Tekna-logy

Ruben, one of our pastoral staff, let me borrow a book, Jesus is My Uncle, a look at how language and culture interact with theology. It comes on the heels of a few conversations Ruben and I have had concerning multi-cultural ministry. We're fully aware that it's not supposed to work-- people like others just like them. For example, isn't it interesting that often the people who talk the most about diversity live, work, and worship in monocultural places? It's hard to let diversity be more than an idea. For example, in history, you will find nothing more diverse than Christian orthodoxy. Being hard-core and sold out to the Trinity and to the authority of the Scriptures is an incredible basis for entering into relationship with all peoples, nations, and races. But I digress.

This is a strange direction to take this, but I guess if you know me, it'll start to make sense. A friend of mine sent me this list:

If I had my child to raise all over again,
I'd build self-esteem first and the house later.
I'd finger paint more and point the finger less.
I would do less correcting and more connecting.
I'd take my eyes off my watch and watch with my eyes.
I would care to know less and know to care more.
I'd take more hikes and fly more kites.
I'd stop playing serious and seriously play.
I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars.
I'd do more hugging and less tugging.
I'd see the oak tree in the acorn more often.
I would be firm less often and affirm much more.
I'd model less about the love of power and more about the power of love.

It's really good advice, and hard to pull off! Morning is when you have to decide what kind of day you're going to have. I think especially with the boys, I have to make the decision that today will be good. What does this have to do with multicultural ministry? Glad you asked...

A few days ago, I did not make the decision to be calm enough to deal with the boys early in the morning. I made no decision, which, spiritually, is a decision. Things were going along fine until it was time to leave. It was the first day of school and Joseph looked at his new backpack and saw that he did not have a lunch bag. He balked at leaving and I told him we needed to go. He said, but where's my lunch? I said, “you'll eat at school, in the lunchroom.” He got a little more agitated. I said, “Come on! Let's go!” I started pushing him out the door. He said, “But I brought my ice-packs back, Daddy, and Mammaw said...” I cut him off and sent him to the car crying.

It took me until later that day to realize what had happened in his mind. At his daycare during the summer, he started taking his lunch the last two weeks he was there. He had ice packs in them, but forgot to bring them home, so he couldn't take his lunch until he brought them back. So when he saw his backpack ready for school but no lunch, he thought he was being punished when he had done right.

So while that was not the case, it was the case in Joe's mind. And not only did he not get to take a lunch (meaning being punished), he also got yelled at and hurried along. And on the first day of school no less!

At its heart, the situation was a misunderstanding between cultures. It's hard to see it that way, because we think of children as... people becoming adults. No doubt, that is true. But, at some point we have to recognize that children have a worth all their own, that they stand as independent beings who at each stage of their development need to be seen as people, people who have a right to their culture and language. It is our denial of the basic humanity of children that makes abortion possible. Short of that, they die a thousand deaths of cruelty, abuse, poverty, and neglect.

So, while we can on the one side say that Joseph needed to know that he was going to a new school where he would be eating in the lunchroom and not taking his lunch, I also needed to try to figure out why he was so adamant about having brought his ice packs back. The whole problem could have been solved by stepping back. Even if I could not have made the connection, I could have at least tried to handle it differently. But, I was on a time-table. My own, really. 5 minutes would not have made a bit of difference in my day.

But, see, we want what we want. I wanted Joe to hop-to, when I said. [Now, of course there are times when children have to learn to listen and obey]. This is the challenge for dealing with other cultures; we want what we want when we want it. We don't want to deal with another language, or accommodate ways of thinking that don't mesh with ours [and you have to know that I am not a relativist].

In my encounter with Joe, in all my encounters with the lovely, frustrating, funny, heartbreaking, and always entertaining and enlightening culture of my boys, I find this end at work: I am trying to learn to speak to them, to work with where they are. And yes, part of that is to help raise them, to usher them into “adult culture.” Which I wonder about-- do I want to be in adult culture?!?! But another part is to find a way to usher them into Kingdom Culture. It's a question of evangelism (you knew it had to come back to that!): am I winsome enough and open enough and (most important) motivated enough to cross the barriers that separate us from each other? To be united in Christ! Not as an idea, that we share the same values, or something, but that we are one in Him.