What is culture? what is the role culture plays in developing a theological method in the post-modern world? How do we contextualize
a new ministry/theology in a postmodern society? These are three questions this
paper is trying to respond.
What is Culture?
Some people understand culture as
the sum of attitudes, customs, and beliefs that distinguish one group of people
from another, but I like what Robert Lewis said, "culture is the shared
software of our minds."[1]
Indeed, a shared software that causes a group of people operating in the same
way and producing the same results in a fairly predictable way. Without too
much difficulty, we can identify a Chinese American from a Caucasian American
by observing what they eat, how they interact with their elders, and how they
educate their children, even they're all speaking the same language. Similarly,
we can probably tell the differences between Christians from different
denominations based on how they run their churches. We are what we believe, and
thus, if a group of people behave and think similarly, they are probably
running on the same "shared software".
Culture, Theology and Theological Methods in Modernism
What is the role culture plays in
developing theological methods? The answer lies in our understanding of how Christian
theology, culture, and theological methods are related to each other. To my
knowledge, theology is an understanding of who God is and our relationship with
Him. Culture is the manifestation of the theology that we believe. Theological
methods are the tasks and tools that we developed for us to better understand
the underlying theology and to articulate what we believe to other people. With
this understanding, I would argue that theology gives birth to culture, which,
in turn, defines how theological methods are developing. In order to develop an
effective theological method in our post-modern world, we will need to
incorporate the understanding of the culture and the underlying theology. Since
the culture is highly contextualized, our theological methods are also
contextualized, but our central theology may remain in the high ground
controlling the meta-narrative.
Borrowing Lewis' analogy, if
culture is a shared software, I would argue that its central processing unit
(CPU) is theology. A shared software (culture) may have many copies
(sub-cultures), but they all share only one CPU. Therefore, to make this shared
software work in a different environment, I will need to use a different local
setting, but my central CPU is still the same. Which means when I am sharing
Gospel with people from different cultural backgrounds, I will need to switch
my local settings to open up a more effective communication channel while my central
theology remains in the driver's seat. However, if my central theology is
faulty, then my theological methods will be distorted, no matter how much
efforts I put in to contextualize my methods.
A Case Study
To further illustrate the
relationship between theology, culture, and theological methods, I would argue
that the overseas ministries supported by western churches in the past three
hundred years may have largely failed, not because of their western-centered theological
methods, but because of their faulty theologies.
What happened? While millions of
people converted into Christianity, billions of people also developed a hostile
view toward western missionaries and called them "cultural imperialists"[2].
To some extent, this name is probably not far from the truth. Even today in
many Asian countries, we can still see churches built in western styles, congregations
sing in western hymns, believers using western names, and traditional customs
and festivals were discouraged. Gospel was "sold" as a western
product at a price of losing one's own culture, which, in turn, also depriving
of one's own identity. No wonder Christian believers in many Asian countries were
viewed as traitors by their own countryman and even rejected by their own
families. Christianity was largely viewed as American's religion and God was
viewed as white people's God.
That sounds bad, right? yes, but
it's not the worst. I would argue that these western missionaries also brought
in a "shared software" designed by and from the influences of
modernism happened in most of western countries in the last three centuries, where
science and technology were valued and rationalism was encouraged. The bigger
problem was, underneath this "shared software", a theology they all shared
which may have been "flawed".
According to their "modernism"
theology (which may have been influenced by the Reformation), God were best
understood by studying and understanding from the Bible, and the Bible only.
This theology created three issues in their overseas ministries.
First, in
order to educate new believers to read and understand the Bible, schools needed
to be built, teachers needed to be trained, and teaching materials needed to be
developed. Churches did a great job helping these developing countries improved
their educational systems, but what the schools taught were mainly science and
technologies, as well as western version of moral and social standards. All
these new "standards" were so foreign to most of people in these
countries. On the one hand, it created an environment easier for western
missionaries to teach locals their western version of Gospel, but on the other
hand, it may have lost the opportunity to use a more native and natural way to
share Gospel and may have forced a faulty theology onto the new believers. We
can see these two issues unfolded in the next section.
The second issue of a faulty
theology is that we lost a great opportunity to witness the Gospel using a
cultural narrative that is more familiar with the locals. Apostle Paul never
forced a Jewish doctrine or tradition on Greek believers, instead he introduced
the Gospel using the Greek culture and language[3]
that were more natural to the locals. Paul's Mars Hill sermon was the epic
example of bridging the gap between worshiping an unknown god and worshiping the
Creator God. If the western missionaries were to use the concept from Chinese
Daoism as the bridge to explain this "Word (Dao) became flesh and made his
dwelling among us", then the entire Daoism can become more complete and
can be understood by Chinese people in light of John 1:14. A Gospel door may
have been opened for Chinese people to accept the creator God that their
ancestors had been searching and longing for.
The third issue is that a faulty
theology can destroy a local culture. Western missionaries brought in new doctrines
and practices which created unnecessary bondage and even caused chaos. The
problem was that many doctrines were explained in western analogies and
Christian livings were gauged by western standards. For example, being a
Christian means that you will need to listen to God and not listen to your
unbelieving parents, which created a huge issue in a culture that respects
parents more than anything else. History witnessed its impact. Hundreds and
thousands of Chinese Christians accepted this "shared software" and
started to believe that their own Chinese culture was nothing but a pair of old
and ragged shoes that needed to be discarded, which may have directly or
indirectly caused more than a hundred year of chaos and turmoil in China throughout
most of 20th century.
Contextualize a New Theology in Post-Modernism
Can this history be avoided? For
most of western missionaries, they had received the best educations, best
theological training, and equipped with the most powerful technologies that
the world could offer, but their understandings of God, their personal
convictions, and their theological methods were largely molded under the
influences of the modern rationalism (epistemology precedes metaphysics), which
became powerless when faced a society that valued more on a meta-physical world
than physical world. Forcing an already "spiritual" man to become
"rational" and then teaching him become a new "Bible" man
in a western cultural setting is totally counter-productive.
So, what should we do differently
in this post-modern world? A world that most people no longer believe the
authority of science and technology, a world where people start to recognize the
possible existence of spiritual elements. From a theological "critical
task" point of view, I would argue that we need to carefully re-examine
our traditional "rationalist" theology and develop a new theology
that allows us to understand God's revelation from a non-rationalist point of
view.
I am not suggesting an "irrational" theology, I am simply
saying that God is bigger than the God of reasoning. Most of people living in
Asian have no trouble accepting a world full of the power of deity, it's the
people in the West who need to "unlearn" what they have been taught
and start worshiping God in "spirit and truth" as Jesus pointed out
to the Samaritan woman recorded in John 4:24. Once we, as evangelical
Christians in the West, start to develop a new theology that allows our God jump
out of the text in the Bible and become a living Spirit dwelling among us, then
we can start our first theological "constructive task" to learn and understand
the cultures of other people who are still worshiping false gods. Sometimes, we
may need to "borrow" their worldview in order to explain Gospel more
effectively to them.
The second constructive task is to review the historical
accounts and see how the ancient saints were ministering their overseas ministries
in a contextualized sense. A suggested area of interest would be the Nestorians
in 7th century China. Their churches were built in a traditional
"temple" style and their texts were not shy from using traditional
Chinese philosophy (e.g. they invented the name of God in Chinese 天主,
literally, "Lord of Heaven").
Summary
Unfortunately, the most difficult
constructive task in theological methods may reside in the 21st century
America. Churches had hard time sharing the Gospel, especially to younger
generations, because American people already enjoyed the "gospels"
from the fruits of science and technology. The Gospel of a crucified Jesus is
not popular, because Americans wanted a Jesus who can make them successful.
Success is worshiped and the rich are honored, which is sadly the theology in our
post-modern society. American people don't need God, because they already had a
God - themselves. Our "shared software" in this post-modern America
is "Be all you can be" - worshiping success more than anything else.
Even churches are run by successful professionals. We need a new theology that
we can reestablish churches which can "preach
the Gospel to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the
captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are
bruised." (Luke 4:18)
[1]
Lewis, Robert and Wayne Cordeiro, The Culture Shift: Transforming Your Church
from the Inside Out (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2005), 12.
[2]
Moreau, A. Scott, Gary R. Corwin and
Gary B. McGee, Introducing World
Missions: A Biblical, Historical, and Practical Survey (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004),
20.
No comments:
Post a Comment