Lessons for American Pastors from a Remote Cambodian Mission Field
This Viewpoint blog post is a companion to the May 19 episode of the Theologically Speaking podcast featuring recent Seminary DMin graduate, Dr. Michael Carlyle, and hosted by professor Billy Gotcher.
Takeaways:
- Pastors should recognize that people in different cultures, and even the same culture, can use the same words but understand those words differently.
- The intended meaning of words used in Scripture in the context of an ancient, agrarian, honor-shame, Mediterranean culture may be difficult to convey in an individualist, egalitarian, post-Christian, Western culture. In fact, it may be easier to convey the truths of Scripture to a rural Asian culture that is more like the culture of Bible times.
- Viewing Scripture through the lens of modern-day, Western culture may subvert its authority by placing our views of authority over the intended meaning.
- Two ways to address this issue are respecting the authorial intent of Bible writers in the culture and “exegeting the culture”—engaging in anthropological study to better understand how the ancient biblical writers thought and communicated and how to relate that information to people in our own culture.
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Consider the story of Vashti’s refusal to come when summoned by Ahasuerus as told in the book of Esther. It is difficult to get across to Western Christians the level of embarrassment that rebuff, by a woman no less, caused a king at the very pinnacle of an honor-shame society. Yet, as I do my devotions in a Cambodian Bible, in language created to communicate precisely the nature of that shame, the words jump off the page.
To get more granular, take the concept translated in English as “despise.” We understand the word to connote “hate,” but in both the Hebrew and the Greek reflecting the ancient honor-shame cultures, the term has the sense of valuing less or conferring a lower status.
These interpretive challenges relate to an issue declared to be at the very heart of the Theologically Speaking podcast and this blog—submission to the authority of Scripture.
We as Westerners want to use the Bible as a proof text to support our theological and doctrinal positions. If I’m reading the words of ancient, Mediterranean men and am bringing my own American meaning to the text, well, this is no longer standing in authority over me. In an unintentional but concrete outworking of it, my own thoughts, culture, and worldview are standing in authority over the text.
How did I, Michael Carlyle, a 13-year veteran of a remote Cambodian mission field, find myself writing a dissertation designed as a resource for American pastors struggling today to relate the truths of God’s Word to an increasingly lost culture? (As opposed to the expected subject relating to Intercultural Studies) And why, on my return to preaching in the United States—where I was born, raised and went to seminary—have I found it was easier to communicate those truths to Cambodians in a village where I was a foot taller than everyone else and the only white person for 100 miles?
The answer to the second question informs the answer to the first. On the mission field, I first discovered the fallacy of assuming that when we are speaking to someone in another culture using the same words they do, those words are conveying the meaning we intend. For example: the go-to evangelistic verse for Westerners is John 3:16. But if we employ that verse in the same way for Cambodians, we will lose them on the second word. Because even if an American learns to speak Khmer, what they mean by the word “God” in their language is not the same thing we mean by the word “God” in ours.
The issue goes beyond individual words. Over time I realized that I was processing information differently than Cambodian villagers whose lives are defined and determined by the agricultural cycle. Having learned Khmer, in preaching I would speak words that they know—and even use correct grammar for the most part. But it wasn’t reaching into their lives—because I was using their language to speak American thoughts about Bible truths.
This led to a second, even more surprising discovery. I learned in the course of my research that in many ways, day-to-day existence in rural Asia is much more like life in the ancient Mediterranean world of the Bible than it is to American life. In fact, I was (and am) as much a foreigner to the ancient Mediterranean apostles and prophets—and their audiences—as I was to Cambodians. That reality was driven home when I was training a young Cambodian pastor named (T) who was essentially a high-school graduate who had received only informal discipleship-level training given the lack of availability of materials in his language on interpretation, exegesis, homiletics, and other pastoral basics. Yet he often humbled me through insights in a biblical text—in particular comments and storylines that related to the honor-shame culture of the ancient world that paralleled his own—that I had completely overlooked as a product of an egalitarian society.
So, what do these observations and lessons have to do with pastors in America today, and why did I feel the need to share them? Two issues present themselves. Modern-day, American pastors will face even greater hurdles preaching and relating ancient Mediterranean texts to modern-day, egalitarian, individualist, American church members—especially in a post-Christian culture—than I did in presenting them to a similarly agrarian, honor-shame, collectivist culture. See the reference above about Vashti and King Ahasuerus.
How should pastors deal with this contextual challenge? It begins with a core principle of hermeneutics, respecting authorial intent by understanding what a Scripture writer was trying to convey in the context of his culture. One commentator has observed that worldviews are not something we look at but rather look through. If we look through American eyes in trying to interpret a biblical event, we may latch onto something the speaker says that is important in our times but not the problem he was seeking to address in the ancient, Mediterranean culture.
To accomplish that, pastors may wish to consider expanding their hermeneutical and exegetical chops by adding anthropological study—learning more about how the ancient biblical writers thought and communicated and, in essence, “exegeting the culture.” Then relating that information to how various people in our own culture act and think in similar ways. I’ll have more concrete examples and pointers in next week’s podcast and blog.
