The Cultural Collision

 The Cultural Collision...

People and culture are two peas in one pod.  You cannot have one without the other.  People are communal.  We cluster together.  Oh sure, there are those outliers who flee humanity and self-isolate in faraway lands.  But the movement of the vast majority of people today is to live in closer proximity to one another.  Cities are growing while the outlying rural areas are rapidly de-populating.  Global urbanization is on the rise and as those people move to the city centers they are bringing with them their cultures.

Culture is the unique and identifiable customs, arts, and social structures of an identifiable group of people.  Often times their culture is expressed in their use of language - even when the language is shared by many culture groups, they have their own words, phrases, and accents unique unto themselves.  For example, English is used in United States, England, and Australia.  But, put a person from each country in a room and see how well the communication is between them!  

Culture flows through the rhythms of music and dance, food and dress, values and faith.  In its own unique and wonderful way, these rhythms of culture are a beautiful expression of people who have a shared community and experience.  What may be exotic and unusual to me is common and ordinary in another culture.  What is odd and out of place to another may be part of the normal rhythm of life that I enjoy within the framework of my culture.  

People are flocking to the urban centers of the world (and bringing with them their unique cultures).  Globalization has prompted the movement of people all over the world.   Regardless of the country, people of different language, culture, race, and color have moved in.   You would be hard pressed today in our Western context to find a monolithic people/culture group.  As a result, we are bound to have some cultural collisions.  These cultural collisions are expressive, powerful, and at times very painful.  People can find themselves pitted against one another - culture is criticized, people are marginalized, and the equality of human-kind is pulverized.  Instead of the celebration of words like “culture” and “people” we are left with the worst understanding of race. 

Racism.  It is ugly, painful, and hurtful.  It exudes the worst of a person towards a people.  Words like prejudice, discrimination, and antagonism are intimately connected to it.  Racism cannot be separated from the individual.  Racism pushes and prods a person to marginalize and minimize the value and life of a person or people because of difference in language, culture, and color.  And more often than not, the person or people that serve as the target of racism are in the minority.  Those in the majority (who are racist), believe they are superior, will weaponize language while minimizing the culture and value of those who are different from themselves.  Words like “they” and “them” role off their tongues with skillful ease while “we” and “us” loose their unifying quality and are relegated to clarifying difference - “We are greater...but they are inferior;” “It is up to us to keep the neighborhood safe from them.”  

Chances are you do not define yourself as a racist.  In fact, the most hardened racist probably doesn’t see themselves in that light.  Wearing our cultural lenses we see the very best in our language, race, and color.  Unfortunately, what we see in our own culture is often at the expense of the other cultures we see through those same lenses. No analysis of culture happens in a vacuum.  We measure and compare the “different” in light of the known.  And since what we know is interwoven into our life story and affirmed by those who are in authority over us it almost universally stands as the measuring stick by which all other cultures, languages, nationalities, colors...well, you get the picture...are measured.  Thus, our ability to compare fairly is tainted.  We suffer from an intrinsic inability to be objective.  In a word, we can’t!

In 2016 Director Theodore Melfi and 20th Century Fox brought to the big screen an adapted Screen Play about three Black women who were integral to the NASA program in the early 1960s.  The relatively untold story of Katherine Johnson ( played by Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (played by Octavia Spencer) , and Mary Jackson (played by Janelle Monae) comes to life with all of their brains and brilliance; but  the movie also brings to light the important struggle of racism and cultural collisions - collisions that in large part are still with us today.

Many of you reading this may have never been pulled over by a police officer while driving your car.  For the most part, you have lived your life following God’s Word and mindful of the civil laws that are in place.  And if you have been pulled over by a police officer, you were more than likely aware of your civil transgression and awaited the penalty for your infraction of the law.  But what if you were pulled over even though you had broken no law?  What if you were pulled over simply because you were different...different sex...different color...different race?  To what level would your anxiety rise?  Would you be able to control your anger as well as your fear?  

In the opening scene of Hidden Figures the three women - Katherine, Dorothy, and Mary - find themselves stuck on a lonely Virginia road with a broken down car.  As they try to figure out their mechanical dilemma, fear (and anger) begin to bubble up as they see off in the distance a police car coming their way with the lights a blazing and siren roaring.  They know that when this police officer gets out of his car their problems may multiply.  The police officer (who happens to be White) exits his car and he is clenching his baton.  Three well dressed, professional Black women whose car is broken down warrants the police officer to approach the car with his baton?  But this is what he does.  His tone, at first, is superior...and might I add, disrespectful and clearly racially charged.  

Standing on the edge of a cultural collision.  The ball is in the police officer’s court.  He asks the three women for identification.  The anxiety level is increasing by the second.   But when the women identify themselves as people who “work for NASA...who do a great deal of the calculating to get the rockets into space” the racially charged moment turns into something very, very different.  The officer is clearly dumbfounded that NASA employed Blacks (and women at that!)...remember, it is the 1960’s!  And yet the women find grace by diffusing the police officer’s overt racism with the gentle words:  “There are quite a few women working in the space program.”

For this police officer the lenses of Nationalism are far stronger over and against the lenses of racism.  The desire for American success is a far stronger pull than the divisiveness of color or culture.  Instead of hindering or hurting his attitude changes to pride and helpfulness.  The police officer wants to engage these women in a meaningful way.  But what can he do?  He offers them a police escort that takes them down the country road some sixteen miles with lights a blazing and siren roaring.  As Mary thunders down the road behind the police car she exclaims to the other women:  “Three Negro women chasing down a White police officer down a highway in Hampton, Virginia in 1961...Lades, that’s a God-ordained miracle!” 

Jesus was quite aware of the cultural edge.  He never backed away from it and, in fact, often times brought his listeners right up to the precipice.   When a lawyer approached Jesus to put him to the test he asked:  “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25).  Why is it that the lawyers, Pharisees, and other religious leaders couldn’t figure out that Jesus was always multiple steps ahead of them?  Why is it that they couldn’t figure out that Jesus would take them to the cultural edge and challenge them to think...and re-think...how they viewed the His Kingdom?  What follows in the parable is familiar and challenging.  

He said to him, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?"  And he answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself."  And he said to him, "You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live."  But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"  Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.  Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.  So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.  But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.  He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.  And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.'  Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?"  He said, "The one who showed him mercy." And Jesus said to him, "You go, and do likewise." (Luke10.26-37)

Love.   Love the Lord your God...and love your neighbor as yourself.  The summation of the Law both vertically and horizontally.  And yet, when we look at the parable of Jesus those who should be most intimately knowledgeable of the Law (the priest and the Levite) seem to be ignorant (at best) or dismissive (at worst) of the Law of Love.  The priest and the Levite shared culture and faith with the battered and broken man on the side of the road but couldn’t (or wouldn’t) demonstrate relational care by helping the one in need.  Instead, they go out of their way to pass the broken man on the other side of the road.  

Which brings us to...the Samaritan.  Here is the cultural edge.  The Samaritan would have been perceived by the inquisitive lawyer as an adherent of a false religion and in a place he doesn’t belong (outside of Samaria).  He walks the same road as the priest and the Levite...encounters the same broken and battered man...but...when he looked upon the man in distress (who was religiously and culturally different from himself) we are told he had compassion.  It is the Samaritan who understands the Law of Love.  It is the Samaritan who truly dances on the cultural edge and falls to the side of help, care, and sacrifice.  In Martin Luther’s Lecture on Galatians 5-6 from 1535 he writes:  

Finally, no creature toward which you should practice love is nobler than your neighbor. He is not a devil, not a lion or a bear or a wolf, not a stone or a log.  He is a living creature very much like you.  there is nothing living on earth that is more pleasant, more lovable, more helpful, kinder, more comforting, or more necessary.  Besides, he is naturally suited for a civilized and social existence. Thus nothing could be regarded as worthier of love in the whole universe than our neighbor 

This is the same cultural edge we are brought to every day when we view, encounter, and interact with people who are racially and culturally different from ourselves.  The Western context has become more and more diverse with each passing day.  Our ability to keep up with the diversity and differences between people is further compounded by the lack of unity in language and cultural expression.  And yet, according to Jesus, these are my “my neighbors.”  Am I willing to sacrifice time, talent, and treasure to assist and advance my neighbor’s life and well-being?  Am I willing to drop my pretenses and listen to the story of the battered, the broken, and the marginalized?  Am I willing, like Martin Luther, to embrace the notion that this person seemingly different from myself, is really very much like me?

So, you have to ask yourself:  will you pass by on the other side of the road or will you engage with a heart and mind that is sacrificial and merciful.  Will you be the police officer whose heart is turned and escort the brilliant women to work?  Will you show compassion like the Samaritan and bind the wounds and carry the burden of the neighbor?  Because when you do you have avoided the cultural collision and embraced the Law of Love.