All of us use shortcuts in our thinking. That is, we have a set of “truths” that we rely on to guide our day to day interactions with the world. Many of these truths are inherited from someone(s) else who has done the hard work of thinking it through. In the modern world, we are in debt to people like Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Maimonedes, Al Jabeer, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, etc., for much of our conception of reality and how the universe works. Thus, we are not generally worried about whether the sun will rise in the morning or whether an eclipse means an evil god is trying to eat the moon.
In morality, the West and the Middle East are mostly influenced by one of the Abrahamic religions. This does not mean that the members of these groups are all practicing believers. In fact, there are large pockets of a type of practical agnosticism in these countries. Rather, it means that when laws are written, they tend to conform to the moral dictates of one of the Abrahamic religions. It also means that most of the citizens of those countries feel more comfortable internally when the laws generally tend to conform to general Abrahamic morality. For instance, countries with a Christian background tend to oppose either polygamy or polyandry in their laws. Countries with an Islamic background tend to allow polygamy but not polyandry.
In politics, the world is basically democratic. Even such repressive regimes as North Korea claim to be democratic. But, it is in economic theory that one sees the widest variety of systems. From almost laissez-faire capitalism to full Marxist communism the variety of expressions of economic systems is rather large. In each country, governmental rules reflect the predominant system of thought present in that particular culture.
The challenge is when we begin to look outside ourselves to another system. Because we live in a particular system, we tend to feel most comfortable with that system of thought. There are quite strong exceptions, of course, and you see that either in countries with very strong resistance movements or countries that are forced to use totalitarian methods of control in order to maintain power. But, to return to my original musings, we tend to feel uncomfortable when we look at other systems of running a culture.
When my family and I were missionaries in Bolivia, we learned about the Aymara culture of the altiplano. They were more group-oriented and less individual-oriented than citizens of the USA. Thus, the question of whether something was good for the village-as-a-whole meant that sometimes the Aymara were not pleased if one individual began to rise too far above the rest of the village without somehow including the village in their rise. As citizens of the USA we would say that the person had raised themselves by their bootstraps and ought to be celebrated. For the Aymara, the person was destroying the unity of the community.
When we were eventually in Perú, we found that the Quechua in a village that I visited regularly (and by mule) were also communitarian. They still had memories of a missionary who had come 30 years before, had “converted” some of the villagers, and then had set up a church building on the outskirts of the village. The missionary was out of a separatist fundamentalist background. The villagers began to separate into true believers and supposedly semi-heathens. Eventually, it resulted in several villagers being expelled from the village and the missionary being forbidden to return. It scarred the village, and I was shown the remains of the church when I arrived 30 years later.
Not surprisingly, the village elders were not very welcoming. For my part, I had been raised mostly in the USA and had strong personal beliefs about individual liberties. Fortunately, we had been taught about the Aymara when we were in Bolivia. Fortunately, the village elders slowly told me about that missionary. Fortunately, at first, I was only able to go visit about every other month. It allowed me to avoid making a cultural assumption about what was the right way for a group to run itself. As a result, all of our approaches to that group became communitarian approaches. When we did something, it was for the entire village. Thus, the mission built a Mothers’ Center for the women, and not just for the Christians. I treated everyone as my parishioner. I listened to the village elders. Eventually, a village church took root. Rather than individual conversions, the group moved closer to Christ. It was very different than the way evangelism is done in the USA. And, it was every bit as correct for it functioned within that culture.
Not everything was sweetness and light. There were cultural/religious clashes that I had to work through. When the Mothers’ Center was built, the elders wanted to offer a libation to Pachamama. I had to explain that, as a Christian, I could not allow a libation to another goddess. It led to discussion, but the village elders had come to know me and knew that I was respectful to them. I must admit, I sweated some over that discussion, but it worked. No libation was offered and the center was dedicated.
Nevertheless, I do not submit to the idea that all beliefs are somewhat equal. That is not only incredibly illogical, but it also leads to some of the muddled mess of thinking that we find in the USA today. Fascism and Communism are not equal to some types of capitalism and/or some types of social democracies. Totalitarianism and democratic governments are not equal. Female circumcision is not acceptable and can be extremely damaging and cruel. You get the idea.
What I am saying is there is room for grey areas in our thinking. I have a strong core of beliefs that I am willing to go to the wall for. But, I have learned to have another set of beliefs that I hold as appropriate for this culture but not necessarily appropriate for every culture. For instance, here is a small insignificant cultural belief. In the USA, men do not tend to wear swimsuit briefs when going swimming. In many parts of Europe, men wear them regularly. In the USA, people would be agog in many swimming areas should they see a man in briefs, unless it were an official swimming competition. Not true in many parts of Europe. In the USA, I would counsel a man to wear swimming trunks. In many parts of Europe, I would not be concerned whether they wore trunks or briefs.
Now, this may seem like a small example, except that there are countries in which you could be in trouble for wearing the wrong attire. When I was in Peru, I went to the bank one day wearing good respectable shorts. I was new to Peru. The bank guard quietly asked me whether I was coming from or going to a sports setting. It was a very polite way of letting me know that shorts were not appropriate in Peru when conducting a business transaction. We could care less in the USA. Had I been culturally insensitive and insisted on wearing shorts after that, I would probably have eventually been forbidden from entering the bank. Now, this was several decades ago in the altiplano area of Peru, so I do not know what would be true today.
What is the upshot to this? Well, it is to remind me of the hard-learned lessons of life as a missionary in two countries with somewhat different cultures. It is to remind me that I need to evaluate myself periodically to see whether I am doing the right things. In fact, Saint Paul alludes to this when he asks us to, ” Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified.” I no longer believe that this is merely a Scriptural belief self-examination. I now realize that it means to examine not only what I believe, but how I apply those beliefs in the particular culture in which I am living. It is possible for me to have correct beliefs with an appalling application of those beliefs.
Leave a Reply