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23 December 2006
The Different Flavors of Neo-Colonialism.
In many ways, individuals and cultures are similar. I suppose that it only stands to reason that the patterns in the microcosm would be reflected in the macrocosm. Both define identities for themselves, staking out a self distinct from the other. Both project that identity to others, carving out a place for themselves in the larger whole. And both are generally oblivious to the fact that their own identity changes over time. We live in the ‘forever now.’ Our concept of self is very rooted in today, and in order to maintain a coherent concept of the self, we assume that the us of today was the us of yesterday, and will be the us of tomorrow. While this assumption brings us stability, it is not entirely accurate. In reality, the ‘me’ changes greatly over time. In fact, the ‘me’ of right now probably has more in common with the ‘me’ of one of my current friends than the ‘me’ of myself in 1979. In my world of the ‘forever now,’ I am practically blind to this. I assume that I am unchanging, and therefore any change is to be feared, for change will destroy the ‘me’ of right now, which is the only ‘me’ I know at this point in time. And this is true, in a way. Each time I go to sleep, the ‘me’ of that day dies to make way for the ‘me’ of the next day. I constantly am passing away and being reborn. The moment I stop doing so is the moment I become stagnant. We can only hold our breath for so long. We have to let one breath pass away in order to make room for the next. Only the dead no longer exhale. Stagnation is death. So in order to live, I must allow myself to die daily.
We look at people groups with the same assumption. The lines we have today are the lines we have had and will have forever. But they are not. Cultures are constantly changing. Consider the Celts. When we hear ‘Celtic,’ we immediately think of Ireland. Alexander the Great would have been greatly surprised at that association. In his day, the Celts were the northern neighbors of his Macedonia, nestled snugly in the Carpathians. Over time, they move to the north and the west, and find their way to Eire. There, their characteristic red hair is donated by the Vikings through rather uncivilized means. Through St. Patrick, who is now an icon of Irishness now yet was not Irish at all at the time, another cultural distinctive is added to the island. On and on it goes, and at some point we end up with the Celts of Boondock Saints, the Irish that we know. As someone with Irish ancestry, I look at a Celtic latticework in many ways the same as I look at a baby picture of myself. I assume that the person in the picture is ‘me’ in a very real way, yet there is a universe of changes between me in diapers and me in a leather jacket. In the same way, the Celts that made that latticework would have very, very little understanding of a present day Boston Irish Heritage parade. The Celts of the Carpathians have passed away at least a hundred times to be reborn in the next generation over and over. But they were never reborn exactly the same. If a generation of Celts refused to let the Celt-ness of their ‘right now’ pass away, then all of Celt-ness would have passed away forever when that generation died out. A people group, just like a man, must die to itself over and over again if it is to live.
So it is with all cultures. No one is indigenous, ultimately. Humanity has one homeland, but we earned exile from that place long before any of us can remember. From that day on, we have been shuffling from one wasteland to another, shoving other groups of refugees out of the way. When we think of the Vietnamese, a certain people group comes to mind. Most likely, that group is not the Dega people, or Montagnards as they are more commonly known. They were the (more) indigenous of Vietnam. They were moved out of the way for the next group, as they moved the last group. Tragically, this people group largely only survives in the United States. They were exterminated for allying themselves with America in the Vietnam conflict. When we run, our friends die, for our enemies show far less mercy than we do. There is no ACLU to restrain them. This is not the point, merely a consideration. The fact remains that groups change, locations change, and customs change. Even bloodlines change. Consider Italian-Americans. Once Sicilians, Romans, men of Naples and of Parma, then united by Garibaldi into one people and one bloodline. That people finds their way to a new country, and eventually that bloodline mixes with others, and what once was a separate group becomes a part of a larger group. The old identity dies, and is reborn in its changed form.
Who is and who isn’t is never static, nor is what they are. Change is a natural part of things, for it is inseparable from growth. We make a dangerous error when we try to hold on to something that is passing away. (Reference C.S.L. in Perelandra.) To close our hand around where we are at, to wish to enshrine it in perpetuity is to call disaster upon ourselves. But we do it nonetheless. There are many sins, many mistakes that seem to be set in opposition to each other but in reality are only different facets of the same error. How many evils have come from man’s desire for immortality? It is no different with cultures. Cultural immortality tells one country that they should subdue and convert all cultures to their own so that theirs may last forever. Flip the coin over, and it tells a country that they can never do anything to change any other culture, so that all cultures may last forever. We have a bad coin on our hands.
Colonialism is the one face of the coin of cultural immortality. It comes in different flavors, French being the classic one. A country decides that their culture should be static, and they start exporting that culture by influence or force. Happening upon another people group, the classic flavor of colonialism rides roughshod over the (more) indigenous culture. Through language, music, philosophy and art, the native culture is crowded out and the native elites bought off. The colonial culture advances toward immortality through the obliteration of more vulnerable identities. There is, of course, a more concentrated form of this brew. When the Nazis overran Slavic countries, they had planned to liquidate upwards of seventy percent of the population of the occupied lands. The idea was to break the spirit of the culture so that the people could be used as slave laborers. For those who can’t quite stomach the espresso, there is a Caffe Americano blend. When the British went abroad, they brought roads and schools with their flags. They brought with them the idea of civilizing a place, defined by British standards of civilization. By civilizing the world with British political and social institutions, the most important aspects of British-ness would be preserved in perpetuity. Regardless of the brew, colonialism was a one way process.
Influence in a real relationship flows both ways. I change you as much as you change me. Colonialism did not allow its own culture to be changed in its changing of other cultures. The only way to justify such behavior is to declare your culture valid and the target culture invalid. Therefore, in order to begin its campaign, Colonialism must start with the assumption that its own culture cannot be wrong. This is an idolatry of culture, ascribing infallibility to the fallible. Colonialism ascribes to culture the place reserved for God, sometimes taking His robes to do so. The ‘imperial missionary‘ is amongst the greatest of villains for contemporary sociology. His faith is merely a Bangalore to breach the walls of the native culture, opening the way for the imposition of Spanish rule or British law, depending on the century. Or so the story goes. But even in the vilest of slanders there is an element of truth, and there is some truth here. There were those who could not leave their own culture behind when spreading the Gospel, and many of these chose to induct converts into their own culture when they introduced them to Christ. They mixed an eternal message of hope with a very temporal understanding of language and culture, lessening both in the process. And this returns us to the heart of the problem. Temporal things are not meant to be eternal. Just like in the Silmarillion, the desire for immortality leads the culture to steal from the Immortal. Colonialism is an idolatry of culture.
Cultural relativism is the other side of our cultural immortality coin. No culture on this side of eternity has a corner on absolute truth. Cultural relativism takes this one step further, asserting that no culture has any claim on any absolute truth. Therefore, no culture ever has the right to make a truth claim on the culture of another. Hence, no culture should ever do anything to try to change someone else’s culture. The greatest of all sins is intolerance. So if a people group decides to eat with their right hand, who are you to enforce forks and spoons on them? Or if a people decides to structure its society along rigid caste lines, who are you to tell them that social mobility is more just? And if a people group to your south feel like owning other people like property, who are you to tell them they can’t? Yet the abolitionists are heroes, not villains.
This presents a significant problem for cultural relativism, for the abolitionists were largely from the educated culture of the American Northeast. The slave owners were the landed gentry of the South, a different cultural group entirely. One group tells another that the basis of their economic system is unjust, and goes to war to change that system (an admittedly gross oversimplification.) We look back on these men as pioneers. Cultural relativism logically should be attacking these men for violating its prime directive of non-interference, but it cannot. Something inside us revolts at calling Gandhi and Dr. King enemies of mankind. In this problem we find the paradox of change within cultural relativism. Where colonialism ignored the right in the culture of the other, cultural relativism ignores the wrong in the other’s culture.
The similarities begin to show themselves. In order for the system to work, there can be no reformers. Cultures must remain forever fixed. In other words, cultural relativism demands cultural immortality. By each culture excusing the sins of every other culture, all cultures can go on forever unchanged. Culture trumps all other considerations, including morality, dignity and human rights. Cultural relativism tells us that that indigenous culture can never be wrong. Which means that culture takes the most important place in our universe, a place traditionally reserved for God. We are back to the idolatry of culture. Instead of deifying Western culture, now we deify (more) indigenous cultures. The primary threat to this new god is the real God. There can be no missionaries, imperial or otherwise, in cultural relativism. Except, of course, for the missionaries of the new religion of culture. In reality, sociology’s objections to the ‘imperial missionary’ is an intramural discussion: simply one idolatry competing with another.
This brings us back to first things and second things. Culture is a good thing, and it plays in to salvation’s history. But it is not itself salvation’s history. There is a difficulty here for us as Christians. On one hand, you have the Pharisees, who confused culture with worship, and incorrectly worshipped culture. On the other hand, Christianity has always changed cultures. As with any other first things question, we need to keep things in the right order. So we must respect culture, but we must respect God more.
We must not put our own culture on a level with the Gospel. It is a good thing to be proud of your own culture. Jesus was proud of His heritage as a Jew, embracing many of the cultural distinctives. But He never let culture supercede God. It was Jesus, the Jew, who healed men on the Sabbath. Jesus, the Jew, who called the prominent cultural figures of His day ‘children of the devil.‘ He was willing to lay down His culture to reach people with the love of God. The greatest missionaries have done likewise. Consider the mission to the Cherokee, who laid down their rights as citizens to die with the tribe they loved.
We must not fear the change of a culture as a result of the Gospel. It is a good thing to respect the culture of another. Paul learns enough about the Athenians to find that they have a temple to an unknown God. He quotes Greek poets to Greeks. But Christianity changes a culture. Consider Paul and the Silversmiths. With the changes that Christianity wrought, the once profitable business of idol-making fell into decline. He denounces the prostitution at the temple of Aphrodite in another letter. Paul was less concerned with preserving cultural distinctives, and more concerned with the Gospel. In a fallen world, there are evil things woven into every culture that must be cut out and discarded as God moves. The fruits of syncretism are bitter. There can be no compromise for ‘old times sake.‘
Sometimes, the solution is far simpler than the problem. The simplest solutions often slip past us because we are looking for something difficult. In the false dichotomy between colonialism and cultural relativism, we have another bad coin. So we should discard it and find a better one. The Great Commission will work, I think. Go ye into all the world and make disciples of men. We should not add anything to that command, but neither should we fear any changes the command brings.
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