Culture – what is it?

"To attempt to become involved in evangelism without first of all grasping fully the concept of culture, would be akin to putting someone behind a wheel of a car who has never driven before and telling him to go ahead, it will all work out! Whether directly or indirectly, the issue of culture is predominant in all that we do in outreach.

So, what exactly is culture, and why is it so important that we understand it?

Firstly, culture could be summed up in a nutshell as 'The beliefs, feelings and values, and the resultant pattern of behaviour shared by a group of people'. Through our experiences we form a mental picture of our world. We all have a mental map of the streets around our home. There will obviously be other streets, but because they are not relevant to us, they do not form part of our world.

Culture is a mental map of the world that people live in. Not just a physical map, but one that determines decisions and behaviour. Although not every single person will feel the same about every single issue, there will be a common majority of thought on many things. People will have the same beliefs, feelings and values. This will be a cultural trait.

Secondly, we need to understand culture because otherwise we will never fully understand anyone outside of our own. Therefore we will never be effective in reaching out to them with the Gospel.

Many people believe that their culture is superior. This is called ethnocentrism and is responsible for much of the misunderstanding that we encounter in the world today. The person who has fully grasped the issue of culture realises that the other culture is not inferior – just different!

As part of our recent teaching at SICM we looked at the Igbo tribe of West Africa. The girls, when at the age when they want to impress the opposite sex (some things never change, regardless of the culture!) wear heavy bracele-type ornaments from their knees right down to the ankle. They find it difficult to walk, it becomes incredibly uncomfortable, but in order to impress, they suffer the discomfort.

"How terrible," I hear you say (particularly if you are from a Western culture). But, what's the difference between a young Igbo girl and many in our own society who will endure absolute agony by squeezing their feet into tiny and extremely uncomfortable high heeled shoes? And why? To impress the opposite sex!" - Stewart Bloor, Sedgeley International Christian Mission

"Many elements of our own culture are invisible to us. The old adage 'a fish discovers water last' indicates that it is difficult to 'see' our own culture objectively. It is often when we meet people from other cultures, or travel abroad ourselves, that we become aware that our own worldview is not as normal, neutral or natural as we may have supposed. For example, many of us become conscious of our accent only when we move away from our locality to study or work, and find ourselves talking differently from those around us. Culture is 'the way we do things around here'.

Many of the aspects of our culture that are most powerful in our lives are invisble to us. We see through them like a window, we do not notice them or their power. Consequently we are unable to evaluable them. We can neither celebrate them nor repent of them."
Living in the Presence of the Future, by Roy McCloughry

We should not assume that because we are trying to reach people in our own country, or those who speak English, we already understand their culture – the way they really think and view the world. Christians often live in a sub-culture so far removed from the culture around us, or else we are too immersed in the culture, to be able to understand it objectively. Many people online belong, at least in part, to oral communication cultures.

Learning to understand culture is essential to evangelism.

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