How Should Missionaries Handle Cultural Differences?

Rightly Esteem Culture

If you’ve ever had the privilege of being near a coral reef, you likely remember the signs posted ubiquitously around the beachfront that remind you never to touch the coral. These instructions warn swimmers about being cut and stung. But they also intend to protect the coral’s delicate ecosystem. The introduction of foreign substances through human touch can have catastrophic effects.

Contemporary sociologists and anthropologists have developed similar sensibilities regarding the protection of various cultures. Outsiders are instructed to avoid introducing behaviors, values, and ethics from their home cultures lest they diminish the pristine beauty of a naturally developed indigenous social ecosystem.

Following the offenses and abuses of nineteenth-and-twentieth-century colonialism and racism, such a reaction is understandable. Today, most Westerners have been taught cultural humility. They’ve been encouraged to uncritically appreciate the diversity of other cultures. This is perhaps good advice for the sociologist who fancies himself a mere reporter or observer; however, it is antithetical to the task of the Christian missionary.

God’s Image and Its Implications

If we don’t have a clear vision of what it means to be human both before and after the fall in Genesis 3, we will struggle to faithfully apply biblical truth as it relates to culture. If we engage in missions with the assumption that culture is pristine and must be protected at all costs, then we will likely struggle to teach the whole counsel of God as it confronts cultural habits.

By the same token, if we engage people with the implicit assumption that they are somehow lesser due to cultural differences, then we will fail to recognize their inherent dignity as fellow divine image bearers. The whole counsel of God confronts human sin wherever it occurs even as it affirms human value in every place.

When asked about the legitimacy of paying taxes, Jesus connected the image borne by a thing with the source to whom it belongs. We are to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar—the coins that bear his image—and give to God what bears God’s image (Mark 12:17). That is to say, God lays claim on our whole lives because we bear his image.

Scripture not only affirms that we are image bearers in Genesis 1:26–27 but also asserts, even after the fall, that the penalty for killing a person is death because to kill a human is to kill one who bears God’s image. Furthermore, the New Testament uses the language of image to describe what it means to be new creations who are being conformed to the image of Christ (e.g., 2 Cor. 3:18).

If, then, humans remain image bearers even after the fall, there is a givenness to our identity and purpose that confers both inherent value and dignity—and it levies certain responsibilities upon us without exception. All who bear the image of God owe him the worship he is due. All who fail to render to God what is his are under his just judgment for their refusal to live up to their responsibilities and privileges.

To be human is to possess the unassailable dignity and value of bearing God’s image; however, it comes not only with inherent privileges but also with the responsibility to live according to a given purpose. Humans have the capacity and responsibility, in all we do, to obediently align our lives with God’s orderly design such that we reflect back to him the worship he is due.

Prefall Cultural Roots

In Genesis 1:28–31 God gives image-bearing humanity a series of commands. They are to reproduce (be fruitful and multiply) and rule (subdue the land and have dominion). While these commands are not explicitly related to making culture, obedience to these commands will inevitably result in the creation of culture. As Adam and Eve obediently reproduce, systems of politics and government will eventually arise as the increased population seeks to order their interactions with one another for the common good. As they seek to subdue the earth and expand the fruitful orderliness of the garden, they will develop tools for harvesting and extracting seeds, harrowing the ground, and storing the excess food. As some develop craft and expertise in the manufacturing of these tools, others will exhibit skill in tending the soil. Cooperation will result in trading goods for foods, thus establishing economy and the production of agricultural artifacts and the expansion of knowledge. The process continues for developing ways of passing on accumulated knowledge to subsequent generations, thus producing education.

The whole counsel of God confronts human sin wherever it occurs even as it affirms human value in every place.

Following these commands results in the artifacts, behaviors, and relationships that we associate with culture. It is important to note that this is a prelapsarian reality. In fact, it is conceivable that if the fall had not happened, we would not only have culture but even a diversity of cultures. Think about the things that change in a society located in an arid desert versus a coastal plain. The language used to name the surroundings will differ, the processes of cultivating the land and vegetation will be suited to the environment, and the materials used for building shelter will change from one place to another.

Such observations should lead us to recognize that the concept of culture is a God-ordained good. This should give us pause as we encounter cultural differences. Divergence from “the way we do things” is not necessarily an indication of disorder. Before judging an aspect of a culture as deficient simply because it is different from what we have come to expect, a Christian missionary should test it against Scripture to determine whether this difference is an unexpected yet defensible expression of culture.

Postfall Cultural Fruits

All of this groundwork is necessary to thinking through how we are to approach human beings as those whose inherent dignity and responsibility are part of their God-given design. Our gospel message must be one that both affirms the inherent value of a person and confronts the abdication of their responsibilities. The biblical message both affirms human dignity and disrupts human behavior.

But we cannot think about humans merely in the abstract. We must recognize that humans are always embedded in cultures that are a mixture of common grace and common sin. This means that the cultures produced by sinful humans will also exhibit a mixed expression of providential order and postlapsarian disorder. This is true of island cultures existing in relative isolation from the rest of the world as well as cultures embedded in the multicultural hustle and bustle of an urban metropolis.

The sociological impulse to avoid changing a culture is not a missionary perspective. Sociologists tend to view culture like visitors to a zoo: interested and curious to make observations and write reports but often more concerned with the idea of the society than invested in the people who compose it. Missionaries encounter a culture of image bearing humans in whose best interest it is to have their self-evaluation reshaped by biblical truth. Sociologists want their observation of a culture to leave no trace so that the next observer can gawk at the untouched artifacts of some exotic culture. Missionaries are those whose message will violently disrupt idolatrous religion, sinful patterns of behavior, and ignorant misapprehension of the world for their good and for the glory of the God whose image they bear.

Cultural Conservationism and Missions

As we consider the fact that missions work takes place on this side of Genesis 3, we have to calibrate our expectations for how we will encounter culture. We need to recognize that differences in culture are not always indications of sin or brokenness. Just because a community operates differently than what you are used to does not mean that such practice is wrong. We should be slow to listen, investigate, and draw moral conclusions about cultural differences.

At the same time, we also need to beware the temptation to avoid critiquing what is sinfully bent away from goodness and truth. We cannot be so fearful of being seen as colonizers that we fail to confront cultural patterns of sinfulness according to the word of God. In God’s manifold wisdom, he is building churches around the world that are faithfully following his biblical commands in ways that look different from one another. We should expect to see in other cultures beautiful expressions of common grace that are also mixed with sin-twisted elements that are an affront to the Creator. Faithful missionaries will have to walk the fine line between, on the one hand, turning a blind eye to sin in the name of cultural conservation and, on the other, assuming every cultural difference is wrong.

This article is adapted from The Path to Being a Missionary: A Guide for the Aspiring by Matt Bennett and Ryan Robertson.

Related Articles