WHAT DO YOU DO ABOUT CULTURE?

As someone who intends on entering into cross-cultural, I think a lot about the potential problems and conflicts that might arise. I see things a certain way, and sometimes I don't even realize I am seeing them that way. It is so ingrained in my mind I just don't give it a second thought. I even more hidden from my consciousness is why I think or do things like I do. This inlcudes my ideas on education, leadership and government, health care, church culture, etc.

The questions one has to ask when in a different culture is, are the things they are doing actually wrong or just different? Why are they wrong and why are they doing them? How can I allow them to keep as much of there culture? How can I make Jesus applicable to that culture? I have been taking a class which has really been helping me to understand how to cross cultural barriers and I stole the examples from last nights speaker.

We just kind of take for granted that when we are sitting around the campfire that it will burn until the wood is eaten up. To us there is no other logical way to see the situation. But to a tribe in Africa it is the other way around, the wood eats the fire.

To a people where treachery and deceit is highly valued, where the best thing you can do is to trick a man into thinking your friends then betray him, Jesus looks like the biggest tool and Judas is the hero. That is completely opposite to what we want to communicate.

Or think of how we as North Americans do church. We have a lead pastor, and then elders who do the majority of the decision making for the body. To others in cultures where community is highly valued, to allow one man to hold the power is absurd. When decisions are made the whole tribe gets together to discuss it.

Anyway, to get to the point of this post. I read an article this morning that made me think, "Where do you draw the line?" Does maintaining culture take precedence even when practices are extremely harmful or potentially life threatening? What if the "victim" of a practice is a child who is not able to make the decision for themselves.

I am refering to FGM, female genital mutalation. Click here to read the article. Several human rights and health organizations have working to end the practice in Africa. It might be shocking to some, it was to me, that women would fight to maintain this oppressive practice. To me there is so many things wrong with this, it's incredibly dangerous from a health perspective since the tools are unsanitary, you are making a girl vulnerable to infections for the rest of her life because everytime she has sex she will be torn again, when she has a baby it will be absolutely horrendous. The purpose as far as I understand is for the pleasure of man and to ensure that a women will stay faithful to their husbands. The girls who are forced to undergo this "operation" are very young, about 8, but could be younger. They have no say. They do not get anesthetic or pain killers.

So what do you do when something seems so wrong but the ones who suffer from it want to keep suffering?