More on culture

As a Christian, and a missionary, I (and many other Believers) are naturally ethnocentric. We really do believe, at our heart of hearts, that we are right. That is the problem with culture! It is learned and perpetuated. We don't naturally think to assume that we are lacking, and need to look from different angles.

I have learned something that has become a huge blessing for my life. It is an attitude that I approach each day, and it is: God wants to use me to be a blessing to others, and, God wants to use others to be a blessing to me.

As a missionary, with a heart burning to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I can easily approach each day with, "How can I be a blessing today?" Not a bad thought, but lacking, I think. It starts with a presumption that I am in a position to be a blessing. It assumes that I am a tool, properly shaped and sharpened to God's work.
It begins with me, and it begins with pride.
I believe that God will use me, but also that He is still shaping me. At 54 years of age, I have just become a student, and one who can be shaped and sharpened. God sent me to the Shuswap People to be a blessing, but He also loves me so much, that He wants to conform me to the image of His Son, and He uses the Native people, my friends, and circumstances to do that. :)
The Scripture tells me that when I am conscious of my weakness, then I am strong. I am in a position to be a blessing, as long as I am humble. I need to die to self and my cultural values and beliefs, in order that I might be shaped by His Hand. This realization hurt when I first owned it. I thought, "Oh, if only I could have been called to be a pastor of a white church! There, the church actually sends you to Willowcreek to learn how to be more in touch with your culture." In cross-cultural ministry, I have to kill my cultural preferences. For five years, I chose not to listen to my favorite music. That music is based on a European cultural value for time and belief of what good music is composed of. Native music has different values about time and beliefs of what music is. In order to have a heart understanding for Native culture, I had to "put on" their values, and that meant to die to self in a more profound way than I ever imagined. I have to put on their language, study their way of speaking and story telling.

Do you want to know a shocking truth? The Native philosophy of the Medicine Wheel has been teaching this for ages. The Medicine Wheel is symbolized by a circle with a line going down and a line going from side to side. It resembles a wheel with four spokes. There are four different colours in each section, and each color has a different meaning. I discovered a complex philosophy in the Medicine Wheel. Simply put, the goal of a real human being, is to move from what ever starting point you have, on the outside rim of the wheel, and move towards the center. So, a person that is inclined to be a thinker and love wisdom must move towards innocence. A person who is inclined to be introspective must move from that comfortable presumption towards illumination (outward).
I apologize for bringing up something as complex as the Medicine Wheel and trying to deal with it here, in such a limited time frame, but it actually correlates with Scripture. 2 Peter 1:5-9 tells us to do this, in our cultural manner. Some Believers are incline to do good deeds. Such people need to move towards knowledge. Those who are inclined to love knowledge must move towards good works. Then we must move towards self control, then to perseverance, and so on.
I have to sit down and work it all out on paper sometime, but I believe I have found a wonderful way to link the revealed truth of Scripture to Native ears, by showing how the Medicine Wheel agrees with the Bible. The goal is to validate that God has revealed truth to the native culture in the past, and lead them to embrace the Bible and the Lord Jesus as the fulfillment of His revealed truth.