“My command is
this: Love each other as I have loved you.” (John 15:12).
All of the
commandments in the Bible can really be boiled down to just two: love God and
love others. However, it might surprise you to know that the command to love
others has great cultural implications! This is true for a couple of reasons.
First of all,
some of the ways that people show love to others do not actually communicate
love at all to those they are trying to love. This should not be too difficult
to understand, especially if you are married. You might verbalize how much your
wife means to you, yet your wife responds by telling you that you don’t love
her or that she is not feeling loved. And then when you eventually get her to
explain what she means, she might say something like, “Well, you aren’t helping
around the house; that would make me feel loved.” Or “You aren’t spending
enough quality time with me.” Or “You haven’t given me any gifts lately.” Or
“You don’t hold my hand or hug me like you used to.” Thus, the way a person
expresses love and feels loved can vary from person to person. And if we really
want to express our love for those we are near to, we need to understand how
the other person feels loved.
This principle
transcends cultures as well. Take for example how a person expresses
hospitality to others. Showing hospitality is a form of loving others and it is
explicitly commanded in Scripture (Rom.
12:13). Missionary Wayne Dye tells a story that illustrates this point. “When
my daughter and I visited the Tboli people of Mindanao, Philippines in 1974,
the Christians provided us with gifts and hospitality which added up to a
month’s wages. Their culture sets a very high standard of hospitality, and this
is the level of kindness they felt they should show to friends of their beloved
translator.
As missionaries
we are often the recipient of Christian hospitality in the United States. Many
people have opened their homes and shown great kindness to us, though we were
strangers. No one, however, has come close to giving us a month’s wages in
hospitality. We don’t expect such a thing in North American culture” (Culture
and Conscience Biblical Absolutes and Cultural Variation, pgs. 12-13).
Thus, the command
to demonstrate one’s love by practicing hospitality remains, yet the way in
which it is practiced is completely cultural! Furthermore, as we have already
discussed, it must be personalized in such a way that the recipient experiences
the love that we are attempting to show them.
As a minister of
the Gospel, having regularly counseled couples, I am convinced that one of the
greatest struggles that couples have with each other is a misunderstanding of
this principle. So perhaps, you don’t feel loved by those you are close to, or
you are struggling to express love to someone. It could be that this is the
issue. If that is where you are at, I encourage you to do two things. First, I
would recommend reading a book by Gary Chapman entitled, The Five Love
Languages. This book will help you to better understand yourself and others
who are near to you. Second, after having read that book, I encourage you to be
open and honest with others, seeking to communicate as clearly as possible how
others can best demonstrate love to you. And at the same time, we need to be
willing to demonstrate love to others in their own love language.
A second reason
that expressing love to others has great cultural implications looks to actions
that can be highly offensive. As an expression of love to others, the Bible
commands us to take care of those who are less fortunate (1 John 3:17).
Ruth was a woman
who experienced great financial hardships. Yet, God provided means for
overcoming the issues of poverty. This was known as gleaning. Yet what is
gleaning? In the Old Testament, God commanded the farmers to not harvest the
perimeter of their crops, and anything that would have naturally been dropped
as they were harvesting, was to be left there in the field. These portions of
their harvest were fair game for the poor (Lev. 19:9-10).
However, consider
what was actually going on. The poor were allowed to go onto other people’s
property without permission and take a portion of the crops without paying a
penny for it. In our day and country, that would be considered trespassing and
stealing. And a person in the times that the Bible was written did not even
need to be in poverty to trespass and take things that were not theirs.
Deuteronomy 23:25 allows for anyone to pluck the heads of grain with their
hands yet they were not allowed to use a sickle. Jesus did exactly that (Matt.
12:1). And David took food that did not belong to him (1 Sam. 21:6). Thus, had
David and Jesus done the same thing in our country in the year 2020, they would
have been arrested for theft!
On the other
hand, what took place back then was a God ordained means of taking care of
others, fulfilling the command to love others. Therefore, in their day and
location, Jesus and David had the right to take what they did.
Another
expression of love that could be considered highly offensive relates to being
generous with others. The Bible explicitly commands us to “be generous and
willing to share” (1 Tim. 6:18). Generosity is again a demonstration of the
command to love others. Yet the application of generosity varies from culture
to culture.
Missionary Wayne
Dye tells of a people group in the northern Philippines called the Isneg. “If
an Isneg came into his village with a basket of pineapples from his garden, and
gave away two-thirds of them, he would be considered stingy. The cultural
standard is to give away three-quarters. If I returned from the grocery store
and gave away two-thirds of my groceries to my neighbors, they would be
concerned about my sanity.
We live in
different cultures, with different standards and systems for sharing. The
command is universal, but the application is culture specific” (Culture and
Conscience Biblical Absolutes and Cultural Variation, pg. 13).
Therefore, as we
study the pages of the Bible, and seek to apply what it says, we must be always
mindful of how to be culturally relevant. Yet being culturally relevant without
undermining requires a clear understanding first of what the Scriptural
commands meant to the original audience. And only when we understand what it
meant to the original audience can we begin to understand what Scripture is commanding
us to do today.
In His service,
Matt
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