Clash of Cultures

Welcome! Today I am excited to begin a new series devoted to the far-reaching topics of shame and honor. Today’s message, “Clash of Cultures,” is an introduction, meant to begin to get us into a shame-honor type of thinking.

The most recent view among those who equip missionaries to reach other cultures is that there are actually three major “axes” of influence among people groups. The first of these is a guilt-innocence type of culture. This is the type of culture, by and large, to which we in America belong, and this is also the type of culture that grew out of the Reformation in Europe. John Adams, our nation’s second president, said “We are a nation of laws, not of men.” Adams believed, as the Bible teaches, that men, all men, are fallible. Based on this belief, the founders of our country designed our government with numerous checks and balances designed to keep our nation a nation of laws rather than becoming a nation of men (or of one man).

But our views of law run much deeper than just our governmental structure. Our entire culture (with only a few exceptions) thinks along the lines of guilt and innocence. If you do something wrong, it is only fair that you pay the fine or do the time, whatever the judge decrees. Even when it is something minor, we tend to feel “guilty”. We consider people who don’t feel guilty for their wrong actions to be sociopaths, people who have something extremely seriously wrong with them. This is not to say that people don’t do wrong things; far from it! We would acknowledge that practically everyone lies sometimes, and they do many other wrong things. But we expect people to feel guilty about it, and if they don’t, there is something wrong with them.

A second major “axis” of influence is fear-power. People whose culture is dominated by this type of thinking can include those who worship multiple gods, who worship their ancestors, who practice occult and shamanistic practices including the pronouncement of curses, etc. These people believe that unseen forces are around them that must be appeased, and they believe bad things will happen if they are not appeased. Before my wife’s mother became a Christian, I would say that she was predominantly driven by this kind of thinking. And in fact, it was when Mimi’s older brother died of a brain aneurysm that she soon after became a Christian, and one major part of the reason she did so is that she came to see that her ancestors and other objects of worship were unable to protect her family. It was at this point that she felt she owed them nothing and was able to break free of fear-based thinking by putting her total trust in Christ and Christ alone for her protection and salvation.

The third major area of influence is shame-honor. In our culture, we don’t use these words in a precise way, so let me give you an overview of what these terms are about. Shame and honor are both defined not by what you think about yourself, but by how others think about you. Cultures influenced by shame-honor dynamics are cultures in which relationships with people close to you, starting with your family, are in many ways the most important things there are to say about you.

This is very foreign to us. If we want to get to know someone, we ask them about what they do for a living, or if they are students, what their major is. We ask them about what they like to do, any hobbies they have. We might ask them what their favorite TV shows or movies are. We want to know what they like, and if they like something we like, we feel that we have the potential for friendship.

But this is not how people in a shame-honor culture think. They want to know about your family – often in great detail! They are also interested in your connections with other people, in your community, or, if you have connections to “important” people, what these connections are. Again, in our culture, this is not something we talk about with someone until we have known them for a long time, and even then, it is often to commiserate, perhaps to compare the degree of dysfunction in their families. People in a shame-honor culture would feel it abhorrent to talk about such things. 

And so, shame and honor are opposite ends of a measuring stick that measures what other people think of you. Honor is when other people think highly of you and want to be associated with you. Shame is when other people think lowly of you and do not want to be with you. Honor and shame both come from bonds with the people around you, the people in your family and community.

Now, I do want to say that cultures and individuals do not fall 100% into a single camp of guilt-innocence, fear-power, or shame-honor; cultures and individuals are always a mix of all three. That being said, questionnaires have been used to explore the degree to which people groups and nations lean towards one of the three axes. The results, based on work by Jayson Georges, are shown on the world map below.

In this map, guilt-innocence is represented by blue, shame-honor by red, and fear-power by green.  As you can see, most of the world is in the shame-honor camp. This leads to briefly talking about why we are doing this series. I have two primary reasons:

1.  Sharing the gospel. We are called to be a part of sharing the gospel to everyone in the world. Part of being able to share the gospel effectively is speaking to what “resonates” with people. The traditional western gospel presentation (exemplified by the four spiritual laws or the bridge diagram) heavily presumes that the listener is motivated by a guilt-innocence paradigm. In both presentations, the emphasis is on how we stand condemned by God and separated from Him because of our sins; the good news is through receiving Jesus as your personal Savior, you experience the benefit of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for sin – forgiveness and eternal life. This presentation tends to resonate most with those who are in guilt-innocence cultures. But the gospel also speaks to fear and power and it speaks to shame and honor. I am reminded of the classic story about blind men touching a small part of an elephant and trying to describe the entire elephant using their one part. The gospel is somewhat like the elephant; the good news speaks to far more than just our guilt.

2.  Knowing the heart of God. The second reason for this series is that the Bible, inspired by the Holy Spirit, itself was written primarily in a shame-honor perspective to people who were themselves in shame-honor cultures. The restoration of man’s honor is clearly very important to God, and by being so heavily immersed in a guilt-innocence culture, we have blind spots to incredible truths in the Bible. By studying the shame-honor perspective and how its themes are expressed in the Bible, we gain a deeper understanding of the Bible message and of God Himself.

Are there examples of shame-honor thinking in the US? Yes, there are some. One example is the military. Why? Because, to a significant measure, the military is a collectivist culture; that is, it is communal – relationships are extremely important. All military personnel take an oath to obey their superiors who in turn obey their superiors all the way up to the Commander-in-Chief. They know that they are part of a mission that is larger than themselves; it is more important than their own interests and even, potentially, more important than whether they live or die! They also know that serving honorably in their relationships with their superior officers and their peers is more important and more valued than their education, their interests, or anything else. Basic training goes far beyond physical conditioning and firearm training; it has as a goal the complete demolition of one’s individualistic values and the replacement of those values with collectivistic, communal values. This transformation goes to the core of a person, and it remains with a person even long after they retire from the military.

All military personnel also understand that although they may have selected a planned occupation within the military, their superiors reserve the right to move them into any role at all. They understand that the success of the military of the whole, and of individual missions, is infinitely more important than one’s own interests. They learn to trust their superiors’ wisdom in these decisions, and even if they don’t trust their wisdom, they still obey wholeheartedly, because the alternative guarantees failure and brings great shame to them as well as to their entire unit. They military teaches and constantly reinforces the idea that interdependence is not a weakness (as many in guilt-innocence cultures often believe, at least with their actions if not their words) but that interdependence is a virtue and critical to success and honor. One more way in which the military operates as a shame-honor culture is that it is greatly frowned upon to call attention to oneself as honorable; instead, honor is bestowed upon you by others (your superiors) through promotions and medals “of honor”. Achieving such things not only brings honor to you but to your entire unit.

However, the military is not quite the same as a typical shame-honor culture in that positions and roles are more important than individuals. You obey your superior because he is your superior, not because of how honorable he is. So even people from shame-honor cultures must have their thinking reoriented in significant ways when they become a part of the military.

A second example of shame-honor thinking is – maybe you guessed it – K through 12 schooling, perhaps especially junior-high and high school. People in school invariably end up in groups; these groups are only slightly self-selected; the “top” groups decide who can and who cannot join their groups. If you aren’t popular enough, you can’t become a part of the groups of popular people. Honor is earned when you do things your group appreciates and shame (and even expulsion from the group) is the result when you do things the group does not like. However, the fact that grownups in our culture see this behavior as a phase and a sign of childishness further draws the lines of difference and distinction between our culture a true shame-honor culture in which living to increase honor and avoid shame is taught by parents and taught in the schools by teachers!

People who study shame-honor cultures often say there are two kinds of honor – ascribed honor and achieved honor. Ascribed honor is the value or worth given to someone based on their family, bloodline, and heritage. Achieved honor is the value or worth given to someone based on what they have accomplished. Do we celebrate ascribed honor? Not much, although sometimes we do pay attention to the children of movie stars or some politicians. Do we celebrate achieved honor? Sometimes – for example, local heroes who achieve great things in sports (especially the Olympics) or, in the past, war heroes. But these are rare things – in a shame-honor culture, everyone is “ranked” based on ascribed honor, and everyone is trying to increase their achieved honor. In a shame-honor culture, almost nothing is pursued more vigorously.

I want to point out that ascribed honor and achieved honor are both used explicitly in Scripture. One of the goals of the gospel writers, and perhaps especially Luke, was to show how honorable Jesus really was.

Genealogies in writing illustrate what shame-honor villages know orally – the standing of someone based on their family line. People of low ascribed honor tend to only know a few generations of their past – 3 or 4 generations. Why is this? Because something dishonorable happened in the past, and everyone wants to forget about it. Does any of this kind of thing happen in the West? Sometimes. For example, after WWII, anyone whose last name was Hitler almost certainly changed their name.

I am reminded of a quote from a Chechen uncle of the Tsarnaev brothers, the people responsible for the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon. Here is what this uncle said in the press to the brothers: “You put a shame on our entire family – the Tsarnaev family. And you put a shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity… Everyone now puts that shame on the entire ethnicity.” Is this how we in the west think? No. Probably very few Americans today even remember that the bombers were name Tsarnaev or were Chechen, and far fewer, if any, would hold the entire Chechen people in contempt because of what these two individuals did.

Let’s look briefly at the ascribed honor of Jesus. From Luke:

When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened  and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” – Luke 3:21-22

What an incredible example of ascribed honor! God Himself tells those witnessing Jesus’ baptism that Jesus is God’s own Son, God loves Him, and God is quite pleased with Him! Sometimes one generation is enough to show honor, when the father is especially honorable himself. In this case, the father is God the Father; nobody is more honorable.

Immediately following this, Luke gives us the genealogy of Jesus, going through Joseph, all the way back to Adam, and even before Adam, to God. This was the longest genealogy possible! Why did Luke give this? He was making a second argument at how amazingly honorable Jesus was. Matthew also gives a genealogy – but his primary audience seems to have been the Jews, as he emphasizes Jesus’ fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies and on His role as the promised Messiah. Matthew takes his genealogy of Jesus only back to Abraham. Why? Because Jesus was a Jew, descended from Abraham, the father of the Jews. Both genealogies hint that Joseph is not a biological father of Jesus, but both gospels also explain the birth story to see how Jesus really should be counted as Joseph’s son – that Joseph in accordance with Jewish law adopted Him into his family. Again, family is everything! From Matthew:

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. – Matt. 1:18-19

Incidentally, this was a hugely shameful situation (if it hadn’t been a miraculous virgin birth, that is). Public disgrace means that she would have been stripped of all honor and would have deeply shamed her entire family – think about the Tsarnaev uncle to get an idea of the magnitude of this shame. If he had exposed her publicly, it was even possible that she could have been stoned to death.

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.” – Matt. 1:20-21

Jumping to verse 24:

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave Him the name Jesus. – Matt. 1:24-25

Note that Matthew is not implying that they did not experience shame. His point is tied to the genealogy – because Jesus is an adopted son of Joseph, Joseph’s genealogy is valid.

But they did almost certainly experience shame, both of them. By taking Mary home despite her pregnancy, Joseph took on and experienced Mary’s shame on his own household, as did his family. Although Joseph had an explanation, it was so incredible that it is likely most doubted him.

What about achieved honor? A great passage that illustrates this is from Phil. 2:5-11:

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage; rather, He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. – Phil. 2:5-11

This is so rich from a shame-honor perspective! Note that it first talks about ascribed honor – being in very nature God. But Jesus did not take advantage of His ascribed honor! Instead He made Himself nothing; that is, He rejected all the trappings of His ascribed honor and instead took on a position of shame, of lowliness, of that of a slave. And in this humble state, He became obedient to death – even death on a cross! What is the “even” there for? It is because Jesus took on the most shameful position that one could possibly take! Nothing was more shameful than to die on a cross. Because of this action, God honored Him with the highest possible honor of all! This is achieved honor. So Christ forsook His incomparably great ascribed honor to take on a position of extreme shame, and as a result of this action, God the Father honored Him with incomparably great achieved honor.

We will talk more about these themes when we talk specifically about the gospel later in this series. But now I want to talk about Adam and Eve – and therefore, also, the story of us. We are all descendants of Adam and Eve, and therefore, as part of their family, we share in their honor – or their dishonor.

We know the story – God formed Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed life into him, transforming him into a living being. God then set Adam to work an amazing garden He had made for him. God then showed Adam all the creatures He had made, after promising to give him a perfect helper. From this experience, Adam learned that none were suitable. God then gave Adam, from one of his ribs, the desired helper. What does all of this show? It shows that God clearly loves Adam very much and wants to lavish him with gifts. What does God expect in return? Only to remain obedient to one little rule, the abstinence from a particular fruit.

Genesis 2 ends with a telling statement:

Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. – Gen. 2:25

But unfortunately, Genesis 2 is followed by Genesis 3. We know what happened: the serpent convinced them to eat the forbidden fruit. How did he do this?

He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” – Gen. 3:1-5

What did the serpent not talk about? Honor and shame! If there is one thing to remember from today, this is it: One of Satan’s big tricks is to get people to stop thinking about relationships! Adam and Eve were in an amazing relationship with God. Yes, God was vastly superior to them, but this enabled God to provide for them! We will see later in this series that this was an example of what is called a patron-client relationship. Here, God was the patron. In a proper patron-client relationship, the role of the client is to praise the patron. This gives him honor that you could say is “cosmically” due him. That is, if the client doesn’t praise the patron, who else will do it? God somewhat jokingly says elsewhere in the Bible that maybe the mountains or rocks and the trees should do it! The serpent never mentions that if Eve eats this fruit, or she gets Adam to do it, she will have broken this amazing relationship! Adam and Eve are currently experiencing great ascribed honor because they are basically the children in the family of God the Father. By breaking this one simple commandment, they will be bringing great shame down upon themselves, and also, upon God, as they too will be destroying their family “name” like the Tarnyaevs.

We are like Adam and Eve when we sin willfully in that we too don’t think about our personal relationship with God before we do it. We certainly don’t think about how this will bring down shame upon ourselves and upon God. Even if no one else finds out about our sin, God knows, and the angels likely know. All sin is public. All willful sin brings shame upon the sinner because those who know see just how bad this is. It is easy to become judgmental on Adam and Eve, but I think the reality is that every time we sin willfully we are being just like them. Satan does not want you to think about this.

We all know what happens: Adam and Eve both eat the forbidden fruit. Let’s look at what happens next with shame-honor eyes:

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” – Gen. 3:7-10

Nobody thinks twice about being naked in a shower. Why is that? Because nobody is looking at them. But what happens if someone opens the bathroom door? You try to cover yourself.

What happened when Adam and Eve’s eyes “were opened”? They remembered that God sees. They remembered their relationship with God, His role as a perfect benefactor or patron, and His tireless love for them. Now they remembered that He sees all. He had seen them break His one rule. This was shameful! How could they do this? It didn’t matter now – all that mattered is that it was done. And their shameful act brought shame not only to themselves, but to their entire family; that is, they had made God shameful!

They felt awful and afraid and they sewed fig leaves to make clothing of some kind. But did this help? No. As the last verse indicates, they still felt naked.  Their response to feeling shame was to cover themselves and to hide. And this is what we tend to do too. We cover ourselves – with busyness, or sometimes even good works, and we also hide – we stop fellowshipping with God, stop praying, stop having quiet times, stop meeting with fellow believers, etc.

We know what happens next – after everyone blames someone else – which doesn’t work so well when there are only three of you and, again, God sees, God pronounces judgement on each of them – Adam, Eve, and the serpent. Parts of this judgment are extremely far-reaching: Adam and Eve now have finite lifetimes, they now are expelled from their garden home, they now must work hard just to survive. And their relationships with one another and with God have become strained by the knowledge of what they have done – that is, they are experiencing a deep sense of shame. Their past of being naked and without shame is now only a wistful memory.

As Genesis continues, we learn about Adam and Eve’s children. Did they know about what had happened? I believe so. Although I can see it is something their parents probably didn’t want to talk about, and although it all could have been revealed by God to whoever wrote Genesis (which many people think was Moses), I find it more likely that Genesis was a God-inspired, God-breathed account that was also based on the known oral or even written history of the people that had been passed down each generation.

How would an honor-shame culture view the fall? As a source of deep shame. People would not name their children after Adam and Eve. And indeed, we don’t see a bunch of Adam’s and Eve’s in the genealogies. By way of contrast, I love to tell the story of last names in Ulan-Baatar in Mongolia. The Mongolians are primarily an honor-shame culture. Their names are given as so-and-so son of so-and-so down several generations, like most honor-shame peoples. But as a part of modernization, Ulan-Baatar wanted to produce a phone book for the first time. They told everyone in their large city to choose a single “last” name for the phone book. First names only make a phone book useless. What happened? More than half of the people chose Kahn, after Genghis Kahn, who they view as a supremely honorable person in their lineage! Of course, this decision made the phone book again useless, as the last name Kahn did not confer any information about who the people were!

The other important thing God did at the fall people sometimes miss. God made garments of skin to cover their nakedness. That is, God killed one or more animals to provide a partial reconciliation, a partial restoration of their relationship with Him. Note that the animal was innocent of Adam and Eve’s sin, yet its blood was shed to cover their shame. This was the beginning of a pattern we see in the Old Testament where God requires the shedding of an unblemished innocent animal’s blood to restore their relationship. As followers of Jesus, we know that this was a foreshadowing of the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus, the one man without sin, to die once for all to offer a permanent reconciliation with God to all who accept this sacrifice through faith in Him. We will talk more about this later in the series, but this sacrifice restored us into God’s family – the Bible uses language like fact that we are adopted as sons and daughters into His family. In a heavenly phone book, we should all use Jesus’ name as our last name, to honor Him for what He has done for us. Our shame is gone!

Hopefully with this introduction you are starting to become able to see the Bible with shame-honor-colored glasses! I want to close by simply reading the first nine verses of Isaiah 25. These verses are prophetic about what Jesus has done and what He will do when we are at last with Him forever. I encourage you to think about how your shame is gone!

Lord, you are my God; I will exalt You and praise Your name, for in perfect faithfulness You have done wonderful things, things planned long ago. You have made the city a heap of rubble, the fortified town a ruin, the foreigners’ stronghold a city no more; it will never be rebuilt. Therefore strong peoples will honor You; cities of ruthless nations will revere You. – Isaiah 25:1-3

You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in their distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat. For the breath of the ruthless is like a storm driving against a wall and like the heat of the desert. You silence the uproar of foreigners; as heat is reduced by the shadow of a cloud, so the song of the ruthless is stilled. – Isaiah 25:4-5

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine—the best of meats and the finest of wines. On this mountain He will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; He will remove His people’s disgrace [shame] from all the earth. The Lord has spoken. – Isaiah 25:6-8

In that day they will say, “Surely this is our God; we trusted in Him, and He saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in Him; let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.” – Isaiah 25:9