:CCO's Cross-Culture Exchange:

Richard Lovelace once wrote that people who are insecure in Christ will often “fix upon their race, their membership in a party, their familiar social and ecclesiastical patterns and their culture as means of self-recommendation.”  Ouch!  How often, when I begin to lose confidence in my ability to live and minister in my multi-cultural community, I clothe myself in the pride of being a white Anglo-Saxon protestant.   In these uncertain financial times people are putting on the armor of their respective political party while throwing salvos at the other side.  The mega church has thrived on the pride of people’s identity being wrapped up in their membership in a successful church.  Anxiety and insecurity can lead to the hubris desire of asserting the righteousness of our own group and criticizing others. 

All of this reeks of the tower of Babel – “a time when the whole world spoke a single language” and “began to take advantage of their common language and political unity”, (Genesis 11:1, 6).  The people were striving for a unity that would give them security and make a name for them.  While Jesus tells us that unity will be the major way outsiders will know God sent His Son, it is a unity of Christians who are different from one another – culturally, racially and economically – that contains the true glory of God. God confirmed this at Pentecost when H e began to reverse the curse of Babel by showing that His Holy Spirit can overcome the linguistic and ethnic barriers we erect. 

For ages people have retreated into the security of familiar customs and cultures and have regarded differences as something to avoid.  These prejudices and preferences according to Tim Keller are a “form of self-righteousness, a way to feel acceptable and worthwhile on our own merits”.  We do this when we begin to convince ourselves that our race, our tradition or our politics are superior to others.  If we are to really embody the gospel to the world around us we must have a bias towards being multi-cultural. We can only do that when our security and identity is fully in Christ and not our cultural heritage.