Scorpions, Snakes and Cultural Sight: Seeing into Culture - Observing Deeper Differences

Did you know that not all Scorpions are the same?

I knew absolutely nothing about scorpions before moving to Botswana and almost nothing until 2 years ago when we moved to live in the bush.

There are actually two main categories of Scorpion (according to danger levels) - a thin pincered but fat tailed deadly type, and a fat pincered but thin tailed almost harmless type.

But up until last week, I had basically only had experience with the dangerous fat tailed version.  Then one morning my husband suddenly and urgently called for help in dealing with a large scorpion that had scurried in the front door when he opened it.  However after capturing it and looking more closely, we realised it was an almost harmless thin tailed-fat pincer version....the first of this type we had seen.

We also live with snakes in the bush around us.  Some are deadly (I haven't seen them yet and they haven't been near our house but others on the property have seen them), but the ones we have found are relatively harmless.

It is easy to assume something about a situation or object because it looks similar to something already experienced in another context.  If I had only ever seen harmless scorpions it could be easy to see yet another scorpion and assume it is the same as others without looking more closely and noticing it is one that should be attended to very differently.  I could fail to 'fear' what I should fear or end up in a 'panic' over something that I didn't need to be.  A closer look could either save me some 'fright or flight' energy in the case of a harmless scorpion , or save me my life or hospitalisation in the case of a deadly version.

This reminds me of looking deeper in cross-cultural situations.  

Especially in an urban missions situation that can have many 'familiar' Western factors evident, it is easy to be in a frame of mind that is 'lulled' into assuming, projecting and expecting Western responses, attitudes, actions and worldview.  I have found that it hasn't been until I've trained myself (and continue to do so) to gain more knowledge and look more deeply into circumstances around me, that I notice more about a situation so as to properly assess and respond.  

It's so easy to miss what is obviously there if you don't know what to look for.  Some things that might be high on my radar due to my own birth culture may not be priorities to be noticed in the 'new' culture around me, and other things that were low or not even on my previous radar, need to be if I am going to respond appropriately and effectively with gospel truth.

Here are a couple of examples.......

If you are a Westerner reading this, what would be your first thoughts if you read about a cemetery having problems from underground water, so much so that when graves are dug they don't take long to have water in them and the ground is waterlogged for those walking on it at funerals?

Maybe you would start to wonder about contamination of the water table (especially if the bore hole on your property was nearby).  Or maybe you would be concerned people would slip on the wet ground and injure themselves, or the difficulty in mowing the grass around the graves.

Here is an excerpt from a local paper where the Assistant Minister for Local Government and Rural Development commented on the issue:

"...I will talk to my officers to always make a survey before allocating plots for cemeteries because it is not proper for the body of our leaders to be on the grave that has underground water,"

The priority is related to honouring community elders whether they are alive or 'late' (as is said here).

This is not so different from a situation where a man was charged after embezzling funds from a charity.  The detective's first comment was 'how could he do this to his people and his country' and second comment was 'now overseas donors will cease sending funds to Botswana because of the reputation this will give us'.  No comment was made that stealing was wrong or that the charity would have bills to pay but no funds to pay them now etc etc.

The priority is related to the shame this brought upon the wider group.

Part of our 'research' is simply 'living' here, making the effort and taking the time to 'see' further than the surface of life around us. This is not just about noticing donkey carts or ladies carrying babies on their backs, its about noticing issues of differing worldview.  It is so easy to not see what is right in front of our eyes, if we are not actually looking for it.  Once upon a time I would have read the newspaper article and just thought "Mmm that's a bit of a health hazard with dead bodies rotting in the water table and muddy ground where people could slip and hurt themselves".  But that would be looking at the situation with 'Western eyes'.

Rather such situations alert me once again to how pervasive the 'honour of elders' and 'shame on the group' is, and the great need to ensure that in discipleship these issues are addressed biblically.

If we are going to help people understand God's word and come to know transformed lives in Christ resulting in doing business better, being better parents, better spouses, better church members, better citizens etc etc we have to understand how they think - what are the primary values and perspectives......and its most likely they won't be what a Westerner thinks they are. But if we don't take time to see into culture at a deeper level than the surface of life around us, we will miss what is really going on and also miss being able to properly interpret, communicate and apply God's truth within the realities of daily life.....and that could result in someone not just having earthly 'scorpion' consequences, but eternal 'salvation' consequences.

As Jackson Wu says in his book 'Saving God's Face' about areas of culture that don't get properly addressed/corrected biblically.... 

'Silence then becomes the Trojan horse where culture imports meaning, values and practice.  Human beings demand answers to life questions.  A myriad of life experiences push a person towards one conclusion over another, whether consciously or unconsciously.  Inevitably, if not informed by a holistic biblical theology, many will simply default to the prevailing cultural norms."

'Seeing into culture' more deeply, really matters!

Is Social Media Accelerating the 'West' into Shame Culture status? Part 4

Yesterday I was sent a link to a very new Youtube video of a TedTalk in which Monica Lewinsky shares some of her story and what life has taught her...

In case you can't quite remember why that name is familiar - she was in the centre of the US Presidential marital infidelity scandal In 1998.

The Youtube video is absolutely fascinating and is called: "Monica Lewinsky - The Price of Shame"

In it she makes many very insightful comments on the issues of public shaming, not least in the social media context.

But most interesting are three facets of her speech  

1. The inextricable link between shame and death 

2. The 'foreverness' and 'everyoneness' of internet shaming

3. The world's culture-crisis of shaming and compassion as the answer

I want to comment in brief on each and quote from her speech, because I feel it is a superb modern day 'object lesson' that God can use in evangelism and discipleship in Western contexts especially.  In fact points 2 & 3 correlate almost totally with some of the points mentioned by 'mere orthodoxy' in Part 3 of this series of blog posts...

Understanding these issues will better help us to understand the dynamics of shame in every human being....

1.

She said:

"In 1998 I lost my reputation and my dignity - I lost almost everything and I almost lost my life"..."The public humiliation was excruciating, life was almost unbearable"

She later in the speech said:

"Fast forward to 2010. I was on the phone with my mum of September 2010....tyler clamente was secretly webcamed by his roommate while being intimate with another man.  When the online world learned of this incident the ridicule and cyber bullying ignited. A few days later Tyler jumped from the George Washington bridge to his death. He was 18.  My mom was beside herself about what happened to Tyler and his family and she was gutted with pain in a way that  I just couldn't quite understand.  And then eventually I realised she was reliving 1998. Reliving a time when she sat by my bed every night. Reliving a time when she made me shower with the bathroom door open. And reliving a time when both of my parents feared I would be humiliated to death - literally."

... Every day on line people, especaily young people who are not developmentally equipped to handle this, are so abused and humiliated that they can't imagine living to the next day, and some tragically don't. And there's nothing virtual about that."

..As Westerners we think about death in primarily physical terms - the death of our bodies.  But there is such a matter as 'death of identity' or 'death of relationship'.  We were created not only with a physical body but with a relational heart.  As I heard Pastor Charles Price recently quote from Pastor and Author Stuart Briscoe "when God created Adam, he created an individual.  When God created Eve He created society".  Physical death and physical pain isn't the only thing we fear - we also fear emotional/psychosocial pain and death.

2.

She went on to say:

"Research last year that determined that humiliation is a more intensely felt emotion than either happiness or even anger.

...Online technologically enhanced shaming is amplified, uncontained and permanently accessible.  The echo of embarrassment used to extend only as far as your family, village, school or community, but now its the online community too. Millions of people, often anonymously, can stab you with their words.  And that's a lot of pain. And there are no perimeters around how many people can observe you and put you in a public stockade.  There is a personal price to public humiliation and the growth of the internet has jacked up that price. ......

For nearly 2 decades now we have slowly been sowing the seeds of shame and public humiliation in our cultural soil both on and off line. Gossip websites, paparazzi, reality programming , politics, news outlets, and sometime hackers, all traffic in shame. .....It's led to....What Professor Nicholas Mills  calls a Culture of Humiliation....

Consider a few prominent examples just from the past 6 months alone ...

Snap Chat: the service which is used mainly by younger generations and claims that its messages only have the lifespan of a few seconds. You can imagine the range of content that that gets.  A third party app which SnapChatters use to preserve the lifespan of the messages, was hacked and 100,000 personal conversations, photos and videos were leaked on line to now have a lifespan of forever."

Isn't this a very good start to help people think about the realities of eternity? 

Daniel 12:2 says

 "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." (KJV) 

or as the New Living Translation says it

 "Many of those whose bodies lie dead and buried will rise up, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting disgrace."

As Westerners, traditionally we thought about the opposite of everlasting life as everlasting death and the physical pain and suffering of that.  But in this verse in Daniel the contrast of everlasting life is described as "shame and everlasting discgrace/contempt".  

Not only is it everlasting shame but it shame of the highest degree.  If we think that the SnapChat hack is extensive (accessible globally) and permanent (for the life of the internet - feels like forever), then when our secrets are revealed at the last day and everything hidden is laid bare (Hebrews  4:13, Luke 12:2,3), that will be a level of shaming that will make a SnapChat hack seem like 'child's play'.

This is an opportunity to bring the reality of eternity into the here and now - or at least a taste of it - at a time when public shaming is fast becoming the worst form of suffering one can inflict on another.  The meaning of total exposure and relational rejection, is being highlighted by social media, in a big way.

..3.

Monica also said:

".....this invasion of others is a raw material efficiently and ruthlessly mined packaged and sold at a profit. A marketplace has emerged where public humiliation is a commodity and shame is an industry. How is the money made? Click.  The more shame the more clicks. the more clicks the more advertising dollars.....all the while someone is making money off of the back of someone else's suffering.

....

The more we saturate our culture with public shaming the more accepted it is.

....

this behavioiur is a symptom of the culture we have created.

....

Public Shaming as a blood sport needs to stop.....we need to return to a long held value of compassion...on-line we have a compassion deficit, an empathy crisis.

.....

lets acknowledge the difference between speaking up for 'intention' from speaking up for 'attention'

....

the internet is the superhighway for the 'id',,,,

we need to communicate online with compassion, consume news with compassion, click with compassion....just imagine walking a mile in someone else's headline."

The cruelty and trauma of being publicly shamed and humiliated is becoming more widely experienced because its becoming more widely inflicted.  While it can give an opportunity to share the reality of of the immensity of eternal disgrace, it is also an opportunity for the church to demonstrate what it means that in Christ there is freedom from eternal shame and also  power to rise above earthly shame and shaming.  

Christians have a great opportunity to demonstrate compassion where Christ would demonstrate compassion, not least when there is confession and forgiveness for sin.  We can show kindness and love and a humility of heart that doesn't just point the finger but comes alongside fully aware of our own propensity to sin.  We can show grace and gentleness.  We can build others up instead of tearing others down.  We can encourage and praise instead shame and belittle.

Lets not just watch this culture-crisis of shaming as it passes along - lets take full advantage of the opportunities it brings to better share and demonstrate the realities of the gospel - the good news!