Culture and our faith

The Lunar New Year will soon be here. For us Chinese or ethnic Chinese we observe our Chinese culture, rightly so. Even among the different dialectic groups there are differences in the observation.

We live in an area where there are so many cultures. Our forefathers came from different parts of the world and have passed down to us their languages, beliefs, customs, way of life and superstitions all under the umbrella called culture. We live in a multi racial, multi religious and multi cultural country and on the whole we have been able to live peaceably with each other.

However there are times when we have to face cultural conflicts within the community and family. This often happens when one member of the family decides to convert to another faith. This means not just a change of religion, but to some extent a change of culture or behavior pattern.

Christianity was brought to us by missionaries from the west and is often seen as a ‘western religion’ and that is not true. The fact is Christianity originated from the Middle East and not Europe or America.

We are indebted to the many western missionaries in the past who had left the comfort of their own homeland to come to our country at that time when we were still classified as the ‘third world.’ We are no more third world. They brought to us the gospel and at the same time they could not help influencing us with their cultures as well. Missionaries are human and although living in another culture could not help living out their culture and sometimes find it difficult to accept our culture. And worst still when the missionary is seen as threatening our culture.

Once we had an Officer Commanding who on arrival made the comment that Christians should not observe the customs of Chinese New Year. He spoke too soon and brought much unhappiness among our people. My advice to our overseas friends, "Don't be too quick to make negative comments about our way of doing things. You may live to regret it."

To me the willingness to learn is the prerequisite or condition for the right to preach and teach! That sounds hard and many of us would prefer to wince at such a demand. But is not humility a virtue that our Lord portrayed when He came to earth to be our Saviour. He emptied Himself and took upon Himself our nature which includes our culture. He became totally one of us.

Now what is culture? It has to do with beliefs and behaviour patterns passed down from generation to generation. It is our way of life and we cannot separate from religion. Conversion to Christianity does not involve stepping out of our own culture into a new culture. Culture has the habit of adapting itself to its surroundings and the wise person learns to evolve with culture.

We must recognize that we live in a fallen world, tainted with sin. So cultures can be good or bad. As Christians we measure our culture with the word of God. To quote the Lausanne Covenent, “Culture must always be tested and judged by Scripture.Because man is God’s creature, some of his culture is rich in beauty and goodness. Because he has fallen, culture may be tainted with sin and some of it perhaps even demoniac.”

So we need to search the Scriptures and seek God’s wisdom in knowing how to distinguish between right and wrong in our own culture. It is important for us to learn the difference, Culture which is inherently evil or against the Christian faith, must be renounced, but culture which is good, should be retained. There are some that lie in what we might termed the grey areas might even be transformed and enriched.

In our society where Christians in the minority, we have to accept the fact that non-Christians culture still dominate. These may or may not conflict with our Christian culture. Culture is ambivalent. Not one culture is superior to another culture Culture expresses itself in customs and people feel threatened when we criticize their customs.

I pray for the enlightenment by God's Holy Spirit.