The Cross-Cultural Gospel

A few days ago I posed the question (well, several questions, actually…but they basically boil down to this):

What could faith and Christ-following look like without the cultural baggage we put on it?

I’ve really noticed in recent years that there is an awful lot we classify as “church” that either is not mandated by the Scripture, or is unsupportable by Scripture. Yet these are so often the things we cling to the most.

The Bible lays out a few principles about what the church is, and what it means to be a Christ-follower, and a few points of order; and beyond that, the Bible is actually pretty vague. There is a great deal of latitude given as to how church can be expressed, and what it could potentially look like. I happen to think this is significant, and here’s why: I believe the gospel was never intended for the Jews alone, or for the culture of the first century. When we put Scripture into its original context, we definitely glean more truth from it; but God is timeless, and I believe the message of faith is supposed to cross generations and cultures. The Bible lacks specifics about what church should look like because the gospel is cross-cultural. The church should be able to hold to a few important characteristics across the cultures, but otherwise the church should be free to adapt to culture and context–which means it can and should look different in different times and differing cultures, while unified by the same Spirit, with Jesus as the common thread.

I think the early church understood this a lot better than we do today. I think specifically of Paul, who in Athens drew from the Greeks’ own theology and mythology to introduce them to the “unknown God.” He literally contextualized the gospel for them, putting it into a framework they could understand, rather than forcing them to try and understand it from a Jewish perspective.

Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of this important aspect of the gospel. I say this because most of the excess baggage we have attached to Christianity has to do with culture more than Scripture. Rather than allowing the gospel to be cross-cultural, we have literally formed a culture around it, and expect new believers to assimilate into that culture. This is not a new problem; in fact, it was a huge problem throughout the colonization of the New World. We didn’t look for ways to contextualize the gospel to the native people of America. Instead, we brought the existing European culture with it, essentially demanding that native converts forsake their own so-called “pagan” cultures and act like European white people. As a result, because we demanded that they not only become Christian but become European, many of our attempts to evangelize the native people backfired on us.

And yet, in an increasingly postmodern culture for whom our churchy culture has become more irrelevant than ever, we somehow continue to insist that people around us adopt not only our faith, but our culture, and we have the nerve to wonder why it isn’t working. We have not learned from our own history. We have forgotten one of the most important elements of our gospel–and that is that the gospel is cross-cultural.

Jesus was born a Jew, but God is not Jewish. Nor is He Greek, or European, or American, or Democrat, or Republican (oh, wait…those aren’t races, are they?). He is the God of all mankind, and His gospel is for all of us. I believe that God didn’t put a lot of parameters around the expression of faith specifically so the gospel could travel light. And this, I believe, is why it is so critical at this time that we figure out how to detach the life of faith from our churchy subculture. Our version of church has become clunky and cumbersome, and in so many ways fails to represent the heart of the gospel which God intended to find fresh expression across the cultures, and across the ages.

Think of it this way: what do we think is most important to God–that people reconnect and be reconciled with Him, or that we “do church” the “right” way? To God, the “right” way to do it is whichever way helps men and women make that connection with Him.

By contrast: which is more important to us? To help men and women make a meaningful connection with Jesus, or to teach them how to do it our way?

See my point? 🙂 Just sayin’.