|
Transforming our Cultures: A Gospel Agenda
Canon Dr. Vinay K. Samuel
Delivered at Wheaton College on February 23, 2006
I wish to address two concerns:
First, any Christian response to human need, poverty and suffering must arise from the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and must be thoroughly shaped from the whole world view of the Gospel narrative. This is critically necessary as much of the world of development action is shaped by a secular rationality where human reason and human willing of the good and human action for the intelligible goods leads to seek solutions in historical action related only to the future human communities envision for themselves and disregarding the creator’s purpose for humanity so clearly set out for the Christian in the vision of the Kingdom of God.
Second, addressing human suffering and poverty is proving to be increasingly frustrating to the social activists, policy makers and scholars in development studies. Recent reports show again that forty years of significant investment and action to address educational poverty among children of poor nations has not produced acceptable results. The grand narratives that have dominated development action like the neocolonial action of developed nations creating ‘dependency’ in poor nations pushing them into ‘the periphery’ continues to survive and shape development policy and action even though such explanations have little credibility today. There is increasing awareness among activists and scholars that cultural values and attitudes have a key role in facilitating or impending social change and transformation. Terry Eagleton, no conservative scholar writes “In modern society it is not enough to occupy factories and confront the state, what must be contested is the whole area of culture, defined in its broadest most everyday sense”
It must be asserted that culture is not an independent variable, providing an explanation on its own. Its is shaped by other factors, geography, history, resources,, political systems and even climate. But there is increasing convergence in recognizing the critical role of culture in Transformational Development.
The Recovery of the Gospel Agenda
Forty years ago Evangelicals ‘again’ began exploring the role of the Church in relation to hunger and poverty. We recovered the Gospel imperative to respond to the hurting and hungry poor of the world. The HNGR program is evidence of such recovery. We also recognized the need to ensure our engagement was biblically and theologically faithful. We also needed to ensure that our analysis and understanding of the problem of poverty and our response was shaped and resourced by God’s word.
In 1983 in this institution bible believing Christians from many nations engaged in reflection for a fortnight and produced the Statement on Transformation which has had a significant impact on evangelical missions all over the world.
In the past 10 years those of us engaged in addressing poverty and reflecting on our engagement have recognized the key significance of transforming culture in addressing poverty.
It is our conviction that addressing cultures for transformation is a Gospel imperative. I wish to explore the validity and power of this conviction by drawing from the experience of missionary engagement and by revisiting the themes of the Gospel to draw out the Gospel’s transformational agenda.
Our Mission Heritage
Prof. Lamin Sanneh of Yale Divinity School shows powerfully in his studies “ Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture” and “ Encountering the West: Christianity and the Global Cultural Process: The African Dimension”, compelling evidence that Christian mission in the 19th century by its focus on providing a culturally appropriate access to the Bible – through Bible translations enabled recipient cultures to experience the transforming power of the Gospel without doing irreparable damage to the host cultural identity. The One Gospel is refracted through many cultures and historical contexts. It is one gospel with many clothes.
It must be noted that other Christian mission scholars take an opposing view that missionary translation of the Bible was an act of violence on other cultures, displacing native customs and values which continued to make these cultures loathe themselves.
The release of the Bible as a local cultural product led to renaissance of the host culture even beyond the church as in India and to the self confidence of the African peoples to reject colonial and cultural hegemony. The biblical stories of God’s liberation of an oppressed people became their stories and provided a powerful narrative resource for social change and transformation.
This heritage continues to be alive in the experience of indigenous missions in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The explosive growth of the Church in India has much to do with the discovery of the poor of India that in the Gospel it is not first the personal connection with the once distant God but the resource for transforming their present circumstances of oppression and poverty through a living experience of the Holy Spirit’s power in their lives. This is true in most of Asia, in Africa and Latin America. The Gospel brings a different view of family, of financial stewardship, of work ethic, of accountability to God of supporting one another, of building communities; of consumption of resources. Overall it is the acceptance of the moral vision, a biblical moral order which must shape one’s life.
Our Starting Point
The starting point of the Christian view of transformational development is the Gospel – not the urgent and desperate needs of the world. The needs of the world is the context of our engagement, but the starting point has to be our reflection about reality from the Bible :- the relation of God to the world, creation, humanity, history, future, all open up challenges to human action, particularly Christian action.
Creation
The biblical view of creation should be from the stand point of the New Creation in Christ. Creation’s purpose, spoiled misdirected and undermined by the fall is reversed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The fulfillment of creation purpose is back on track.
God’s purpose in creation gives a central place to humanity, creates an order – a moral and social order in which humans fulfill the responsibility of stewardship of all creation. Adam’s choice was death in a mistaken pursuit of autonomous knowledge. Christ the second Adam fulfills the purpose of creation by his obedience to the Father even to the death on the cross. His resurrection released the power of the Holy Spirit to transform human life and direct history to its fulfillment.
The beginning of the new creation experienced and lived out by the Church on earth affirms that human life on earth can recover the moral order which was part of the original creation, human life can move towards that destiny for which it was created. The new creation assures us that creation is being restored and will not be dissolved when the Kingdom of God arrives in fullness at the coming again of Christ.
It is this understanding of creation we must use to shape our engagement in transformational development. I will identify some of the implications to our development understanding.
The Enlightenment ideas of progress are a key driver of engagement in social action. A biblical view of creation places hope as the key driver and displaces progress. Hope is built into the creation order. Progress suggests our historical action is our destiny. Wrong historical actions and experiences lead to underdevelopment and instability. Hope provides a different perspective on history and destiny. Hope is a focus on God’s actions in history and our part in them in the movement of history to its destiny.
Hope is the energy of the promise God made possible by the Holy Spirit of God. That in Christian action transformational development witnesses is not to the inevitability of progress rightly directed but to the hope of the fulfillment of God’s promises.
Poor communities all over the world are assaulted by cultural products portraying models of pleasure and progress and fulfillment of desires; desires are aroused by images that are imprinted with sophistication and power. The challenge of Christian mission is to witness to a hope of transformation that addresses all such cultural forces.
The key theme at the center of the Christian view of creation is personhood. The dominance of rights-based politics and strategies in development work today make it critical for Christian activists to share their understanding of the biblical view of persons to shape development work. This focuses on freedom, choice, stewardship, moral agency and community reflecting humans as made in the image of the Triune God.
Reconciliation
At the heart of the Gospel is the message of reconciliation. This recovers the principle of Jubilee that was central to the moral order given to God’s people as they settled in the promised land.
Human sin and failure leads to bondage, indebtedness and consequent violence. The order of Jubilee was founded on the themes of forgiveness restoration and a new beginning.
The reconciliation brought about on the Cross has profound socio – political and cultural implications. How can humans deal with the bad consequences of human action, theirs, their ancestors and others who ruled them? Can such consequences be reversed? Poor communities find this a very heavy burden and descend to a culture of inevitable fate. It is here the truth of the offer of forgiveness and its experience is a powerful resource to deal with such fatalism. The Jubilee principle applies forgiveness to economic life. Economic indebtedness is addressed with the offer of forgiveness, the restoration of families broken up by debt and the opportunity of a new start at least once for every generation
Reconciliation made possible by forgiveness also provides the basis for human community building particularly against forces of violence that break communities. Shalom – peace and wholeness is a condition that is brought about by actions of reconciliation. Christians witness the promise of reconciliation and seek to live on that promise.
We are surrounded today by enfeebled cultures without a moral vision and energy driving them. We fall back on self-fulfillment – so choice and consumption dominate. Such cultures create large spaces for a selfish individualism which is never satisfied and for violent assertions of one’s right to fulfillment. Economic prosperity offers no protection from such forces of cultural anomie.
Christians witness to the possibility of communities of shalom, of wholeness. We do this as we draw out the implications of the reconciliation wrought by Christ for our engagement in transformational development.
The Christian view of reconciliation is that Christ did not set aside human sin and unrighteousness – he dealt with it head on knowing that dealing with unrighteousness with righteousness will not lead to uncontrollable violence but to reconciliation and restoration of people to God and to one another. That is the teaching of the Epistle of Ephesians.
Christian mission activism – does not compromise the truth, the commitment to addressing unrighteousness injustice in its witness to reconciliation and shalom. This is action to build authentic human communities.
Incarnation
God becoming human not just for a brief period to do a necessary job but to become like one of us and take that humanity into eternity underlines the significance the Gospel gives to human life and culture.
Cultural transformation can only be addressed as Christian mission activists apply the principle of incarnation in their engagement. The Gospel cannot be carried and shared except as incarnation. Christian reception of the Gospel begins of process of fleshing itng out in ones life however imperfect that process is.
The implication of the Incarnation for development action is not just focused on the development activist. It means that a Christian view of transformational development announces God’s personal engagement with individual’s families and communities in all aspects of their life. The whole of personal and social life is God’s area of concern and action. Sacrifice and humility characterize an incarnation mode of social engagement.
The Holy Spirit
Biblical teaching of the work of the Holy Spirit locates the work in human community. The Holy Spirit addresses our cultural values and commitments, convicting, correcting and converting them. The work of the Spirit is transformation. Our empowerment by the gift of the Spirit provides the basis for our reception and use of power in our lives and communities.
A Christian understanding of power in human communities recognizes powers dominate human lives. These are spiritual, cultural, political and economic. The work of Christian social activists must recognize how knowledge and power are inseparable and how knowledge is used in the service of power either to liberate or dominate.
Christian social activism witnesses to the availability of power to powerless communities as an action of the Holy Spirit. The empowerment of the Holy Spirit transforms Christian activists to be servants not masters and empowers the powerless.
The implications for transformational development are the significance of prayer in development action the recognition of the supernatural as an essential part of social engagement and the interconnection and interdependence that the Holy Spirit creates in communities.
The Future
God’s will on earth as in heaven is the biblical framework for understanding creations future. The present creation is the locus of the eschatological transformation to be consummated when Christ returns.
The Church as a community of the Kingdom itself moves in history towards the kingdom and facilitates the promised transformation by being both a sign and a sacrament.
The Church lives in the tension of seeking the promised transformation of the kingdom in the present to the greatest extent possible and waiting for it’s’ fulfillment in the final coming of the kingdom. So its becomes a sign of the future of creation and a sacrament of that future enabling human communities to experience palpably the reality of the kingdom.
Its implications for Christian involvement in transformational development are profound. We do not sacralise historical action. All the answers are not in history, in government, policies, human social endeavors and actions of global corporations. We recognize that forces of globalization are dominant in shaping human present and future. Globalization of culture is the key feature of this globalization and its most influential global force.
It is here the Christian recognition of the globalizing work of the Holy Spirit and the global presence of the Kingdom of God enables Christian engagement not to confuse human ideologies with the kingdom nor to separate kingdom activity from history. It also provides a more confident engagement with globalization while neither demonizing it nor sacralising it.
An Agenda for Cultural Action
1. Engaging with Cultural Discourses
We live in a world of competing social blueprints – Islam; particularly fundamentalist Islam has its own social blueprints, and seeks to impose it on its societies even at the price of keeping many of its people economically poor, politically with few freedoms and socially isolated. Secular Liberalism also has its social blue prints where individualism, democracy, human rights, freedom of conscience, pluralism, free speech, sexual equality are all privileged and even sacralised and the traditional view of the sacred is pushed to the farthest margins at best and rejected as violent at worst.
There is an assumption among some western economically developed cultures – that certain cultures are unable to develop and continue to remain economically undeveloped.
It is suggested that ‘African Society’ is primarily communitarian focused on consensus, solidarity and kinship obligation which militate against modern economic development shaped by free market choices and competition, and asset development. It is also suggested that ‘Asian Societies’ with their collectivist values have a different view of authority based on natural order and stress unity, harmony, order and duty. While this may produce economic growth , its’ hierarchical power structures will inhibit the creativity necessary to sustain economic development and growth.
Christian engagement in addressing poverty cannot bypass these cultural discourses. If they do so their contribution to transformational development will be negligible. This is a great pity as the Gospel is the best resource for such transformation and we need to make that available to poor communities.
2. Areas of Engagement
A. Upholding a Biblical Moral Vision:
The Gospel resists domestication to vested interests in every culture. Fallen human cultures attempt to domesticate any transformation movement that seeks to bring justice and liberation to oppressed people. The Bible cannot be domesticated. It must be read – that is used in development as our most important resource. Its narrative must provide the framework for our analysis and the direction for our strategy. Its themes must illuminate and shape our action.
B. Contemporary cultures like cultures of the past have their idols which define and direct them. Such idolatries are not confined to the cultures of developed nations. Poor nations and communities have their own idols at the alter of which these communities remain enslaved and powerless. Christian engagement identifies and addresses these idols in the power of the Gospel.
C. Witnessing to the presence of the living God.
Vincent Donovan in his work ‘Christianity Rediscovered’ writes of paganism as a closed and fatalistic system. The Christian understanding of prayer enables people to believe that creation is open-ended and continuing. It is a Christian idea to believe in God’s constant presence addressing us and being addressed by us. Christian prayer is a key component of Christian engagement in cultural transformation. It challenges the religion of nature. The Christian view of religion is the presence and action of a living God who acts in the world in love and redemption.
D. Trust and Openness
John Taylor spent many years as a missionary in East Africa. He writes that African Society is corrupted by a twofold mistrust: mistrust of a stranger because he is outside of a kinship bond and mistrust of an unknown witch doctor because he or she is outside of known humanity. Bishop Taylor writes that the Gospel where no one is a stranger but all are neighbors and where the sting of terror has been removed is a powerful resource for transformation.
The Gospel’s call to love our neighbors as ourselves is a powerful force against corruption that plagues poor countries. This Gospel imperative builds the trust necessary for civil society and social transformation. The biblical understanding of neighbor must shape our development action much more than it does.
E. Moral Order
Contemporary cultures have a weak sense of moral order. The rule of law is only part of the moral order and certainly not the whole of it. Moral order is the framework of ethics that shapes directs and legitimizes human action. Moral agency and action is so individualized that it reflects no community accepted moral order.
Christian understanding of creation and new creation must witness to the moral order written into God’s creation, recovered in the new creation and made possible because of the resurrection of Christ. It is this order which will find its fulfillment in the eschatological kingdom of God.
We need to find ways to recover, renew such moral order for our communities.
The challenges cultures pose to Christian believers today are many and intimidating. We have a Gospel more than adequate to address all of them. The Gospel is the power of God for transformation of all cultures.
2006 Symposium
HNGR Symposium Homepage
|
