Australia and many other countries are becoming increasingly multi-cultural. It's a real melting pot of dress, foods, habits, languages and even religions. As a Christian, how do we know what's best for us to do to relate to people from other cultures or even religions?
As was pointed out in a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) course I am currently doing, habits can clash for good reasons, and may need resolving. Take water for example, we in Australia:
Sometimes a right or wrong is purely a cultural thing or necessity. Other times there may be a moral dimension involved. Take for instance the example from Vishal Mangalwadi, which I read in Truth and Transformation recently, Vishal explains when living among the poor in mud huts in India, that his wife came upon a young boy in her travels. As usual she tried to chat and asked him how many children in his family. The answer came "four, or maybe three; or... four".
"So how many?" she asked again.
"Four, but one is dying; in there" pointed the boy to the hut.
To cut a long story short, the dying child was a baby girl, the second baby girl in the family. She was unwanted, and being left to die. A girl was of little value in India; and the second girl was a real burden. With no abortions available, what choice was there but to leave the cild to die after birth.
Vishal and his wife took a while to figure this out. They rescued the little girl twice, and each time they returned the child to her mother after recovery in hospital and at their home, she went down hill. After they returned her the third time, she was dead within days. The cow down the road was more valuable than the child because it was sacred in the Hindu culture.
Why then was Helen Keller, for example, valuable in her parents eyes when she was not fully able (blind and deaf) from a young age? Why do my wife and I care for girls with disabilities cheerfully? Vishal is uniquely positioned to comment on this, as he has lived through the alternative. He is convinced it is the biblical foundation of western culture that has provided this ethic. We are all created in our Creator's image, and therefore valuable. This should drive all our interactions with people around us, no matter what colour they are, what language they speak, where they are from or what they believe.
As was pointed out in a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) course I am currently doing, habits can clash for good reasons, and may need resolving. Take water for example, we in Australia:
- keep our showers short as water is a precious commodity
- and also wash our dishes in a tub of hot water with detergent, taking them straight to dry
- They may like to shower for 20-30 to get clean, and may need to shower a few times a day in wet season
- They also often leave the tap running when doing the dishes and make sure each dish is rinsed properly.
Sometimes a right or wrong is purely a cultural thing or necessity. Other times there may be a moral dimension involved. Take for instance the example from Vishal Mangalwadi, which I read in Truth and Transformation recently, Vishal explains when living among the poor in mud huts in India, that his wife came upon a young boy in her travels. As usual she tried to chat and asked him how many children in his family. The answer came "four, or maybe three; or... four".
"So how many?" she asked again.
"Four, but one is dying; in there" pointed the boy to the hut.
To cut a long story short, the dying child was a baby girl, the second baby girl in the family. She was unwanted, and being left to die. A girl was of little value in India; and the second girl was a real burden. With no abortions available, what choice was there but to leave the cild to die after birth.
Vishal and his wife took a while to figure this out. They rescued the little girl twice, and each time they returned the child to her mother after recovery in hospital and at their home, she went down hill. After they returned her the third time, she was dead within days. The cow down the road was more valuable than the child because it was sacred in the Hindu culture.
Why then was Helen Keller, for example, valuable in her parents eyes when she was not fully able (blind and deaf) from a young age? Why do my wife and I care for girls with disabilities cheerfully? Vishal is uniquely positioned to comment on this, as he has lived through the alternative. He is convinced it is the biblical foundation of western culture that has provided this ethic. We are all created in our Creator's image, and therefore valuable. This should drive all our interactions with people around us, no matter what colour they are, what language they speak, where they are from or what they believe.
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