In the Culture: The Problem of Being an Insider.

          You have an accent.  Regardless of what you believe, you have an accent.  Even if you have that Midwestern-General-American-English sound you have an accent.  We often do not hear our own accents because we live amongst people who, for the most part, sound like us.  It is not until you meet someone who has moved from the Northeast to the South that you realize you have a Southern accent (or the other way around.  North, you’re welcome for the beautiful noise coming out of that person’s mouth).  In this respect, accents are a lot like culture.  We often do not realize how much we are “in” our culture or influenced by it until we step out of our home setting for an extended period.  Sometimes, we don’t pick up on the way our culture influences us until we return to it after that long time away. 

When I lived in India, I was daily confronted by the reality of Indian (particularly, North Indian) culture.  I studied the language, grew to enjoy the food, and acquired some of the cultural norms (like the way my friends would tear their bread before they ate, or the way a man would greet a woman without any shaking hands or physical contact).  However, I never stopped being different.  I was the outsider.  I looked different, sounded different, and acted different.  I was not inside the culture.  But, being an outsider had its advantages.  I could do anything, and if I violated a cultural norm I was forgiven.  The white-faced American doesn’t know better.  Now, I didn’t intentionally violate cultural norms, but if I wanted to ask someone a question I asked.  I didn’t wonder if it would be awkward.  I knew they were excited because I was speaking their language.  I knew that even if my question was unusual, well I was unusual.  Being an outsider allowed me to go deeper (in some ways) than being an insider.

Since I have returned to America, I have realized how much I let American culture affect the way that I act.  I don’t ask as pointed a question as I asked in India.  I try not to make people uncomfortable.   Although, I still feel like I am stumbling around in the culture I grew up in.  But, I am okay with that feeling.  The feeling that makes me uncomfortable is the feeling I get when I realize that I didn’t ask the questions I would have asked in India.  The question about their view of God.  The petition to have the honor to pray for them.  Even the question of being friends.  I don’t ask those questions because I am too American.  I don’t ask those questions because I am too inside my host culture.  That feeling scares me.  It scares me because this culture is my host culture; it is not my home culture.  My home culture is not of this world.  My hope is not in who is President or what laws are being written; my hope is the Maker of Heaven and Earth.  The Great Sovereign who has already secured my future.  My hope is not found in avoiding uncomfortable or awkward situations.

I am too much of an insider in America.  I have burrowed deep into my host culture and have laid down roots.  I have let my culture identify me, at least in part.  I even let my culture tell me what it means to be a “Christian.”  I have not really tried to engage my culture with the Love of Christ.  But I am not downcast because my hope is not in my changing my culture.  My hope is in the Author and Editor of Culture.  He has blessed me with a two-year piece of life lived outside of the culture I grew up in.  2 years outside the culture I died to the day He pulled me out of it and into His marvelous Light, and the culture I must die to every day.  He has given me a new perspective and the opportunity to share it with others.  Most of all He has given me Himself.  That is my hope.  And my hope is firm.