Outlined Transcript:
Hi, everyone.
In my book, The Transcultural Gospel, I draw from various felt needs in different cultures and show how they connect to the heart of the gospel. I’m going to be looking at some notes on my other screen, so if I look away, that’s what I’m doing.
I want to give you some summary takeaway thoughts from each chapter and help you think through how to evangelize people from different cultures, and how to rightly communicate the gospel without accommodating the felt needs of those target cultures.
Here’s the first point.
Every Culture Values Something
Every culture values something.
If you have ever gone through missions training or read literature about culture, you know there is a vast array of definitions for what culture can mean. I don’t think we can simply call any group of people a culture, because culture is not the same thing as an affinity group.
I’ve heard people talk about reaching the unreached people group of Harley-Davidson riders or the unreached people group of the LGBTQ community. But those are not people groups insofar as they are not true cultures. They are more like affinity groups or tribalistic clubs that gather around a particular hobby, orientation, identity, or ideology.
The idea of culture is different. It is much more closely connected to linguistic categories.
Personally, I don’t even particularly like the phrase “unreached people group” or simply “people groups.” I think it is too vague and ambiguous. I prefer terms like “language groups” or “unreached language groups,” which are used in some missions circles.
The term “unreached people groups” has been widely used since the 1970s, when Ralph Winter popularized it at the Luzon Congress. I still use it because it gives people a point of reference, but I don’t think it is the most precise terminology.
Culture develops within these language groups.
Culture as Shared Meaning
So what is culture?
Culture can be viewed as shared meaning.
And where does meaning come from? Meaning has to come from something we can articulate, and articulation comes through language. Some cultures have particular kinds of shared meaning because of their linguistic and vocabulary boundaries and limitations.
I was recently in Vietnam teaching, and my Hmong interpreter told me that in the Hmong language they don’t really have a word for “suffering.” They use words closer to “sad,” “disappointed,” or “persecuted.” That is essentially the extent of the linguistic categories available to express the concept of suffering.
Think about what that means if you are trying to translate the Bible into Hmong or preach a sermon on the suffering servant in Isaiah, or explain all the ways Jesus suffered for us.
You basically have two or three kinds of words available to communicate those theological concepts.
That leaves the missionary theologian in a difficult position. You are trying to rightly communicate what God is saying in the biblical text to a linguistic category that does not really exist in the target language.
You may need to create a new word, or you may have to go out of your way to explain what the Bible means even though the language itself does not have an easy way to express it.
This is very difficult.
Missionaries Must Be Linguists and Theologians
This is why missionaries must be both linguists and theologians.
It is not enough simply to be a noble-hearted practitioner. You have to train well because words have meaning, ideas have consequences, and eternal words have eternal consequences.
What you say, or what you leave unsaid, can be the difference between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, or between orthodoxy and heresy.
Every culture has particular values. The primary ones I identify are honor, peace, freedom, and strength.
And cultures seek to achieve these things through some kind of code, what I call a moral code.
Deep down, there is a dividing line between whether you have achieved enough honor, enough peace, enough freedom, enough strength, or enough power. There is something you have to do enough of in order to attain those things.
Most cultures, religious systems, and belief systems have some kind of spoken or unspoken code that you must follow in order to receive them.
The Test of Enoughness
The problem is that people often do not know where the line is.
They do not know the threshold of enoughness.
I call this the test of enoughness.
They do not know when they have done enough to earn enough honor, enough peace, enough freedom, enough strength, or enough power.
This is where the transcultural gospel enters into the story of their cultural baggage and cultural struggles.
The transcultural gospel makes sense of those human longings and those felt needs, but it rightly orders them.
It helps people begin to see that the real problem is not shame. The real problem is not fear. The real problem is not bondage. The real problem is not weakness.
Those are genuine problems, but they are not the foundational or fundamental problem.
The Deeper Problem Is Guilt Before God
The deeper problem is that we are guilty and cursed before a holy God.
All of those other felt needs arise out of our guilt before God. We are corrupt in Adam. We are both unable and unwilling to come to God.
This is where the solution is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Jesus has achieved atonement for us in order to pardon our guilt before God. And He has not merely lived an innocent life. He lived a righteous, law-keeping life, earning the righteousness of God so that it can be freely credited, or legally imputed, to us through faith alone.
When we receive a righteous standing before God through faith in Christ, having been pardoned for all of our sin and guilt in Adam, then the last Adam, Christ, becomes our family head, our legal head, our federal head.
Every Blessing Is Ours in Christ
All the blessings of belonging to the family of God, of being adopted into this family with Jesus as our head and representative, are freely credited and freely imputed to us.
And then those desires for honor, peace, freedom, strength, and power find their proper place.
All those things that cultures spend their lives chasing after become ours in Jesus Christ through faith alone, in the work of Christ alone.