The Impact of Cross-Cultural Experience (Part 1)

As I met with parents of the youth group at my church for an informal “get to know you” night, I was asked a particular question that caught me off guard: “how has your interest and pursuit of understanding and engaging cross-culturally shaped you?” I was not sure how to answer. It was seven years ago that I first decided to study religion and history in order to do community development, to “understand” culture instead of having a goal to simply “appreciate” it as anthropology or many religion programs would. But what kind of journey have I had since that decision? Where has that path led? What have I learned and am still learning?
I was tongue tied for a minute, mulling the question over in my head searching for an answer-an answer that was concise, believable, yet authentic. I had none b/c like culture, my answer had to have a context, a framework, color and nuance. Yes I have changed the last seven years and have learned much but I also see how much I have yet to learn. These are all very general areas but they are what came to mind:
1. Culture is complex
You don't need to go to another country to be confronted with a different culture. Surfers are sometimes described in Nebraska like some of us describe a third-world culture! Seeing, recognizing and learning to love the differences in your community is hard. Going from White Center in West Seattle (almost everything but white racially to those who know it) to a largely white Christian high school was cross-cultural, with all the vocabulary, behavioral mores, tensions, questions, risks, acclamation and critique of going to another country. Going from that school to Lookout Mountain, GA (the south) for college was another cross-cultural experience. I worked one summer in St. Louis, with one of the highest home owning immigrant communities in the country, for an inner city youth development program,. I also helped with a youth group 20 min away in white suburbia. It was two different worlds separated by a highway (sort of like Fitzgerald's portrayal of the area between New York and West Egg in The Great Gatsby). In some ways it was easier for me to go to Uganda and relate with the village community there than it would have been to engage with the deaf community outside my own house in the US. Living in and visiting cities around the country made me realize how quickly we create cultures and subcultures, largely to define ourselves better in light of others. Even in a world class city like London where you'd imagine a melting pot experience to be common, living with the Indian community 30 min outside London and riding my cycle to central London was immensely cross-cultural! And now, living in/near the Central District and working primarily in Green Lake and further west in Ballard I see and feel like I pass through markedly different communities.
2. We connect as humans not by avoiding hard questions but by asking them
Avoiding the hard questions is a disfavor to others, in fact it is quite lazy though it seems “kind”. Asking my host family in Mexico why I got to sleep on the only bed in the house taught me much about their culture, hospitality and contentment. Asking the finance minister of Uganda how he handles the weight of civil war and economic disaster was hard, but it revealed his heart-as he spoke of Jesus' love for him even as tears came down his cheek recounting the struggles of living out that faith in a broken world. Asking a suburban youth what he wants for his birthday but knows he can't receive -parents who work less and love him more-revealed how poverty is not simply economic. Asking a second generation Indian immigrant in London how he felt about his future-fearful, weary and anxious-revealed a man caught between two cultures struggling to love one while paving his way in another. Asking hard questions connects us because at our core we are amazingly similar. How someone asks those questions matters because only when you feel cherished do you trust someone fully and see grace and hope as a gift can. And then they, despite their circumstances, are both challenged and comforted by being part of something bigger, more complex and beautiful than they fully know. Friendship, humble yet intentional fellowship, breaks past systems and structures to our deepest hopes and fears, doubts and dreams, which is both scary and remarkably comforting.
Food for thought: Christians were first called that name by the Romans in Antioch b/c they could not be categorized. For their own safety, the Romans had to segregate those they ruled from each other but since Christians came from all sorts of racial, economic and cultural backgrounds, they didn't know what unified them other than believing Christ, hence “Christians”. Read any history of Rome or any portion of the Bible and you'll see that combining people with differences into one group is messy and dangerous yet despite culture's complexity and life's hard questions, the group that emerges is stronger, not weaker. More on how that happens in the next post...