8/4/2014
I have only
been home for three days and I’ve had so much to reflect on lately. I
had just returned from a two month long mission trip in the Philippines.
Right now, I have been experiencing what some might call a
“reverse-culture-shock.” After I had just become accustomed to living
and loving a new culture that had seemed
to feel like a second home, I soon found myself returning to what feels
almost like another universe. Soon, I found that I had new eyes to see
things about my own culture before I had seemed to be so oblivious to.
When I was in the Philippines, I left my comfort zone to adjust to a
culture whose social some in my own culture may consider strange or
backwards. But the reality might be that my own culture is the one
living backwards.
In the Philippines I was living in a culture where
everything is more event oriented rather than time oriented. You could
walk up to any house and people would just invite you in or to come and
eat with them if they were having dinner. When I would walk down the
road with my new Filipino friends, they would often grab your arms or
almost lean against me as we would walk and talk. People were always
close to their friends, family, and even their neighbors.
In Filipino
culture, among your group, often times you will find that “what’s mine
is yours and what’s yours is mine.” One friend told me that in another
“warm-culture” country he himself visited, that it was rude to call
someone and say you were coming over—you were just supposed to come
over. Now, I was in the province area of the Philippines so I couldn’t
tell you much about the city there, which almost seems like a different
culture, but what I did experience in the city was not real pleasant.
There, I saw so many in need, but they were more than often ignored. The
province had its problems too. Many families I met had a parent or
parents who worked in the cities and would only see their children in
the province a few times a year.
When I was making my return home to the
U.S. was when I really started to see the monster of isolation that
plagues our culture and is steadily moving into other parts of our
world. On my flight home, I sat near a traveling American woman who was
shying away a small booklet she was reading entitled “How to Make
Friends.” At home now I am missing all the everyday community I had
grown accustomed to.
I recently attended a new church plant in my town
that is eager to see true gospel community in our area. The pastor, at
the end of our gathering, talk about something they like to do called
“community group.” Community group is where believers share life
together, pray together, share meals together, and simply fellowship
together as Christ’s family. Some people in our area may find this
strange, but it’s nothing new to the church. Such gatherings are seen in
the early church in Acts chapter 2. Such community in the church
reflects who God is.
God is not some lonely being but is triune and has
community in himself with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To be the
church in our culture who show the world who God is means being
counter-cultural and being uncomfortable. It means not being isolated and
putting the needs and interests of others above ourselves. This is not
easy and we need grace for this. We need to be reminded that in the
Gospel that God reconciled a people for himself to live in community
with himself and one another. Sin and death still plague our world, but
as Christians, we are messengers that hold is coming to an end and that
the battle has already been won before it has even ended.
Personally, I
now know how a foreigner may feel coming from such a warm culture to one
so isolated as ours. And that can open so many doors to show
hospitality that they may miss or even to our own nationals who may have
never experienced it. A community that does not simply have community
to get something from someone else but community that gives selflessly
for the needs and interests of others like Jesus Christ has done for
undeserving people like me. The church has the privilege to be the light
of Christ to the lost, lonely, dying and dark world around us—and we
never stand alone.
-Caleb F.