Culture is Everything!

Culture is Everything, and this can be so frustrating when trying to communicate. I was rummaging through some old text books (I have a lot of free time) and I found myself reading a passage on culture and language and communication. Most of what I read was in the context of communicating the Gospel of Christ to cultures other than the Western world. Immediately I thought that sharing the message of Christ sounded like an impossible task. How do you break down such cultural barriers in order to communicate truth in a way that is properly understood?

But immediately after that thought, the author put me in my place. [The context of the following excerpt rests in "Christianizing" non-Christian terms (usually terms in languages or cultures other than our own). This indefinitely causes a confusion due to the differences in cultural meanings.]

It said:
"The missionary who takes the Fall seriously, then, must stop to define his terms. Which terms? Those terms indicated by the distance between divine truth and cultural error. The definitional process must proceed by compassion and contrast. If this process seems too painstaking for the Western missionary who is used to instant everything-- from instant cake to instant coffee-- so be it. But he should know that to build Christian conversion on non-Christian foundations is like building skyscrapers on sand."

Fruit from the labor is not instantaneously produced. And to conquer a cultural mountain will ultimately take time and effort whether it be across the Atlantic or across the Mason-Dixon.

Culture is Everything!