The power of culture and history

Culture and history are a powerful combination. It is all around us and affects our thinking whether we are aware of it or not. I was pretty clueless about this until I went through a dramatic theological shift from Arminianism to reformed theology. It was then that I embarked on a journey to learn about what I believed now, what I formerly believed, and why. It was difficult at times but worth digging up the roots of ideas I had taken for granted as gospel truth which were not. The journey has only continued, and since the 2016 election I am making a feeble attempt to understand the blending of evangelicalism and American culture that brought us to where we are today. My intent isn't to blame but to understand so I can be a bridge builder. It grieves me to see professing believers so sharply divided in the last few years particularly when it comes to issues of ethnicity and gender. Perhaps I can be someone who asks questions to get people to think about things they have not considered before.

To illustrate the power of culture in my own life, here's one example. The pressure to succeed academically is very important for Asian immigrants. Getting a good education means getting a good job with a good company who may be willing to sponsor you for a green card and eventual citizenship. But once the family has gotten their naturalization papers, the pressure is off, right? Wrong. Even though I can't remember my parents consciously pushing me to do well in college, I felt it. I vowed to not put that pressure on my daughter, but somehow she inherited the "Asian rabid academic gene," as she calls it. Where did it come from? Our culture. It's not just "out there." It's not just through TV, commercials, and other media. It's in how I spoke and heard others speak of people and their professions. It's in the random comments about education, money, and success. My daughter and I absorbed these impressions, and their impact was proportional to the regard we had for the person who voiced them. How many generations back does this go? I don't know, but it's real, and it's powerful especially because we were not aware it was going on.

As another example, I was never a big fan of Christian women's books, but I had friends who were helped by them, so I began to read a few. After the dysfunction in my former marriage came to light, I began to pick up on the inability of many of these books to accurately and adequately address abuse. But there was something still nagging me. It was only in the last couple of years that I could put my finger on it, and the only way I can describe it is this - I felt like I had to turn into Melanie Wilkes from Gone with the Wind to be good Christian woman. The adjectives describing the ideal and the whole vibe resonated of the Antebellum South, the Victorian era, and its more recent version, the 1950's SAHM. I'm not making an accusation of racism. This just illustrates the power of culture. Every book I read was written by a white woman of a certain age from a conservative Christian background. It is really no surprise that they would draw from their culture in looking for examples and descriptors. It is also no surprise that nostalgia for the past would be invoked especially with the upheavals of the 1960's and 70's. But my question is this - Does familiarity make a cultural expression biblical? What should I do with this ideal since my cultural perspective is completely different? Assimilate and become like Miss Melly? Is my heritage so bereft of godly women that I need to go to another culture to find one?

The power of culture and history not only shapes our ideals but also our fears. This past Sunday, my pastor spoke on fear of God versus fear of man from Psalm 118. We fear people for what they can do to us, but we also fear/reverence them for what they can do for us. My illustration for the former - losing what we once were as a nation and the accompanying loss of power and influence we formerly held in society. And to illustrate the latter - Vice President Pence's speech at the SBC convention. I can see why Christians would feel this way, but these fears are not mine because their history isn't mine, and what they are afraid of losing was never mine to begin with.¹ Just hearken back to "better" days, say before the 2nd wave of feminism, what else was occurring? This was  the time of Jim Crow. Asian Americans were few and far between due to severely restricted immigration. Does this matter? I think it does because our inability to acknowledge the differences in our fears, our history, and what moves us to nostalgia has contributed to the recent political disagreements among Christians. The "Make America Great Again" slogan invokes wide responses depending upon the hearer. Some may think of a time in their past or their parents' past with fondness. However, my reaction is, "When and for whom?" because the past has not been equally kind. So what do we do? Just stay mum and keep our opinions to ourselves?

No, I believe our cultural and historical differences need to be acknowledged and discussed with humility rather than just checking them at the church door. Borrowing from a friend, avoidance is not unity.² Rather this avoidance has, in my opinion, exacerbated the tension because so much is left unsaid that needs to come out in the open. How do we bear one another's burdens if those burdens cannot be shared? How do we strengthen the limbs that are weak, if we cannot share the hurt? And who is ultimately the source of this diversity? Aren't the various backgrounds from which we find ourselves part of God's providence? What if we saw them as blessings for our mutual edification rather than potential division? Is it possible we have blind spots that others with a different perspective may be able to see more clearly and provide the needed correction? Maybe we need to have a wider view of the body of Christ beyond the narrow lens of one culture or one nation and not presume that our individual experiences speak for everyone in the church local and beyond.

I will end this post with a thought exercise. I was reading a book by Mary Matsuda Gruenenwald. She is Japanese American who was incarcerated with her family in an internment camp during WWII. In her book, Looking Like the Enemy, she wrote that she was unable to tell her story until she was in her 80's and then the dam finally broke. If Mary was a member of your church, how would you help her as she processed the trauma that had been repressed for decades? In this instance, you can't ignore her culture because her ethnicity was the very reason for her suffering. Her history would probably be unique from the rest. On the other hand, her rights were taken away by the government and she endured. For believers who are fearful of persecution, wouldn't Mary be someone who could address that fear because of her first hand experience? In what areas could the community grow? And finally, do we need to wait for someone like Mary to come to us or can we pursue those areas now?

                                                                                                                                 
1. What is my fear? At the personal level - not being respected as an individual and being normed, which is another form of shaming. At a national level - that the fear of losing American life as the majority knows it will increase the syncretism and religious nationalism to the detriment of the church's witness. My hope? Christ is still building his church.
2. Borrowing from the title of Aimee Byrd's new book -  Why Can't We Be Friends? Avoidance is Not Purity.