Posted by Quotable in Baptist Life, Bible & Theology, IMPACT Features
There is a sense in which all Christians are prone to ethnocentrism – and it remains, strangely, the sin they never confess.”
From Announcing the Kingdom: The Story of God’s Mission in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), pp. 37-38.
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Wow… just keep stirring…
What makes ethnocentrism a sin?
It’s natural for me to see the world from my cultural perspective, as my culture is where God has me working. But it’s not necessarily a controlling tendency, or nobody’d ever go to the mission field.
The numbers of folks on the mission field demonstrates that God can easily overcome ethnocentrism when He has work for someone outside their own culture.
Now I did find another definition what includes the thought that we view our culture as superior (which ours isn’t). In that sense, of course, it’s ungodly among other things, but I’m not sure how many folks know enough about other cultures to make that judgment.
Ethnocentrism is but a branch of “The World Revolves Around…” syndrome. One of the things I remember well from reading The Purpose-Driven Life is the statement “It’s not about me.” I guess a statement worth contrasting with ethnocentrism is “It’s not about us.” The scripture is clear: “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:26-28).” The challenge, as with all scriptural truth, is the application. Even the first Christians had difficulties with each other and these divisions were along ethnic lines (remember the Grecian and Hebraic Jews from Acts 6?). We must be encouraged by Apostle’s reaction, challenged by the Galatians passage, and remember to, in humility, consider others better than yourselves.
Ethnocentrism??? A sin? Who is doing this? And, what?
David
Wikipedia…Ethnocentrism=”Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one’s own culture.” Even if people are doing this, where’s the sin? Where in the Bible does it say to not be ethnocentric? Where does it say that people who are looking at culture from thier own perspective is sin??????
This sounds like one of those Pharisaical type things where people are adding something to Scripture to just make thier philosophy sound more holy and right.
David
The world does nor revolve around me. Nor is the object of the Gospel
me, but God.
Self is our main sin, and obstacle. If self is not gratified we
don’t want it.
Man’s chief end is to please God , not himself.
PEOPLE WHO DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE GLASSER QUOTE, ARE STUCK ON
THEMSELVES.
I think we’re beginning to mince words. There is nothing necessarily wrong with having a point of view. If there was, SBCImpact would actually be encouraging sin because the authors are writing from their point of view, and we commentators are as well.
Ethnocentrism can simply mean viewing other groups and cultures from our own cultural perspective. Again, nothing necessarily wrong with that, but not even attempting to understand others from their perspective limits our capacity to interact appropriately and understand fully. How well would we be able to understand the Bible if we never tried to understand the beliefs and values of the Jews, Greeks, and others from those times. If a new convert was left alone with a Bible and never received any discipleship, they might miss out on some of the meaning in passages where Jesus, Paul, and others draw on the perspective of the people they’re communicating with.
One of the things my Spanish instructors over the years have hated is the phrase, “Well, that’s stupid.” Students beginning to learn Spanish will find that word placement differs. Some words may sound the same between English and Spanish but have entirely different meanings. The Spanish language isn’t stupid because it doesn’t align with English. The Spanish language wouldn’t even be a language if it were the same as English.
Getting back to the quote. Yes, ethnocentrism can have a meaning that implies ignorance or even the foundation from which we begin to understand other cultures, but you have to ignore that and try to understand the author’s meaning because ethnocentrism can also be “belief in the inherent superiority of one’s own ethnic group or culture.” And I got that quote from Dictionary.com. This is what the author is beguiled about. And to be totally honest, it ticks me off as well, in part because of my love for the Hispanic people and the terrible way they are charicatured in America today. But before anyone says I’m xenocentric, let me point out that Americans aren’t the only ones to do it. If I felt that way, I might be xenocentric (thinking other cultures are superior to my own) and ethnocentric (thinking of American ethnocentrism only from an American perspective) at the same time. Trust me, I’ve seen it also where the conversation focuses on the “crazy Gringos.”
The point is that we should recognize that 1) we all, as humans, are prone to think of other nations/cultures/ethnic groups as being inferior to our own, 2) that inflated view of ourselvees is pride, and 3) pride is sinful and should root it out.
Does anyone really disagree with these points?
I believe the danger the author of the quote is warning us against is, in our zeal to spread Christianity, not to focus on spreading white American Christianity. I like our church services just fine, but if I visited a church we started in India and it looked and sounded like our church, I would feel like we failed somewhere.
I have the gut feeling that the quote is trying to more closely align our thoughts with “birds of a feather…” than a “superiority” feeling about ourselves, or our “group”/”culture”. It’s a big challenge for some people to step outside of their “comfort zone”, and really communicate with other individuals that appear/speak different than what they are accustomed to in their “normal” daily lives. Most college singles don’t hang around slightly older married people w/ kids, for example.
The “sin” aspect, is the challenge for those who view the “Church” as a Rest Home for Saints, instead of a Rehab Center for Sinners. …and thereby sit inside the comfort zone, instead of “Go Ye into all the Earth…” (…which ALSO includes your next-door neighbor. You don’t HAVE TO go to Africa or China to be a missionary.)
It can also mean believing one’s ethnicity superior. That would be sin.
Debbie,
Of course, believing that you’re better than someone else due to the color of your skin, or due to what people group you were born into, is wrong. But, that’s not the meaning of ethnocentrism…not from what I read. I guess it could be a definition that the word has come to mean.
Mike,
But, do you have to adopt another worldview in order to reach out to a different culture? Do you have to become aborigine in order to reach aborigine’s? And, would it be sin to reach out to the aborigine people of Australia while wearing jeans and a t-shirt and combing my hair the way I did it in America? I mean, is that a sin?
David
Of course not. You know that already. The sin is to keep your posterior plastered on the couch, when God told you to get up and “Go”. We’re supposed to be “in the world”, but not “of the world”.
Mike,
Is a sin? To not become Aborigine to reach the Aborigine in Australia? Is it SIN?
David
Are you required to BECOME a prostitute, to REACH a prostitute?
John 4:6-39
Your continued hammering on contentious paraphrased re-issues of repeated questions, resisting answers, smells a lot like direct contradiction of Paul’s instruction to Timothy: 2 Tim 2: 15-16.
Mike,
?
David
PS. You sound angry. Why?
I tell you, and you refuse to hear.
I re-phrase, and you still refuse to hear.
Therefore your intention is to not hear, only to waste time effort and energy.
Mike,
My intention was to show that maybe Mr. Glasser was going a little bit too far by calling ethnocentrism a SIN. That’s the point I was trying to make. You and I and everybody else on the planet might think that it’s best to dress like an aborigine, and to eat what they eat, and learn their language, etc. in order to reach aborigine’s. But, to call it a sin?!?
Mike, I’m not refusing to hear anything. I’m just trying to make my point.
David
That’s a great quote.
From a missiological context, it’s really a no-brainer.
Not sure it makes Glasser pharisaical, though. But speaking of them, the NT Pharisees were, in many ways, ethnocentricism personified. Thankfully, Paul shed that part of his upbringing and education.
Stuart,
Again, is it a sin? a SIN?
I think not. It might not be the best way to reach people of a different culture, but is ethnocentrism a sin? goes against the Bible?
David
Volfan,
I do understand what you’re asking. It’s kind of like, “is money evil?” No, money isn’t evil in and of itself, but the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.
If ethnocentricism is merely viewing the world from within the lenses of one’s own culture, then no, it isn’t necessarily a sin. But for a missioanry People of God, it certainly can become sin rather quickly.
volfan,
As to the example of the aboriginal Australian. One wouldn’t have to become an aboriginal to reach them. One wouldn’t even have to dress like them. But, if one concludes that reaching them also involves their learning English and adopting Western dress, then one has indeed sinned by creating barriers between the aboriginal Australian and the gospel.
But Stuart, I agree that it would be the BEST
But, Stuart, I would agree that it would be the BEST thing to do in reaching a people group…to dress like them…learn thier language, etc. But, it’s not SIN to not dress like them, eat like them, speak thier language, etc. Remember, we’re talking about sin…not what is best and most wise. And, Mr. Glasser called it a SIN!
Do you see what I’m saying? I think he went extremely too far in calling it a sin. Where in the Bible does it say that missionaries are sinning if they dont dress and eat and speak like the cultures that they’re trying to reach?
And, further, I really am trying to speak against the whole idea, that seems to go around every so often, of people calling things sin which are not sin. They seek to add thier preferences to the Bible and call it sin…which the Bible does not speak to.
David
What would be the best?
* Trying to understand their worldview and so present the gospel?
* Or their learning English and adopting Western dress?
Do you see how one removes a barrier and the other creates one?
Volfan,
Disregard my last comment as it was a reply to what I realize was only a partial comment of yours.
Brothers,
I appreciate this quote and would probably argue that the word ethnocentrism, at least in the missionary community, carries with it two implications that might be considered sin. Again, I am speaking out of my experiences in hearing and using the word, not necessarily what the dictionary says. Maybe it would even be better to say these two things are at the bottom of the slippery slope of ethnocentrism. Here goes:
1. The word implies that one thinks more highly of his culture and his way of doing things and actually looks down on other cultures. This is sin because of the pride involved.
2. The word can have a direct effect on the way in which we proclaim Jesus. If we view our culture as “better,” and more beautiful than another culture, we are less likely to attempt to see the world through their that culture’s proverbial eyes. Thus, we will present a Gospel that only answers our culture’s questions and does not deal with the questions the “other” culture is dealing with. This very quickly leads to syncretism if there are any “converts” at all. I would say this is sin in that we are not properly loving our brothers. And, this sin is a direct result of the pride mentioned above.
I am guilty of both all the time. This is a continual battle we always face. Examples of language that indicate we need to check our hearts:
“The way they do that is stupid.”
“If they would just…”
“These people ALWAYS…”
“When I was growing up…”
“They just don’t get it.”
“Back home we…”
Again, all of the phrases do not necessarily mean that I am in sin, but I certainly check for the above two sins when I catch myself saying them.
Peace to you brothers,
From the Middle East
FTME,
nevermind.
David
Volfan,
I wrote a fairly lengthy, hopefully thoughtful reply that got erased by accident. I can’t begin to attempt to repeat it all here.
I guess I’ll just summarize it this way. Something that isn’t necessarily sinful (seeing the world through one’s own cultural lenses) can BE sinful. By NOT attempting to recognize and remove cultural barriers between a people and the gospel, I effectually impose new ones. So maybe I should say it this way, as a Christian if I am CONTENT in my ethnocentricism, I sin.
Sorry I lost the longer, more detailed, and more thoughtful reply. Have a blessed day in the Lord.
Stuart,
I still cant agree with you….long comment or no. I do not see how you can call it a sin. If I wear a t shirt and jeans as a missionary to the Saudi Arabian people, and I continue to wear a t shirt and jeans after being there for 3 years; I still dont see how you can call that a sin. Where is that in the Bible?
David
God bless you, brother.
Have a blessed mid-week service.
Stuart,
God bless you, too.
David