Have you ever gone to a new place where you were not known? Do you remember what it felt like? Do you remember what it felt like when you first met a person from another cultural or ethnic background? Describe your experience?

What Is "Culture?"

What do you think of when you hear the word "culture?" In everyday language we often use the term "culture" to refer to the behavior of the rich and educated elite. They are cultured because they know how to eat with the proper spoon and fork at a banquet, they know how to dress properly, and they listen to classical music. In the context of studying people anthropologists have broadened the term "culture" to refer to the way a society lives and thinks.

A Model of Culture
Culture affects all dimensions of our life. To help us think about the different dimensions of culture we will use a simplified model of three concentric circles that represent increasingly non-conscious and fundamental dimensions of culture.

• The outer layer: visible behavior, products, and institutions
• The deeper layers: values, beliefs, ideas, and feelings
• The invisible layer: worldview

The Visible Layer: Behavior, Products, and Institutions

What is the first thing we notice in another culture? It is people's behavior. People eat, greet each other, sleep, walk, read and work. We may also observe that there are patterns of behavior. People greet each other in a certain way. All these behavior patterns are learned rather than biologically determined. The products of a people and the institutions of a nation are also part of that outer layer.

Examples:

• In America people shake hands.
• In Mexico and France people embrace.
  
• In India men may put their hands together and raise them toward their forehead with a slight bow of the head, allowing them to greet many others with a single motion.

The Deeper Layers: Values, Beliefs, Ideas and Feelings

How can these differences in behavior be explained? They are determined by the values, ideas and beliefs a society holds about life, the world and people. These ideas could be likened to inner mental maps that guide people's behavior and actions. Without understanding these more implicit dimensions of culture, many behaviors remain a mystery to the newcomer.

Examples:

• The Indian way of greeting is important in a society where the touch of an untouchable defiles a high caste person and forces him to take a purification bath.
• Moslems eat only once a day after sundown during the month of religious fasting (Ramadan).

The Level of Assumptions: Worldview

At the deepest level cultures provide answers about what is real. These answers help people form their views about the questions of meaning and origin, what causes sickness and death. Cultures are not a random accumulation of ideas, behavior patterns, and values, but systems integrated around fundamental assumptions about reality and life.

Each aspect of culture is inseparably linked with other patterns. Even though there are always "loose ends," inconsistencies, and constant change, cultures function holistically.

How We Learn Culture

To summarize we can define culture as the integrated system of learned behavior patterns, ideas, and products characteristic of a society (Hiebert). But you may ask, "If worldview and culture have shaped us so fundamentally, how did we learn culture in the first place?"

Most aspects of culture we learn in early childhood before we know how to reason. We learn everyday things like how to greet, how to dress, what, when and how to eat, when to go to bed, how to say "no" politely, and how to relate to strangers, friends, and people in authority. Our concepts of family, friendship, relationships, property, privacy, time, and space are developed through parental training and reinforced through social interaction. Rules of proper behavior are reinforced through sanctions. Additional skills we learn in connection with schooling and career training. All these ideas and skills help us to make sense out of life and solve daily problems. In the end we feel that life is "normal" as long as we can integrate what we learn into our cultural frameworks of understanding.

Three Observations

1. Culture is a total way of life and therefore pervasive.
There is no society without culture. Culture is a people's design for living affecting every aspect of life. It functions like colored glasses through which we filter what we perceive. We don't really notice them until they get dirty, or until we start using other glasses. Moreover, you can't change one aspect of culture without affecting other parts as well.

2. Culture makes life meaningful to its people.
It provides a society's answers to the basic human questions all people face. These answers give meaning to life and provide an integrated logic to those within the culture even though they may seem strange to outsiders.

3. Culture makes communication possible.
People communicate with each other in various ways. Culture creates the symbol systems (e.g., language) people need to communicate with each other in an understandable way. Culture is reflected in language. Thus, without knowing the language of a people it is often impossible to really understand a new culture.

Implications for Missionaries

What we have learned about culture has many implications for Christian service. Here are some to think about.

Cultures resist change—Since culture embraces all aspects of life we need to be aware of the fact that we come to a people who already has a set of answers to their questions and a way of life.

The Gospel is a change agent—Before we can effectively minister in a new culture we must first seek to understand it within its own context. Missionaries have often introduced changes without knowing how cultures change.

Change in one aspect affects the whole—When introducing change we must ask ourselves how this change will affect the total life of the people. Think of a car. You can't tinker with one part (e.g., the carburetor) without affecting the condition of the whole system.

Different is not bad—Each culture operates according to its own innate logic. We must be careful not to condemn people whose customs are not like ours as if they deliberately chose a perverted way of life.

Scratch where it itches—Because no society is perfectly integrated, Christians may find openings for witness in the problems and questions people cannot answer from within their own culture.

1. In this chapter we developed a basic definition and model of culture. When you think of the four levels of culture, what examples from your own cultural background come to your mind?

Behavior

Values

Belief

Worldview

2. Language often reflects the culture and experiences of a people. For example, people living in Michigan are familiar with winter storms and icy street conditions as well as hot summers and ice cream. They use the same word "ice" for frozen streets and ice cream. Eskimos, on the other hand, have many different terms to distinguish between different kinds of ice or frozen conditions. Can you think of other similar examples in your language?

3. Culture is a more or less integrated total design for living in a given society and tends to resist change unless old answers to basic questions are no longer seen as valid. What are some questions in the North American society which you feel are no longer adequately answered and can therefore become bridges to share Christian answers with people?