Who's farther from God?

Who is farther from God, the aboriginal animist sporting his loincloth in the Australian bush? Or the Parisian positivist 1 bearing her monokini on the Riviera?



This is the last entry in the series, “religious smoke, philosophical mirrors and cultural incandescence.” I have blogged on these subjects in order to:
Explain some of the dynamics of mission in Europe.
Question: "Why, for example, are Europeans more resistant to the gospel than Canadians?" 2 “Why is church planting slower in Europe than in the Chad?”

Answer: The Crusades, the Inquisitions and atheistic philosophy have created cultures that condition Europeans to have an allergic reaction to "Church"; many view Christianity not as positive, not as neutral, not just irrelevant, but as abusive and evil.

Explain contextualization.
Question: “Why don’t apostles ("sent ones"/cross-cultural missioners) to Europe just use proven American methods to share the gospel and plant churches?” 3
Answer: Of course we need to learn one from another. But in any culture, the role of the missioner is to contextualize the Good News by sharing Jesus and his riches using local language, expressions, thought forms and behavior, not foreign ones (Eph. 3:8-9).
I therefore encourage my GBIM teammates to act and speak in a way that will cause Europeans to ask the question to which Jesus is the answer.

For example, Paul, when with non-Jews, knew how to talk and behave as an “outlaw” (anomos — one without law 1 Cor. 9:21), while remaining scrupulously careful not to sin. When with self-righteous clergy, the apostle-as-chameleon became convincingly religious so that they might find their righteousness in Christ.

convincingly religious?

Neil Cole and Bob Logan put it this way: 4

"Tools, more than the principles and values behind them, are culturally bound. They become outdated and irrelevant with time and need to be replaced. What works in one cultural setting will not necessarily translate to another with the same success."

Affirm that the need for missioners to Europe is real.
Question (a person from my denomination asked me this): “Why are you a missionary to France, they are all Christians aren’t they?”

Answer: 1 out of 3 Americans claims to be evangelical. 1 out of 200 French people claims to be evangelical. We must not confuse being civilized with being Christian. Europe needs missioners who incarnate and articulate the good news of Christ.

Suggest that lessons learned in Europe could prove valuable to believers in the United States.
I often receive the comment, “Yes, it is like that here too (in the U.S.).” No, but there are similarities and we can practice cross-pollination, learning one from another.

Remind that prayer is utterly essential.Please pray for Europeans, that they would see the glorious light of the gospel of Christ and not be blinded by the incandescence of their culture, by religious carnage and atheistic philosophy.

"Mother praying for family" by Elisha Ongere
www.insideafricanart.com

Question: So what about the aborigine and the Parisian?

Answer 1: Arguably the aboriginal animist is farther from God if the gospel has never reached his people group.* Apostles need to take the gospel to him.

Answer 2: Arguably the Parisian positivist is farther from God because, unlike the aborigine, she believes neither in God nor gods. Religious carnage, atheistic philosophy and high civilization have numbed her from sensing her need for Christ.

Time to GO…
NOTES * Of the detribalized aborigines of Australia 22% are evangelical; only 0.5% of the French people group is evangelical (see www.joshuaproject.net).1 Positivism “for many intellectuals… became a substitute for Christianity.” Positivism was the belief in “an invincible law of the progress of the human mind, to replace theological beliefs or metaphysical explanation.” See previous entry "Contextualization for philosophers" under August Comte.
2 I once shared with a Canadian, doing church planting in Canada, some of the cultural challenges that my wife and I faced as church planters in France. His reply was, "Wow, it is not that bad here!"
3 The presupposition here is that by using U.S. methods we would see results similar to those in the United States. I disagree.
4 Cole & Logan, Raising Leaders from the Harvest for the Harvest, section 5, page 7.