The concept of “face” in Asian cultures can be a source of endless wonder for Westerners coming to live here. Recently a local friend and I took some people out for a meal and coffee to thank them for helping me when I had traveled to their province. He knew one of them already, so he called and asked if they could help me out when I made my trip. They did, and then when they were passing through our city it was a good gesture to take them out and thank them. I get that, so far so good.
The interesting part for me came at the end of the meal when we got the bill. He had called for the check so the waitress brought it to him. I pulled out my wallet so I could contribute. Actually, I had come to the evening prepared to pay for everything, since he had also been helping me out. I asked for the check so I could pay for it all, but he wasn’t having that, so I started asking if I could contribute and for him to let me see it so I could chip in, etc. He wouldn’t even let me see it.
We went across the street for some coffee and to talk for a while longer. When we were finishing up I told him to let me get this one (not a fair trade, but at least let me take care of one of the checks!). He refused again and went and paid the whole thing himself.
As we stepped outside we got a taxi for our friends and sent them on their way. Then, as we crossed the street to get back to where we had parked he told me, “I’ll let you know the total of both bills and you can pay me back half of it this week.”
Aaah, now I get it. He needed for them to see that he was treating us all. Well, sorry I protested and tried so hard to chip in, but it probably helped firm up the appearance that he was taking care of all of us. I wondered about all that was taking place beneath the surface here:
· Was it more a case of him not wanting to be shamed by letting me pay,
· Was it standard operating procedure that because he made the invitation he was responsible to pay,
· Was this a “debt” that he owed them for helping me out on my trip and he had to do this to settle accounts,
· Was this going above and beyond the “debt” that he owed them so that now the debt had shifted and they might even owe him, so that he could call in another favor sometime…
It was mildly frustrating at first, but the more I thought about the more I simply became entertained by it and intrigued about the way life works here.
We’re still very new in this place – trying to get the lay of the land. Learning about the culture is one area of focus for us. There is a progression from observation to participation that takes place. At this point, with very little language ability, we are primarily observers. We watch, we try to listen, we pay attention. To what? Well, everything. At first, we don’t know yet what will turn out to be significant, which means that everything is significant. We have to develop the discipline of paying attention, of noticing: Noticing the way people address one another, and how people dress, and the way people drive, and when and where people congregate, how things are carried and on and on the list goes.
When we see things we jot them down, then categorize and file them. It’s a way to keep us proactively working toward understanding this place and these people. We have lists of topics and themes to explore, some of them broken down into weekly assignments, but we also try to always be alert and learn from whatever is right in front of us.
Any attempt to cross a culture is a long process, but approaching it in this way can help speed it up, can open us up to learning things we wouldn’t learn otherwise, can lessen the effects of culture shock, and can enable us from day one to start recognizing things about us that will need to change if we are going to become participants here, accepted and active in the community.
Filed under: prayer, testimonies, Uncategorized, worldview | Tags: Prayer, testimonies, worldview
N was excited when he found out we were believers, because he had questions. He had noticed that Christians seemed to have true happiness and treated each other better than most people. This had made him very curious, a genuine seeker. He had never been to church and didn’t speak any English, so his searching was limited to what he could find online in his own language, which wasn’t too much. He had found some websites, though, and had been reading and even listening to some sermons. Here’s how some of the conversation went.
“Where does someone have to go in order to believe in Jesus?” he asked.
“Nowhere,” I told him, “There are no sacred spots or buildings, no temples or places more holy than others.”
“What about church?” I thought he was ask this, and I was glad he did, so I could try to explain that you don’t have to be in a church to begin following Jesus, but that church is a gathering of people who follow Jesus to be together, encourage each other, worship him together, learn about him, etc.
“What does it mean to believe in Jesus? How can God help me?”
“Well, many ways, but most importantly by forgiving our sins. All of us have sin in our lives and we are unable to do anything about it. No amount of good deeds can take away or lessen our bad. That’s why Jesus came to die for us.”
“Jesus died for everyone?”
“Yes, everyone.”
“Not just the Jews?”
“No. Everyone.”
“Then who are the Jews?”
“That’s gonna take some time to explain…”
“How can I know more about Jesus?”
“Read the Bible.”
“The whole thing? It’s huge!”
“Well, start with the gospels – they are 4 books about Jesus’ life that were written soon after his death and resurrection. They are named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.”
“You mean that’s what it means when the preacher says Matthew 22:37? What’s the 22 and the 37 mean? ” (I don’t actually remember what passage he asked about.)
I went on to explain chapters and verses, and remembered when I was confused about the chapter – colon – verse thing.
Before long we were out of time and I had to wrap up the conversation. We exchanged names for the first time in the conversation and exchanged contact info and that was it.
I was thankful for the opportunity to share with him, excited about the seeds that had already been planted in his heart, and saddened by the fact that I didn’t have much time that day and was leaving the country just a few days later. I connected him with friends and have prayed that he would remain open to the work that the Holy Spirit is doing in his life.
What is most exhilarating to me about this experience was that it was sparked by the witness of someone else, who will never know the power of their lived-out testimony before N and many others. It was a real example of John 13:35 and 1 Peter 3:15, two verses that we should pray will become a more consistent experience in our lives.
There are lots of exciting things that come with learning another new language. I’m sure we’ll post more of these as we make more progress with it. We’re very close to our move-in date now. One of the challenges that I know we’ll all face is our tendency to speak the langauge of the country we’re in now with the people of the new country…which won’t get us very far in terms of communicating! It will be a very difficult habit to break free of, though. Being back in our home country last year this wasn’t a problem, of course, because we were back in the setting of our first language. Going from one Asian country to another will be a different story.
I’ve started learning some of the language already and in some of the (very short) conversations I have had in this langauge I’ve found myself doing this. I’m expecting both of us to do it, as well as our son. I’ve thought a lot about this for him recently, as he’s made so much progress in the language here recently. There are some people we see every day and he loves to greet them in their language, ask them how they’re doing and tell them that he’s doing fine. There are a number of other things he can say in the language and he’s very curious about it. If he hears us say something a few times he’ll often repeat it and ask what it means. On one hand, it makes me sad that we’re leaving this environment and he’ll have to start from scratch with the new language. On the other hand, he’s at a great age for it and he does a great job of remembering and using the words and phrases that he learns. Hopefully he’ll take off and learn a lot, from day one. Maybe he’ll be tutoring us before long instead of the other way around!
Eugene Peterson recounts the following, illustrating the importance of story and the danger of neglecting it:
Several years ago I was conducting a seminar in the interpretation of Scripture in a theological seminary. It was a graduate seminar. Our topic that day was Jesus’ parables. All the participants were experienced pastors and priests. One of the priests, Tony Byrnne, was a Jesuit missionary on sabbatical from twenty years at his post in Africa. As we discussed the biblical parables, Father Tony told us of his experience with his Africans, who loved storytelling, who loved parables. His Jesuit order didn’t have enough priests to handle all the conversions that were taking place, and he was put in charge of recruiting lay-persons to carry out the basic teaching and diaconal work.
When he first began the work, whenever he would find men who were especially bright he would pull them out of their village and send them to Rome or Dublin or Boston or New York for training. After a couple of years they would return and take up their tasks. But the villagers hated them and would have nothing to do with them. They called the returnee a been-to (pronounced bean-to): “He’s bean-to London, he’s bean-to Dublin, he’s bean-to New York, he’s bean-to Boston.” They hated the bean-to because he no longer told stories. He gave explanations. He taught them doctrines. He gave them directions. He drew diagrams on a chalk board. The bean-to left all his stories in the wastebaskets of the libraries and lecture halls of Europe and America. The intimate and dignifying process of telling a parable had been sold for a mess of academic pottage. So, Father Byrnne told us, he quit practice of sending the men off to those storyless schools.
-Eugene H. Peterson, Tell It Slant. p.60-61.
A minority man working in a remote part of his country was appalled to see young children of poor families running around the villages unclothed. Up in the mountains it can be very cold in the winter months (less than 50°). So he and his co-workers decided to collect clothes to distribute to the poor. When they went to the village headman to ask permission to give out the clothing to the poorest families, the response was “Why would you want to do that? The poor are social parasites and useless to society.”
The predominant Buddhist-Animist worldview in the country creates little incentive for helping the poor. According to their understanding of Buddhism people are poor, sick or come upon hard times because of bad karma – they did something bad in this life or a previous life and are now reaping the consequences of their wrong actions. Most of the tribal groups in the country are animists (i.e. they believe that everything in life is controlled by good and bad spirits). For them sickness or poverty is a result of offending the spirits and so the answer is to make offerings to appease the spirits.
The church will have to both teach and model a Biblical worldview regarding poverty and suffering. May God so transform their way of thinking that Christians will love and care for the poor unconditionally, just as He does.
