Get on the Field
I was blessed during my college years with wise leaders in the Christian fellowship I was involved in. One of the many lessons I took away from them and from that experience was the importance of cross-cultural missions, and of the need for both sensitivity and fearlessness in doing cross-cultural missions. The good news of the Christian faith is available to all, and is often best conveyed not by getting people to see those truths from our perspective but by learning how to express those truths from their perspective.
In doing so,
we must be mindful of and respectful towards the cultural “rules” that govern
someone’s worldview. We cannot trample on
them willy-nilly, nor can we discount them as archaic or silly. But we also must not be so afraid to make
mistakes against those “rules” such that we never really engage with people and
learn how they view things and what is important to them. Indeed, and again without being intentionally
cavalier, one cannot really learn and respect someone else’s culture unless one
engages with that person in real ways, during which we may make missteps in
speech or action. We should feel bad
about those missteps, to be sure, but if they are done in a spirit of humility
and engagement, hopefully they are forgiven and they are learned from.
I recall these
lessons from long ago as I consider the hyper-sensitive environments we often
find ourselves in. As people are
awakening to sensitive issues of race, discrimination, and privilege, it is
easy and damaging to speak in inartful and insensitive ways, and so on the one
hand we should proceed with a caution that is respectful of where people are
coming from and how misunderstandings and triggers can be deeply hurtful. But, on the other hand, if we are so cautious
to the point that we stick to bland and superficial interactions, or even worse
withdraw from settings in which we are with people different from us, that is
not a desirable outcome either.
To use a baseball
analogy, my encouragement to those of you on the sideline is to get on the field,
and my encouragement to those of you already on the field is to help others who
are getting on the field for the first time.
When you are on the field, you will make errors, and those errors will
be seen and they may be criticized. But
you should still get on the field. Now,
we don’t rush onto the field before we’re ready. But we also don’t wait until we are totally
mistake-free before we step onto the field.
The field is where we learn and, hopefully, contribute positively to the
team’s success, even if we still make errors.
For it is far worse to stay on the sideline, when so much is at stake.
If you are
already on the field, it can be frustrating to bear the sloppiness of newbies. And, to be sure, if folks rush onto the field
before they are ready, or do so for individual attention rather than team
progress, that irritation is warranted.
But, if that is not the case, be gentle with newbies, and use their
errors as teaching opportunities. Our
competition is fierce, and we need every contributing team member we can get,
even if they are unpolished at first.
People who are trying to get on the field, however raw they are, are to
be scolded far less than people who have chosen the safety of the
sidelines.
Of course, in
the Christian faith there is such a thing as people grandstanding for the
purpose of receiving the praise of men or because they think it is the way to
please their God. But, in the right
spirit, being on the field is borne of good news that must be shared, and in
the process of conveying that news to people different from us we will likely
commit some cultural faux pas along the way, but that is to be feared less than
not trying at all. And so it is with the
great social and cultural issues of this day.
If you are on the sidelines, we welcome you to the field. And if you are on the field, be nice to us
who are trying to get on. This stuff
matters.
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