A year in a different culture...

Introduction (to dilute offense)

To be frank, growing up in Western culture all my life makes me unqualified to write this post. In fact, growing up in a slightly different country for only a year means I have not become fully educated on this culture. The only reason I feel less daunted or embarrassed to even reference my experience cross-culturally is because I am a US Citizen. Like Paul, if I felt like I was to be persecuted for the things I said, I could just fall back on my citizenship, right?

All jokes aside, I want my ignorance to be lucid in my writing, my comments to be tantamount to worthless opinions that are not founded on stone but on sand. If I am not to approach the idea of changing cultures with at least some humility, I might as well stop writing.

However, I will note that Paul, in writing to different cultures, does not allow the struggles within their culture to keep him from speaking against unbiblical, ungodly ideas within that culture.

Honestly, I think one of the most scary problems we are facing in modern culture is that we are elevating nationalism, or tolerance, or diversity, and no longer celebrate the biblical truths (established by God himself) that should echo across our differences and unite us in the way they were designed to. So many people want to be treated as human, but in the celebration of diversity, we forget our humanity. Christians can then forget that all the truths in Scripture are for every human. Cultural differences should be respected, but when they become a barrier to the truths of the gospel, when gospel truth becomes offensive because it is the antithesis to cultural norms, when scripture cannot be accepted as people hold close their country's values, we have a problem bigger than intolerance.

So, I make it known that I am ignorant of culture, so that I may not become a stumbling block to those who hold God's good creation of diversity as significant, perhaps even paramount in this world. However, I will not exercise unloving restraint to a gospel offensive to a watching world. It is not racist or intolerant to do so. In love, we can become effective in evangelism.

What I have learned from this past year...

"American and Australian culture are basically the same"

Perhaps one of the biggest lies ever to escape my lips. In fact, I think I am a repeat offender. Honestly, the may reason I said this was to keep other internationals off my back about growing up in the Western culture, because if I say it first, maybe I won't have to hear it from them.

I guess I never really gave them the benefit of the doubt.

Honestly, I would say that part of it is true, because the greatest struggle for me has really only been the homesickness. Really, I miss the people I knew for 18 years. I've actually experienced a lot of the same struggle most Third-Culture Kids and Missionary Kids go through in leaving people behind, saying goodbye to a lot of people all the time, feeling like international travel could be done in your sleep and not being able to see the world as a large place anymore. Honestly, it becomes pretty real once you've done the 30 hour or so trip from Perth to Washington DC.

But I suppose to negate the idea that the two cultures are the same would be silly, wouldn't it? They are two separate continents 11,000 miles away. I believe Australians have retained a similar western culture to the Americans largely because they both were established by the same nation, England (though there is some debate over who exactly found both these nations). However, there are some interesting things I think we often forget is that no nation remains stagnant in its values or cultural identities. Trade has changed the world as we have known it for many years now, but especially in the past 500 years. With trade's exponential development over the past few years, I am hardly surprised that both the US and Australia have become increasingly diverse.

But both have become diverse from different sources: Australia has been impacted largely by South-east Asia and the US by South America.

I think one of the first things I have had to learn since being here is that multiculturalism looks different in different countries. It sounds ignorant for me to say, but I think because I have only ever experienced America with its greatest diversity deriving from African or Hispanic cultures, it has been easy for me to hesitate calling the US "multicultural" when I have not seen as much South-east Asian integration.

But I do not think this is unnatural or concerning for me to notice this, it was simply different. I had to get used to the variety of Asian products in the grocery store to be limited and be enthralled with the variety in Hispanic foods. Let me tell you, when a native Puerto Rican family serves you their empanadas, you will find yourself smiling like you've never seen before. I had to laugh when people were delighted with an Indian market behind Cracker Barrel or a Asian market that sold Boba. I had to cry when the closest place to get Boba was downtown.

The other important thing to note was the great cultural shifts that happen between states. This is an easy thing to forget, because while being called "The United States", each state has its own government. While this was true back in Australia, there wasn't as much variety and each state is usually so spread out, you are not doing interstate travel a lot. I have been travelling to Georgia and Tennessee and North Carolina and Pennsylvania and Virginia in the past year, which is more interstate travel than I ever did in Australia in the past 18 years.

A states culture really does vary. Driving looks different between states. I have heard drivers in certain parts of Pennsylvania are better than others, that South Carolina is one of the worst places to drive, and Tennessee has better roads. There is so much variety, sometimes it feels overwhelming.

Each state also varies in its extent of hospitality or friendliness. Pennsylvania to me seemed a warmer Northern state than, say, New York. People seemed very kind, and maybe that is because of the part I was in. Tennessee seemed very hospitable, but perhaps more laid back than somewhere like South Carolina or Georgia, where people were very loud and outgoing and friendly. I have been overwhelmed by the generosity of people in the South.

In the best way possible, I have seen how such hospitality has become a norm for the Christian to adopt in their own lives. Acts 2:46 has been on so many signs in so many homes:

"They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts" (Acts 2:46)

Christians down here have done so much to help me, to serve me and love on me, when perhaps I needed it most. It has been a humbling thing to be served. This kind of hospitality is seen back home, but I have noticed how I think the "hands" aspect of "head, heart, hands" Christian living has come out in amazing ways in the South.

There is one family I have been to who serve CIU students Sunday lunch. Every week, it seems like more than fifty CIU students come to this family, who delight in serving them without complaint, with great joy and with open hands, seeking nothing in return. How much I have to learn from people who would not complain or tire from serving but see this as their calling and their obedience to the Spirit of God. I pray I may rest similarly on the love of Christ and be inspired to then work to serve others around me.

With hospitality all around me, there also comes offers, conversations, events and plans that have to be accepted or declined for the sake of sanity. Yes, in American culture, this organized girl has had to learn the hard way to use her time better. It is such a weird lesson for me to learn, but the American high-school and college experience seems a much more balanced system in which students can understand adult lives much better out of school than Australian students may be exposed to.

This, of course, is a generalization. But with the extent to which Academics was stressed in High School for me, I feel I had lost both people-skills and adulting skills. Since coming here, I have learned so much more about balance and how to learn while balancing work and extra-curriculars. It has been a much healthier environment for me, but it has meant a shift in focus.

In fact, because of this balance, I have learned the power and need for relationships. There is rarely a day, at CIU, where I don't have some deep conversation with someone, even on the most stressful days. This sort of connection has been an earnest desire of mine for many years now, and it is a delight that I have such even now. Christians here have that same desire as well. American culture lends itself to close connection incredibly well. I have been surprised by the amount of friends I have made. But I have been warned of a fair amount of things at Bible College:

1. It is easy to be trapped in long, meaningful conversations and procrastinate the very reason you are there: to be a student. When I am stressed with workload, it may be just as important to ask if the conversation can happen later.

2. It is easy to go too deep too quickly and share your life with someone who might reject you later. This may not be unwise, but it is worth knowing

3. Everyone will likely know everything eventually. It is the sad truth that gossip or rumors spread like wildfire on a small Christian campus. Everyone will soon find out about your relationship, or past sins, or other news. It is important to keep that in mind as you will not always avoid it

4. You will feel like friends with everyone, and yet feel you are friends with no one (at least the first year). This was so true, I felt somewhat lonely my first semester, though I was surrounded by people all the time.

True relationships take time. I think you make a lot of "fast friends" your freshman year. But I really wanted something meaningful. It was excited when I finally had friends I could call "close" or even "best". It had been months until I could say that. And then I felt it hit me, like a breath of fresh air. The Lord had blessed me, in this new culture, with a group of people with whom I could share life with as well as my heart.

Crossing cultures can be hard, but here's another thing. I have been blessed by the strong Christian values which still mark many American people. It was hard to see my country so damaged politically, racially and even physically (COVID) upon arrival in the USA. It was not a nation I had dreamed of visiting. I saw it moving further and further away from God. But I also saw people who were sticking up for the Bible.

I have been deeply encouraged by those men and women who have written books, spoken, evangelized, conversed and encouraged people to stand up for the Lord. One of the things that impacted me most was the presence of what I see as a superficial, nominal Christianity. I believe that this America has also confused Christianity with its ideals of tolerance and its own opinions of what a "better world" looks like.

But I sit here now and repent of my perceptions of the South's Christian Church. Frankly, it felt like a lot of wealthier people, putting on airs of joy and love under the guise of being put-together and it saddened me. I believed that this nominal Christianity was creating lukewarm Christians, even in churches where good preaching is occurring. I repent of this feeling. In fact, Southern culture has taught me a lot about presenting ourselves as sacrifices before the Lord, giving what we have, whatever that may look like.

So if there are Christians dressing up for church Sunday to symbolize their desire to use them, and all they have, then so be it. Like Cain, I must not offer myself unwillingly before the Lord, only to be rejected for my half-hearted effort. I must instead offer myself, like Abel, with a willing heart before the Lord. I must learn to love people, I must learn to be hospitable, I must learn to accept many cultures.

Most importantly, I must be willing to break the bounds of cultural norms and expectations. Instead, I must endeavor to pursue Christ first and foremost for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of the cultures around me who may not like what I say, but will only see love.

Honestly, a year in another culture has been amusing, with tales of culturally inappropriate words, or being misunderstood, or driving on the wrong side of the road. But it has taught me how to love people, be it in my country or long-distance. It has allowed me to understand exactly what I may have "missed" as a TCK growing up, and provided more understanding for why I might have done things then.

It has been a season of growing with so much more to do. And I can't wait to begin again this next school year.