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Transcript 142B — The Cultural Impact of the Gospel Witness
CALLER: I'm taking Anthropology now, and I thought that would be a good chance for me to be a witness for Christ, seeing as how they're talking about religion, and so on. But I can see already, as you were saying once, that so many people are antagonistic to the Gospel that they really couldn't care less.
But the other day they were talking about Americans thinking that our culture is better or supercedes others. And I think they were trying to use it in relationship to what we teach, when we go over there. And I wondered how that relates to the Gospel. We're told by Christ, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel." But when we go, how much of our own culture is supposed to rub off on the people? Are we supposed to just go over there and be neutral about the way that they live?
HC: The question is, when we bring the Gospel, just what part of that person's life is it to relate to? Our answer, of course, comes from the Bible. The Gospel has to do with the spirit of man. It has to do with his obedience to God. Now if he is living in a way that is breaking God's rules, then the Gospel is going to have an impact upon his life, upon whatever department of his life in which he is breaking God's rules.
Let's use an outlandish example. If you go down to some tribe of headhunters somewhere, where they are murdering each other, then they have to give up murdering each other if they accept the Gospel, even though they may think that this culturally acceptable, to eat the flesh of other humans. But once they become saved, that practice has to go.
But on the other hand, if they have a practice of living in a grass house, up on stilts, the Bible is silent concerning that. They can be just as God-glorifying Christians in a grass house on stilts as they can in a Western house of some kind.
CALLER: So in other words, even though we're to go there and bring the Gospel to them, we really shouldn't be concerned about, for instance, whether they become capitalists or not. You know, a lot of people want to go over there, and they want to change their whole system of things. And I was wondering if we should have kind of a "hands off" policy about that.
HC: I don't think we are going there to mold them into our ways. Our ways may not necessarily be better than their ways. We are there to bring them the Gospel so that they might have eternal life. And if they're starving, we may bring them some food. If they are dying of disease, we may teach them something about medicine, to help them. Or we may teach them some farming practices, if we think that this will keep them from starving.
But the main goal is to simply bring the Gospel. And certainly we're not there to change their culture.
CALLER: Thank you, I appreciate it. I'm happy to talk with you again.
HC: Thank you for calling. Good night.