I’ll try to let you try to identify which culture is the United States and which one is Madagascar.
Society A
This society follows the idea, “Honor your father and mother.”
Society B
This society follows the idea, “Your parents are out of touch goofballs, and you can blame them for most of your problems.” (Thank you Freud!)
Interestingly, the society that knows where the phrase, “Honor your father and mother,” came from, is not Society A.
There is a phrase everyone should know when they are traveling abroad: “It’s not wrong, it’s different.” That because when going to another culture, some things will seem so very out of place, and sometimes just plain wrong. While some things are actually wrong, others are really just a matter of custom, even if they seem incredibly unreasonable. The Word of God is super helpful at determining the two.
This post is an effort to help explain what it is like to be in a very different place like Madagascar. I’ll give one example with a story.
I had been in Madagascar for two weeks when I got the chance to go on a trip to the small town of Betioky to share the gospel, and I went with about thirty other Malagasy people. We didn’t have money for a hotel, but the town let us stay in two classrooms at the school since their classes were on holiday. So the first night, I went to the classroom where I and about fifteen other men were going to be spending the night. All the seats had been removed from the classroom, so the whole floor was available as sleeping space. I had prepared myself mentally for spending the night on the cement floor, and when I got in the room, I found a nice cozy unclaimed corner-spot. I got my blanket out and had my fleece jacket arranged nicely as a pillow.
But there was one thing I did not understand. From my perspective, things should have looked something like this in the room:
All sleeping peacefully
But then I heard a voice, and turning around, I realized that things looked like this…
"It's not wrong, it's different. It's not wrong, it's different. It's not wrong, it...
Why in the world would I want to sleep all isolated in the corner as though I thought they were all gross and dirty? Why wouldn’t I be thrilled that Victor and Crescend had saved me a spot between them on a 4 ft. x 6 ft. straw mat? Isn’t it much easier to sleep shoulder to shoulder instead of cold and alone?
I reluctantly picked up my blanket and my fleece-jacket-pillow, and got into their nice little sleeping arrangement. It took me a while to get to sleep.
I think this would strike some Americans as odd. So might the fact that, on a recent trip to the capital Antananarivo, the Bishop was assigned a twin bed to share with his Malagasy translator.
In Pierre’s house there are five people using one bunk bed and a double. Either he and his wife or his two sons are sharing a spot on the bunk bed.
A part of all this might also stem from the fact that many other cultures outside the United States practice cosleeping (that’s an official anthropology term, not one I made up) which is where newborn babies sleep in the bed with their mother and keep sleeping there until another baby is born, at which point the older child might move to another bed in the room. Often at that point, the father might move to the bed with the older child so that child does not have to sleep alone. This is especially helpful for newborns because it lets the baby breastfeed whenever it needs to and the mother often barely wakes up or perhaps does not wake up at all. You might think that is strange and backward. They would call you a cruel and unloving parent since you try to force your child to sleep in their own bed and (gasp!) in their own room. They would wonder why you don’t like your baby.
Maybe all these things seem totally normal to you. If not, just remember: it’s not wrong, it’s different.
Why is it so fun to surprise people? Why do we throw surprise parties? Why do we wrap gifts and make people wait? Why do men go to great lengths to plan something elaborate and surprising when they want to propose to the woman they care about? What is the joy in surprise?
Perhaps it is the joy of thinking, “You are about to be far happier than you realize.” Perhaps surprises let us tell people, “I was thinking about you and planning this party/gift/surprise when you weren’t even aware. You were being loved behind the scenes the whole time, even when you thought everyone had forgotten your birthday/anniversary/you in general.” Perhaps it is the thought, “If I told you about the surprise beforehand, you would think you planned it and not me.” Sometimes we surprise people to give them something they would be too shy or timid to ask for because they never thought we would actually give it. Maybe we surprise people simply because we know it will make us and the other person happy.
We serve a God of surprises.
Why does He have us wonder and wait in prayer long before showing us an answer? Why does He only give us small glimpses of future gifts and grace that we already know we are going to receive when from our perspective it would be really nice to know exactly what those gift are like right now? Why does He go to great lengths to plan, from eternity, something elaborate, surprising, and completely counter-intuitive when He wants to do something in our lives? What is his joy in surprise?
Perhaps it is his joy in thinking, “You are about to be far happier than you realize.” Perhaps surprises let Him tell us, “I was thinking about you and planning this joy/grace/act of love when you weren’t even aware. You were being loved behind the scenes all along, even when you doubted and though I had forgotten your need/prayer/you in general.” Perhaps He realizes “If I told you about the surprise beforehand, you would think you planned it and not Me.” Sometimes He surprises us in order to give us something we would be too shy or timid or shortsighted to ask for because we never thought we would actually give it or even be able to give it. Maybe He surprises us simply because He knows it will fill both of us with unspeakable joy.
CLICK TO OPEN BACKGROUND MUSIC IN A NEW TAB
I guess I did have one free afternoon for a November post. Hooray! We did make it back safely from Ft. Dauphin, and it was a great trip! Praise God.
Please still be praying for me, as I am about to leave to go out to villages for several days to finish setting up water tanks. Pray that the job would get done, and that I would have good health while I am away from the city.
There seems to be no respect for time here in Madagascar. The meetings will start forty minutes late. The church services will last five hours. The taxi-bus will crawl lazily along for twenty-six hours. Dinner conversation will trudge on indefinitely. Or why even have dinner conversation? We can just sit here for thirty minutes or so. They do not seem to have gotten the memo: I have things to do.
Why do I seem to be the only one who cares about the stuff that needs to be done?
And then it hit me one day. In order to have stuff that needs to be done, one needs stuff. Stuff, stuff, stuff. No wonder I’m always the one in a rush to get going. “I’m sorry, but could we hurry this along? There are computers that need to be typed on, books that need to be read, phones that need to be glanced at, and music that needs to be listened to. I have things, and those things need doing. Sigh…but you don’t have the things, so you just don’t understand. All you seem to want to do is be together.
“But for now please, excuse me from this conversation. I prefer watching the rerun on TV to hearing the rerun of your life. And please, excuse me from the dinner table. I prefer the fascinating silence of my book to the awkward silences of…you. Oh and also, please, excuse me from paying attention to you. I have to make sure that…Yes! I do still have a phone in my pocket! Really it’s been great, but I’ve just got to run!—to check my email.”
Unfortunately for them, the Malagasy haven’t quite caught on to the fact that stuff can save us from each other.
What they're saying is: "Can you please get OFF ME? Haven't you heard of PERSONAL SPACE??? Ughh! I wish I had an XBOX!!!"
Sometimes you leave the place you knew so well…
…and things suddenly become much clearer.
You see, for the first time, what was really there all along.
This post could also be titled,
“Ryan Receives Many Strange Looks From The Malagasy People”
Culture shock is a warm, sunny day at the beach.
You wade out into the ocean and dig your feet in the sand and let the waves and the salty ocean breeze wash over you. And you could stay forever.
But then, out of nowhere, some huge angry wave rushes over you, dragging you from your little paradise and hurling you to the sandy shore next to a pile of dead fish. And now you have sand in your swimsuit.
That is my experience with culture shock. The day is normal, if not quite pleasant, and then unexpectedly, you step in child-poop; dinner is inexplicably two hours late, and you are the only one who seems to care; your English-speaking friend decides he wants to teach you Malagasy, and therefore refuses to speak a word of English with you; the 23 passengers on the taxibus decide to sing that same song (one of maybe five they know) one more time; the rice has more pebbles in it than normal.
The shocking thing is not that these events are frustrating. Continue reading
Let’s make the issue plain. When someone sins against you, his debt is totally unpayable. He hurt you and he cannot make things right again. He can try to bring life back to normal. He can apologize and work and suffer and make his contrition very clear, but does that repay the debt? No. Can his regret restore lost time? No. Is his confession some extraordinary balm that soothes all the open emotional wounds? No. Do the words, “I’m sorry,” magically take away all the careless words from the painful past? No. Are rote apologies any kind of guarantee that it won’t happen again? No. Sin is simply a black abyss, an empty vacuum, and no amount of anything can ever right the wrong.
But there is another option. A king once had a servant who owed him a life’s worth of wages. The servant was stupid; he begged and said, “I’ll pay you back,” an obvious lie. Yet the king was a good king, and in his goodness and compassion, he told the man, “You no longer have to pay your debt. You are forgiven.” That of course meant that all of the debt would fall on the king’s shoulders. All the lost money and time and honor, the king simply had to absorb. And we of course know that in the end of the true story, the King had to die.
Can you forgive the brother you thought you couldn’t forgive? No. Forgiveness is a miracle; in order for you to forgive, you must die. Take all the shame and loss and pain and choose to die—not the dramatized tragic death of a feigned martyr; this is the true death of the debt that happens in the heart. The miracle is that somehow, out of the dead vacuum created by sin, forgiveness—true forgiveness from a heart that has decided to die in order to forgive the offender—can create life.
The secret is that all your debts have been paid. Moreover, you have such a vast inheritance that to nitpick over the debts of others is ridiculously shortsighted. The other secret is that you have already died with Christ and have already been brought back to life. Thus, you can freely lose your life in forgiveness every day. And in losing your life you find it. Good can overcome evil, and the victory is overwhelming. The victory of true forgiveness has the power to defeat sin once, twice, seven times, seventy times seven, and then some. God can raise the dead, and He can make the unforgivable forgivable. He can take the irreconcilable relationship and bring about the beauty and warmth or reconciliation. God can break the bondage of sin and set free both the forgiven and, gloriously, the forgiver.
Brazzled 