Reformed Cross-Cultural Naïveté

I have recently been thinking about a serious problem in the reformed movement and conservative evangelicalism more broadly. It is actually not a new problem but an old one. The novelty factor, it seems to me, is that it is affecting some reformed ministries quite spectacularly. It is not just an American problem. We in Britain can be just as guilty. The problem is this: we have become negligent of our duty to be cross-culturally aware. We think we can do cross-cultural ministry without a single hour of training in intercultural communication. We send our pastors off to Ouagadougou to do pastor training without giving them any lessons in contextualization. We fund the translation of our finest books into Telugu without first seeking to understand how the Telugu mind works. And we set up seminaries in Burma without the slightest crumb of knowledge of how Karen or Kachin tribes people best learn. Shame on us.

How did we get this way? Here are six possible reasons:

1.      We think it is enough to emphasize human universals: we are all made in God’s image; we are all sinners; Jesus is the only hope for all people. Those are all true. But it is not enough. The commission of the Lord Jesus was to make disciples of all nations (Matt 28:19). Put that way, he meant that discreet nations rather than the general mass of humanity, have significance. It does an injustice to the Lord to neglect that by only emphasizing the universals and ignoring the particulars.

2.      We have not mined the riches of our theological heritage. So we have an undeveloped theology of human creativity. The biblical doctrine of creation tells us that humans were given a mandate to fill the earth and subdue it (Gen 1:27-28), creating culture from the stuff of creation. That includes language and customs, art, music, architecture. So the rich diversity of the manifold peoples of the earth is something God designed. Reformed people should know this. It has been a significant element in a robust Reformed theology since Calvin. We should recognize that diversity. But we don’t. Or won’t. I am not sure which.

3.      We assume that, because truth is one there is only one biblically permissible worldview. This is false because worldview is, in fact, formed out of an interplay between one’s heart commitments and the environment in which one works out one’s salvation (Phil 2:12). So the world’s peoples look at the world differently from each other. They perceive time differently. They perceive space differently. They are more or less field-dependent, more or less collective, communicate in more or less indirect ways. Which means that the straightforward declaration of the truth is not as straightforward as we may like to imagine.

4.      We assume that to teach the Bible all you need is to study the Bible. This is false because the communication of a message involves both a source and a receptor. In order for communication to be effective there has to be attention to the receptor as well as the message and the source. So we mustn’t take a sermon that we preached in Birmingham and preach it the same way in Bangalore. But you say there is only one Bible. Indeed, but when you take that Bible and you create a message you enculturate that message in your culture. That means it is no longer just the Bible. It is the Bible in your cultural idiom.

5.      Personal confidence is confused for godly conviction. It is good to have strong doctrinal convictions. The problem is, though, we often confuse a strong doctrinal commitment for godly conviction rather that what it really is, ungodly self-confidence. We are naïve about ourselves. Whereas those we disagree with must be foolish and self-deceived we are not. We are triumphalistic, not humble. We assume we must be right on all our finer points of doctrine because we are right about the basics. Or because so and so celebrity pastor says it is. Where is the godly self doubt that should lead us to question ourselves? We have fallen into the Corinthian pit of self-deception (1 Cor 3:18).

6.      We forget we are in a spiritual battle and that the enemy of our souls has a vested interest in the failure of our ministry. That failure can be accomplished in many ways. One way is by fooling us that we don’t need to pay attention to local matters, that what is good for Manchester is also good for Maputo. Another way is by lulling us into a false sense of our own effectiveness leading us to think we can do this with professional ease. So we don’t pray like we should.

So how should be fix this problem? We need to remind ourselves that we might not be right about everything after all. We need to get down on our knees and examine our hearts and repent of the pride that leads us to such hubris. We need to get a biblical view of the particular, take the trouble to give heed to it, and be more modest about the expectations we have of anything we do cross-culturally, especially if we don’t make the in-depth, long-term investment in language and cultural acquisition that is every bit as serious as our biblical and theological learning. I fear the reformed triumphalism of recent years is every bit as ugly as the charismatic triumphalism of a generation ago. May God have mercy on us.

Ten American Picture Books Every British Child Should Have Read to Them

We have two whole shelves of picture books at home. Now my youngest is ten they hardly get taken down and looked at, let alone read. These days it is The Hobbit, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, The Divide, etc. But we would not want to part with these beloved picture books. They sustained us through many an exhausted bed time. They let our imaginations run wild: we clambering over icy mountains, fought fire-breathing dragons, explored deep dark caverns, and swam through shark-infested waters. Thankfully, we always managed to get back in time for bed. The children enjoyed them too! We learned geography, history, art, mechanics, animal behaviour, and meteorology.

Of course, we read many picture books that were never read again. Some seemed, strangely, to be over much more quickly than the number of words suggested! Once the children were able to follow along they had to be confronted with the grim reality that some books would have been better had they never seen the light of day. Such books have happily been expunged from my memory and certainly do not figure on those two hallowed shelves in the family room. Most of the books that do remain found their way from the West to Nepal and back again. One or two went missing so we bought replacements because we could not imagine life without them. Most have seriously worn dust jackets or plain cloth covers because the dust jacket did not survive the frequent assault of preschoolers eagerly seeking their contents. Some are affected by monsoon mould. One had to be reassembled page-by-page with sticky tape after a frustrated toddler could think of no other way to handle his emotions than to rip up most of his favourite book. These books are loved.

Now it is a curious thing that the United States of America and the United Kingdom are not just two great nations divided by a common language but also two great picture book powers divided by mutual ignorance. Not completely: a few authors get read on both sides of the Atlantic, e.g. Dr Seuss. But it always struck us how very different the children's section of the library in Britain is from that of the States. So I would like to share with you fellow Brits ten American picture books that you may never have heard of and that will leave you and your children in a desperate state of cultural poverty if you do not get to enjoy them together.


Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans (ISBN 0-670-85187-6 for the 6 story set)
"In an old house in Paris
that was covered with vines
lived twelve little girls in two straight lines."
This has been one of our all-time favourites. I can probably recite the whole book still. We all recite lines when the occasion prompts us, usually in unison. Brave Madeline is the smallest of the twelve. We don't even learn the names of any of the others. In fact we don't even find out why she is even at the old house in Paris. But the sparse context makes the story stand out carried along by its brilliant rhyming. We were given the complete set of six Madeline stories in a single volume. The only difficulty is which one to choose before bed!




"Could Be Worse!" by James Stevenson (ISBN 0-688-07035-3)
"At Grandpa's house things were always the same...," but Mary Ann and Louie find out that Grandpa's life may not be so boring after all. James Stevenson has a wacky imagination and draws with a sketchy style that belies his artistic talent.







Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey (ISBN 0-670-45149-5)
A duck's-eye-view of 1940s Boston with a homey story and brilliantly drawn monochrome pictures. I once got two of my girls to copy a McCloskey duckling and still have those drawings.








Christina Katerina and the Box by Patricia Lee Gauch, illustrated by Doris Burn (ISBN 0-698-11676-3)
Christina's mother buys a new refrigerator but Christina is much more exited about the box, which becomes, by turns, a castle, a clubhouse and, well you'll have to find out. A celebration of childhood creativity, imagination and just plain fun.









A Big Ball of String by Marion Holland (ISBN 0-00-171318-3)
As with cardboard boxes if you have a big ball of string you can do anything! The rhyming text encourages children to predict the next line and try out rhyming words themselves.








Doctor De Soto by William Steig
Doctor De Soto is a mouse dentist. Being a mouse he refuses to treat animals dangerous to mice. But when a well-dressed fox turns up with a flannel bandage around his jaw the De Sotos decide to risk it. The fox wonders whether it would be 'shabby' of him to eat the De Sotos when the job was done. The question is, Who is able to outwit whom?






Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall, pictures by Barbara Cooney (ISBN 0-14-050441-9)
A 19th century farming family in New England uses an ox-cart to take their goods to market, where they make the money to buy the things they can't make themselves. Simple story that shows the cycle of the seasons and the value of hard work and thrift.






Amos and Boris by William Steig (ISBN 0-14-050229-7)
When Amos the mouse falls off his boat, the Rodent, all seems lost. But as Amos begins to wonder what it would be like to drown a huge head bursts out of the water: Boris, a fellow mammal. Boris rescues Amos but that isn't the end of the story.... Steig has a tremendous way with words. 'Bursting breakers,' 'phosphorescent,' and 'evaded' are not words you normally find in a book for small children but the way Steig uses them they will never feel lost but will have their imaginations expanded. My favourite Steig book.






Stone Soup by Marcia Brown (ISBN 0-689-71103-4)
This is a classic retelling of an old French tale in which three hungry soldiers outwit the selfish inhabitants of a village into laying on a feast for them. Children love the clever scheme of the soldiers and mock the folly of the villagers!








The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot by Alice and Martin Provensen (ISBN 0-14-050729-9)
"The year is 1901. The place is the city of Cambrai, in France." History as it is meant to be - a great story of vision, hard work and perseverance and eventual success with watercolour paintings reminiscent of Ox-Cart Man.