Negotiating Culture Stress
By Julie Sanders 6/19/03
Over the branches of the Narra tree in the front of our house, I can see the towers of the city. They are draped in a mango-colored glow, as typhoon winds move over the skyline with the sunset. From a distance, the towers seem beautiful. However, when I walk by the base of the buildings, the smell of urine fills my nose, and I dodge trash floating in diesel-colored puddles. The up-close reality is uncomfortable.
We had been warned about culture stress before we moved to the Philippines as missionaries, but never understood the phenomenon until we experienced it. When, after a time of heavy strain, we unloaded our frustration to a colleague, he exclaimed, "Nine months? You lasted longer than most before you felt crushed by it!" We were reassured to know our feelings were normal. While culture shock comes from the initial dive into a world of differences, culture stress arises from daily life in a foreign culture.
Culture stress accosts the senses in waves-the sounds of different languages, the levels of noise and the variety of background sounds, the variance in physical touch and space, the visual saturation of every waking moment, and the range of new tastes that makes the absence of the familiar so obvious. Smells especially become markers for cultural events and differences.
The Blood of Men
The odor of dust and sweat and soda reminds me of the night we watched a Holy Week parade. Our family sat on a corrugated metal roof of a friend related to our language teacher. The road below was filled with tightly-packed dark heads and lit by streams of candle-holding hopefuls. In a mixture of solemnity and revelry, they accompanied 65 towering floats. Heavy ornamentation, gold paint, and bright lights covered the icons and statues on the float platforms. Chanting, the people reached up to touch the icons. The spiritual blindness around us seemed almost tangible. The strangeness of the moment was undeniable.
After a half a year as new missionaries, culture shock had long passed. Yet, we were still astounded by the Good Friday procession we witnessed. Men stumbled barefoot along the hot asphalt, flogging their blood-covered backs. Their hooded heads hung down, swinging to the rhythmic sound of their whips as they performed their acts of penance. Bamboo shards clacked as they struck, keeping time with their groans. My two young children stood with me in the shade of the church wall. Back in the car, they had many questions about the cultural wave that had just washed over us.
As we drove home, our car doors were splattered with blood. Blood of sinful men, trying to save their own souls, urged on by others who could only hope for heaven and yearn to know a distant Lord. My husband had the urge to go and wash the car, to wipe away the evidence that aroused a mixture of sorrow and disgust. We knew that only through Christ's blood could these men be saved.
Though the Philippines is often referred to as the only "Christian nation" in Asia, the empty and dry lives here eventually reveal their true nature. Our task in that first year was to learn to see through the superficial religiosity of the culture and understand the godlessness beneath it. Such is the cross-cultural challenge, to reach into the mind of the culture, a mind so different from our own, using the filter of God's Word.
Nearsighted/Farsighted
Culture stress can be overwhelming, even crippling, when we look with our "nearsighted" perspective. Through "nearsighted" vision, other cultures can appear harsh, strange, and incomprehensible. But when we see with "farsighted" vision, we are able to see a broader and, perhaps, more beautiful picture.
Each morning of our first year in our new field, I would look out the window of our bedroom, and fix my eyes far across the rice fields where small brown huts were framed by palm trees, breaking the lines of distant mountains. Maintaining this "farsighted" vision, I could more prayerfully and joyfully face the day.
Yet there were times when I needed to be "nearsighted," to acknowledge the truth underlying my surroundings. From the second floor of our house, we could see the canal below. When we first moved there, the irrigation channel was full of children, getting relief from the heat. It moved on, uninterrupted, day after day. Then, the hot months brought drought, and the canals quickly dried up. As the water subsided, it became apparent that an ugly secret had been concealed. Around the exposed sewer pipes and lining the sides of the canal for miles was a tangle of trash. When the typhoon rains came, the exposed refuse floated past our house in a daily parade. The refuse was a visual metaphor for the spiritual emptiness beneath the surface of the country's culture.
Lifting Our Eyes to the Hills
Missionaries often endure temporary housing, temporary worship, and temporary relationships-for eternal purposes. They must struggle to become transient for the cause of Christ, to be tied only to Him and His way. "Letting go" becomes a daily requirement. Even then, it can be challenging to pull away from stresses caused by cultural gaps. We often forget to lift our eyes and see the farther view that helps to obscure the harsh, up close realities and provide a bigger picture. When we are so intent on functioning in our environment, it is a challenge to concentrate on understanding the surrounding culture and looking beyond it at the same time.
It is the ugliness of sin exposed over time in the activities of life, day after day, that produces culture stress. In a culture not our own, we are more vulnerable to the realities of our strangeness there, while attempting to do a work of great proportions for a worthy Lord. We find help when we lift up our eyes far enough to see beyond the immediate worlds we minister in on this earth. "I will lift up my eyes to the hills-from whence comes my help? My help comes from the Lord." (Psalm 121:1-2).
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