow rules that seem irrelevant, nor should we feel we are more spiritual than those who do not live up to our ideals of Christian behavior (Rom. 14:10). Put another way, each of us is answerable to God, not to others. Only the Master knows exactly what He wants each servant to do. We should not judge another person because God may be leading him to obey in quiet a different way. Nevertheless, we must be careful not to do things which are wrong for others and will tempt them to follow our example.’’ (Rom. 14:13-15, 20-21) (Dye 1976:33)
In no way is this chapter of Romans lessening the truth of the previous thirteen chapters or any other section of scripture. Neither is this suggesting that our freedoms should lead us to do things that would discredit the scriptures. There must always be a balance between Christian laws, love, and liberty illustrated by the following isosceles triangle:
/\
LOVE / \ LAW
/ \
/______\
LIBERTY
Only when these three elements are in balance from his own perspective, the respondent’s perspectives and the scriptural perspective can a contextualizer communicate the message most effectively. It is for this reason that Paul cautions any contextualizer to avoid passing judgment on others. Instead he says, that communicators - both verbal and non-verbal, should concentrate on not putting unnecessary stumbling blocks in their brother’s way. So for this reason if wearing shorts in Nigeria causes people to reject the Christian message as immoral, missionaries should defer from wearing shorts in public. Granted there are a number of gray issues or neutral matters that may not fit into the categories of either good or bad such as wearing glasses. The Greek Stoics use to say, ``It all depends by handle you pick things up with. To one person an object may be a useless piece of scrap metal. But to another person it may be an expensive piece of art work. To another person it may be an idol that he uses to worship certain gods. To another man it may be seen as device for spare parts to fix his car’s engine with. This explains why some of our students at the seminary succeed in certain fields, but not in others. While some people are possessed with the ability to make a lot of money while others struggle along barely able to feed their families. To some a game may be a mechanisms of determining superiority over an opponent - like many of the games played in America. But yesterday, when I watched the seminary students play volleyball, it was obvious that the game was mainly to enjoy fellowship, laugh at silly plays, and to generally enjoy life in a community of like minded believers. There seemed to be more joy seen in those 30 minutes of volleyball at the seminary than I witness with some of my missionary colleagues in a month’s time. This leads one to believe that there are activities that to some would be very sinful and potentially ruinous, but to others would be perfectly harmless depending on their consciences.
The point that Paul is making in Romans 14 is that the thing, event, or the activity is neither clean or unclean in itself; its character is determined by the person who sees it or by his perception of it. One should be vigilant to understand that a mature Christian will not see any harm in certain ways of preaching. However, a new Christian coming from an Islamic background might be terribly offended by the way that the Pastor puts his Bible underneath other books on the pulpit, for example. It is rather amusing sometimes to watch some of my neighbors on the compound in Nigeria become angry with the dozens of children who play on the tennis court during Sunday afternoons. It goes against their conscience sensibilities to think that people are violating the Sabbath with games. However, many of us see no harm in the games of the children because we have consciences that see Sundays’ as a day of rest which can be expressed in different ways. For the children, games are rest. For the adults rest may be taking a two hour nap, both are relative expressions of each others culture, needs, and perceptions. We should not allow our conduct to be dictated by others consciences, but to be sensitive to avoid causing unnecessary offense as long as it remains possible.
The trick is trying to find which things, ideas, events, or activities fall into the baskets of the essentials, non-essentials, or the indifferent. The customs of each culture has a range of taboos that are expressions of these three baskets of acceptable or non-acceptable or indifferent elements. We must always be guided by love and if we do our lives will act responsibly as will those of the respondents’ culture. Augustine said it best when he said, ``The whole Christian ethic could be summed up in the saying, ``Love God, and do what you like.’’
As we live and work with growing Christians our goal should be to raised their consciences to the supracultural ideals of scripture. If missionaries, Pastors, or cross-cultural teachers can learn how to do this they will experience a great deal of frustration and ineffectiveness in carrying out the will of God. Observe what Dye reports:
``Some missionaries have come to understand sin in a quite different way than his hearers do. He finds it hard to believe that God is not even speaking to those people about behavior which would for him be clearly sinful. Without disciplined application of the above principles, the only thing he knows is to preach about ``sins’’ for which they do not feel convicted, and which in fact may not be sin at all for them. At the same time he ignores other sins which are real problems for them. In effect the missionary unintentionally takes on the role of the Holy Spirit, instead of cooperating with the Holy Spirit in His work.
In spite of all this, converts are won with such preaching. But they still face some difficult problems. For one thing, they may have a very long struggle learning what God wants for them, since they hear through their consciences. One result may be a slavish obedience to everything the missionary suggests or does, including brushing one’s teeth and putting flowers on the dinner table. This inability to function independently greatly delays the development of an indigenous church.
Eventually, if the converts are taught the whole range of Scripture, or if they have the Bible for themselves, they may come to see how different is the teaching they have been given from own sense of what is right. The result is a breakaway, independent church. Barret (1968) found that among the more than 6000 independent churches in Africa, a common reason given for separation was: The missionaries were living inconsistent lives. In terms of Romans 14, the Africans were tired of trying to live by someone else’s conscience.
One group of New Guinea highlanders responded to the mission teaching and were baptized. For several years they tithed, attended church, and followed the mission’s Christian behavior. Then one day the leaders told the missionary, ``We ought to have done enough by now to repay Jesus for his death’’. (Irwin 1972). They thereupon reverted to paganism. Or did they? Had they ever known real conviction of sin and forgiveness? Or had they only heard about the things that would have been sinful to the missionary if he were living there. (Dye 1976:37)
Dye suggest the following steps to cooperate with the conscience mechanisms in the receptor’s cultural conditioned thinking. When the scriptural truths are presented the people from the points of views that they deem convicting, motivating, and truthful, then a contextualizer is on his way to real transformation by the Spirit of God rather than indoctrination by the spirit of man. Dye suggests the following six steps:
1. Learn the ethical system of your potential hearers.
2. Compare your findings with your own culture and with the Bible. Become sensitive to the strengths and weaknesses of yours and theirs. This helps overcome blind spots and ethnocentrism.
3. Learn to live a loving life by THEIR CULTURAL STANDARDS. Be a witness to them without going against your own conscience (2 Cor. 4:2). For each decision you make, remember which cultural framework you are thinking in: your own culture, their culture, or the New Testament culture. Make decisions within the appropriate cultural framework.
4. Preach repentance for areas in which the Holy Spirit is already convicting. . . Begin to teach with patience about God’s concern and standards for actions which, though cultural, are in conflict with the Bible. Pray that you will be able to accept those aspects of the culture which, though galling, are compatible with the Christian faith.
5. Expect the Holy Spirit to be working. Keep getting feedback to find out how He is working, and also as a check on whether you are really communicating. Learn to trust the insights of the new converts. They may be able to teach you something new about the full breadth, depth, and height of the meanings of truths in the scripture.
6. Teach the converts to obey and rely on the Holy Spirit. Teach them how to keep their consciences clear so the Holy Spirit can use their consciences to teach them new truths. Expose them to the Bible, not just the ``pre-digested’’ form of your lessons plans. Teach them to take from it the principles they need for wise and truly Christian answers. (Dye 1976:38-39)
Dye said that when he started to explain to the Bahinemo people the expectations of God and his disappointment in them in terms of the differences between their behavior and their own ideals, they really listened. He showed them how the Lord used Jesus Christ to carry out God’s redemptive activities in reuniting them with Him so that they could live up to both their ideals and His.
``This was a crucial step toward their conversion. For the first time the Scriptures were linked to what God was telling them through THEIR CONSCIENCES. Within a year most of the people in that village had committed themselves to Christ.
Since that day in 1967, they have never lost the awareness that in the Bible God is concerned about their daily behavior and not just talking about strange taboos (from the missionaries). Since the, they have changed their source of authority from inherited traditions to the Scriptures, and they have been learning how Christ through His Spirit can come inside them and give them the power to attain the standards they could not keep before. All this has led them into a vital relationship with God and produced a strong indigenous church (Dye 1976:39-40)
A contextualizer wears many different hats. Through pastoring, teaching, and counselling, a contextualizer includes his mentalities and approaches toward marriage in some of the following ministries. First, he might use these attitudes and insights about the contextualization of marriage into a series of his sermons. Second, he could use this approach to set up a series of marriage and family relational seminars throughout the churches in his area. Thirdly, the contextualizer could offer to visit several couples with other Pastors who could learn from his methodologies. Fourth, the contextualizer might want to write several pamphlets on the subject of contextualized marriage counselling. Fifthly, the contextualizer could arrange to set up a premarital counselling service in his locality in order to put the proper emphasis on preventative rather than remedial or curative marriage counselling. Sixthly, the contextualizer may choose to set up continuing education classes at a local university, seminary, or evening school in his church. Seventh, at every wedding, the contextualizer could present his relevant approaches to marriage during the ceremony. Eighth, the contextualizer may be able to influence Christian musicians and artists to develop songs and paintings that will affect the local radio and television programming with the ideas of contextualized marriage and family relationships. Ninth, the contextualizer may choose to write books, especially textbooks for training Pastors in the cognitive, affective, behavioral, and spiritual growth areas of marriage and family relationships. Tenth, the contextualizer may influence hundreds to begin to pray toward better contextualization of marriage and Christian home relations bringing a reawakening of the higher goals of the family.
