I had a conversation with my mom today because of my increasing desire to go into relief work/ministry overseas. She challenged me with these thoughts and questions: Is evangelism a form of cultural imperialism? Can it sometimes do more harm than good? (A look at the history of American Indian/missionary interactions on this continent will supply one answer.) Is it condescending and demeaning to a culture to have outsiders (in developing countries, usually white) come in, assuming their way is the better one, and set to work "helping" to correct that culture's perceived deficiencies? Do relief workers sometimes fall prey to the error illustrated in the maxim "to give a man a fish will feed him for a day, but to teach him how to fish will feed him for a lifetime" (i.e. only providing short-term solutions to long-term problems)?
These questions are weighing heavy on my heart as I think about my future. I just want to help people. It's as simple as that. I just want their basic human needs to be met. I don't want to destroy their traditional ways of life or engage in cultural imperialism in any way. However, I do believe that although truth is to be found in many different religions, it is only in Christianity that the fullness of the truth is revealed. I want everyone to know Christ because I believe that he is the son of God -- an essential person of the glorious and life-giving trinity.
I have always had trouble with the idea that salvation is for Christians only. I like what C.S. Lewis says: that every person is in flux, in a state of becoming more Christ-like or less Christ-like. Salvation seems like a mystery to me. I do believe that following Christ guarantees salvation because each Christian has asked for forgiveness and been ransomed from death and sin through his sacrificial death and resurrection. I do not believe that "works" are the way to salvation; they are the fruit of a heart that loves God and not a way to "earn" his love. I have simply always believed that God knows the heart of every man and saves whom he will (not in a Calvinistic sense of predestination, however -- I believe in free will), and that those who seek him will find him, and that anyone who prays to God by whatever name they call him will eventually meet Christ because Christ is God. I have a difficult time with the outsider/insider mentality that many evangelists seem to have ("Are you saved?"). Still, paradoxically, I have a heart for evangelism.
My mother contends that the only way to help people is to love them, not to try to change them. I agree. But how do you love people best when it seems that change is what is needed (both for yourself and others)? I can't change myself or anyone else. Only Jesus can.
About assumptions of cultural superiority and cultural imperialism: I see the many, many wrongs inflicted by and flaws and weaknesses inherent in the culture in which I have lived. But I have always had clean drinking water, sanitary bathroom facilities, access to education, plentiful food, etc., and when people don't, there is something very wrong there. It seems to me that basic relief work to amend the immediate sufferings of people must go hand in hand with trying to get to the root of and correct the deeper, causal problem. How do you, as an outsider abroad, do that without destroying a culture's traditional ways of life? How often has the problem itself been caused by imperialism? Should we all stick to solving the problems of our own communities rather than venturing out globally? If so, isn't it somewhat hard-hearted to only want to help "our own"? How do we distinguish between "our own" and the "other"? (We're all human beings.) Is it wrong to go elsewhere when there are people in need right here at home? How do we define "home"? Isn't there value to the international understandings and friendships that can be fostered by cross-cultural pollination? And why does it have to be so complicated?
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