Culture Crash

This past week, the country celebrated Nelson Mandela’s 92nd birthday. There is a national holiday for the man who created a bend in the story of South Africa’s history and represents the reconciliation and celebration of cultures, declaring South Africa a “Rainbow Nation” during his presidency. The national anthem is sang in 5 of the 11 national languages. There are countless culture groups, each with their own languages, foods, and social norms.

This past weekend, I attended an Afrikaans church, where I knew the words to the worship and the atmosphere was pleasant and polite. We took communion together, the children were dismissed for Sunday School, and the format was similar to American churches I’ve attended. After church, I was invited to lunch with a couple from the church – in a gated community of gorgeous brick houses on a golf course. We were ushered in with amazing hospitality and love, and served an incredible feast of chicken, steak, potatoes, carrots, bread, salad, juice and even 2 kinds of cake with custard for dessert!

This week I’ll go to a Swati church in Mbonisweni, where the women and children sit on one side and the men on the other and there are no instruments for the worship sang mostly in siSwati. A new member leads church every week, the children snack, sleep and wander about freely, and guests are invited up to share testimonies. There are spontaneous songs throughout, and you can always count on dancing wherever Stanley and Lennon are sitting. You bring your own toilet paper in case you need to use the squatty potty outside and, when you finally hug the children goodbye at 1pm, you hope they have pap and beans to go home to.

And then there’s the spiritual and relational community on the Ten Thousand Homes base where I live, with its own, largely American culture. Everyone comes to morning prayer with a cup of coffee in hand, and we talk about love languages at least once a week.

South Africa is both a 1st and a 3rd world country. And I’m trying to live somewhere in between – I think.

I have no idea where/what to call my home church here. I say “no” in Afrikaans and “yes” in siSwati. I’m finding that the more I experience, the more cultural confusion I enter.

Since joining staff and committing to be in South Africa for at least 2 years, I’ve realized that if I’m not intentionally and continuously aware of what’s happening around me, I could drown in this ocean of cultures.

Being intentional.

I want to look for the good in each culture and celebrate it. I want to experience another facet of Christ’s uncontainable character amongst every person and every people group.

I don’t want to get washed away by a tidal wave of norms and expectations.

I want to learn, to see, to hear, and to choose to live out of a Kingdom culture anyway. Sometimes I feel undeservedly privileged to live amongst such diversity and getting to glean more Kingdom experiences by living alongside other cultures. But, honestly, most of the time, I’m overwhelmed and just feel out of place wherever I am.

I think that’s ok. Because I don’t think I’m supposed to “fit in” anywhere on earth. But, dang, it can get uncomfortable. Even lonely in the times when I’m desperate to feel like I “fit” somewhere.

God’s been teaching me that there’s a “new” kind of comfortable. It’s being comfortable in my Home in Him rather than trying to get comfy on the couch of whatever culture I’m living in.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort… For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.” – 2 Corinthians 1:3,5

That kind of comfortable is WAY better… it’s the eternal kind that never disappoints. But, truthfully, I’m struggling to rest in that.

Please pray with me that I keep working for, that I choose daily and that I will believe all the way through me that my Home is the Kingdom and that’s the culture I belong in. It doesn’t matter what language I speak or what my love language is there; I just belong.

It’s almost hard for me to write this part because of how uncomfortable it is, but I hope you experience that “misfit” longing for something beyond the culture around you, too. I hope that longing leads to a new wave and passion of intentionality in your life. I hope your insides start crying out for eternity and that we can strengthen and encourage each other for the culture where we all belong, where we are all perfectly loved, and where the social norms don’t necessarily align with any culture on earth, but relationships develop to depths we’ve never known before.

“Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile, we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” 2 Corinthians 5:1-4