how the people and parts of our world cross cultures
Author: Craig Thompson
Interested in cross-cultural issues, particularly the emotional process of adjusting to new cultures, whether that’s brought about by a move to another country or a move back “home.”
“Writers,” said David Brooks in a recent interview, “are beggars who tell other beggars where they found bread.” Brooks, a best-selling author, American political pundit, and staff writer for The Atlantic, called this his “favorite saying about writers.”
But wait up. I’ve heard a version of that phrase before, and I don’t remember it being about writers. Isn’t it about preachers, or missionaries, or just gospel-sharers in general? A quick internet search led me to the original:
Evangelism . . . is one beggar telling another beggar where to get food.
I was glad to find the actual quotation but was even more glad to find out its source. It wasn’t Elizabeth Elliot or Billy Graham or some other Christian from my American neighborhood. Instead, it was an evangelist and theologian from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), D. T. Niles. Here is what Niles wrote in 1951 in That They May Have Life:
Evangelism is witness. It is one beggar telling another beggar where to get food. The Christian does not offer out of his bounty. He has no bounty. He is simply guest at his Master’s table and, as evangelist, he calls others too. The evangelistic relation is to be “alongside of” not “over-against.” The Christian stands alongside the non-Christian and points to the Gospel, the holy action of God. It is not his knowledge of God that he shares, it is to God Himself that he points.
It’s a great reminder to me that Christian wisdom doesn’t always flow from the West to the rest of the world—though it is so easy for me to get locked into a bubble of influence made up of people like me, where we are the givers of wisdom, and they are the receivers.
After raising five children, it’s hard for me to even type those words, much less say them out loud. Telling someone to “Shut up!” was an extreme offense in our family’s younger days. My wife reminds me of the time our pastor said the phrase from the pulpit while quoting someone in a story he was telling. Our children turned to us wide-eyed. “We’ll talk about it later,” she whispered to them.
Even now, the taboo still sticks with me.
While not as rude, there are other words in the English language used to get people to quit talking. “Stop!” we say, or “Be quiet!” “Hush!” “Pipe down!” “That’s enough!” “Shush!” “Shhh!” “Put a sock in it!” or “Talk to the hand!” (remember that one?). The vocabulary may be different, but the gist is the same.
In the church, in ministry, in work, in life, there are those who would tell us to stop talking when our words are inconvenient or troublesome. In my interview with Silas West from a few months ago, he speaks about this silencing of those who report spiritual abuse:
“What I frequently see,” he says, “is a concerted effort to silence the problem in order to get on to business as usual—but the problem that is getting silenced is the victim, not the abuser or the abusive culture.”
All of us long to be heard, but we don’t always want to listen. In the church community we have come up with some words and phrases that we use to keep others quiet. They’re things we should be cautious of when we hear them, and we should be careful when we consider saying them ourselves. Here are a few:
Gossip This is one that A Life Overseas‘ Jonathan Trotter points out in Serving Well: Help for the Wannabe, Newbie, or Weary Cross-cultural Christian Worker, in the chapter “Four Tools of Spiritual Manipulators.” “Manipulators,” he writes, “will use a w i d e definition of gossip—and apply it liberally” to any kind of “negative talk.” After pointing out the sinfulness of gossip, “they magically remove their own responsibility to deal with the truth.”
“Be aware that despite all the preaching and teaching on gossip, a concrete definition will be absent,” he says.
But what happens when a concrete definition is present? Well, even then it depends on what it is and how it’s used. When you hear someone defining and condemning gossip, ask yourself what their motivation is. Is it correcting detrimental behaviors and guiding others to address problems in a better way? Or is it exerting control, shaping the narrative, and making sure that only those in leadership are allowed to discuss difficult issues? Is it being used by those in power to protect themselves and a broken status quo?
The best definitions I’ve heard of gossip* deal with the attitude and intent of the “gossiper.” I think we should use the same test for the ones applying the label.
Matthew 18 Jesus teaches on a number of topics in the 18th chapter of Matthew, but “Matthew 18” is often shorthand for Jesus’ teaching on how to handle a fellow Christian who has committed a sin. First, Jesus says, go to the person one-on-one. If the person doesn’t listen and repent, take one or two others with you. If that doesn’t work, tell the church.
It’s been over a year since I talked here with Barnabas International’s Josh Beck about member care and cross-cultural workers. At the time, he mentioned “emotional and spiritual abuse” as a “pressure point” that Barnabas was beginning to look at and said he’d know more on the topic in six months.
While it took me longer than I’d planned on, I recently reached out to him again to follow up. (How time flies!) Josh said that Barnabas staff had come across abuse situations when providing member care, so they first decided to look at themselves to make sure they weren’t fostering any systems that could lead to abuse in their own organization.
This evaluation took the form of a spiritual-abuse audit, led by Silas West, an adult TCK and former cross-cultural worker in Nepal and member-care professional, who now works as a licensed mental-health counselor in the US. Josh suggested I contact Silas, and Silas kindly agreed to add his voice to our discussion. Following is our conversation, which took place over email.
Thanks, Silas, for talking with me about such an important topic. First off, what do you see as the characteristics of spiritual abuse, and how have you seen it take place in the world of cross-cultural work?
Thanks for asking this question and for making this issue known in a broader way. So specifically, you asked about the characteristics of spiritual abuse. The first characteristic is that spiritual abuse often occurs as a misuse of power. An individual or group with greater power causes harm (intentionally or unintentionally) to someone with less power. For abuse to be spiritual abuse, there must be a religious, sacred, or spiritual (faith-based) context.
This does not mean it has to only be within a church. It can take place in para-church organizations or faith-based organizations. It occurs in marriages or parenting where faith, Scripture, or fear of God is used to coerce or manipulate, and it can happen in a mentoring or discipleship setting or in a small group . . . anywhere where the sacred or faith is the context of the abuse.
It can be committed by an individual or by a group or system. It is not always committed by a leader. A pastor, leader, director, elder, or missionary team leader may be abusive. But so can a member of a congregation or team. If that member can wield the opinion of the group, even if that member is technically an equal in power sharing, practically, they hold power over the one being abused because they control the opinion or perspective of the group over the victim. Power is not just in the rank or role held. It can be real or perceived.
Spiritual abuse utilizes various methods to control, coerce, manipulate, or otherwise influence. Scripture is often used to persuade someone toward an outcome that the abuser wants. Theological teaching, fear of the eternal, or position in the group (like how the group may reject them if they disclose wrongdoing) are also used.
And one of the key characteristics of spiritual abuse is that it is not always intentional. In fact, I would say in the majority of abuse situations I work with, it happens unintentionally. But this is why it is often missed. Because those committing the abuse are usually in positions of authority or greater power, they get to dictate the narrative of what happened, which is filtered through the lens of their intentions.
What is essential to truly understand if abuse is occurring or not is the impact, not the intention. This means centering the victim when deciding when abuse has occurred. Whether it was intended or not, victims experience holistic spiritual, emotional, and psychological harm.
Spiritual abuse may include manipulation, exploitation, enforced accountability, censorship in decision making, requirements for secrecy and silence, pressure to conform, shaming, misuse of Scripture or the pulpit or leadership roles to control behavior, condemning language, requiring obedience, suggesting the abuser has a divine position, isolation from others, and more.
Read the rest of my interview with Silas atA Life Overseas. . . .
I’m on a subway in a crowded city . . . a group of orange-clad monks carrying bright-blue IKEA bags enters my car . . . now I’m not on the subway . . . I’m on a bus . . . some children next to me are nibbling on chicken feet . . . the bus stops for a dragon parade . . . with lions . . . a cat waves at me from inside a 7-11.
Sound like a bizarre dream to you, or just another day in a life abroad? Sometimes it can be hard to be sure.
We’ve all woken up from a toss-and-turn night with a vivid story in our minds that we can’t wait to tell to somebody, whether or not they are interested in hearing it. Sharing that dream can have a lot in common with telling stories about our mundane, or not-so-mundane, adventures overseas. How? Let me count the ways. . . .
Someone from back home asks you what life is like where you live. You tell them, and their eyes glaze over as your details get further unmoored from your passport-country’s culture and happenings. As the common touchpoints diminish, the interest often decreases. You won’t believe what happened to me last week! can sound an awful lot like You won’t believe what I dreamed last night!
At some point in my life I learned not to accept hospitality on the first offer. Even if I want something, I need two or three invitations.
“Would you like a piece of cake?”
“Thanks. I’m OK.”
“Are you sure? I’ve got plenty, and I can’t eat it all myself.”
“Oh, I don’t want to bother you.”
“It’s no bother at all. Let me go get you some.”
“Well . . . I guess I could eat a small piece.”
I’m not sure where this habit came from, and it really is a habit. I often turn people down at least once even before I give it any thought, even when I realllllly want some cake. Did it start when I was a child with me imitating the culture of my small midwestern town? Did I get it from advice in a Dear Abby column? Or did I pick it up in my host Asian country, where saying yes too soon can be seen as a sign of greediness? Is that it? Do I do it out of not wanting to appear overeager, or could it be because I know that I sometimes make an offer simply out of politeness, hoping I’ll be turned down but still get credit for my generosity?
There’s another offer—or invitation—that is over-easy to decline. It’s when someone asks, “How are you?” We all have our pat answers: Fine. OK. Not bad. Wonderful. Can’t complain. Or we simply repeat back, How are you? And then the conversation, or at least the greeting part of it, is over. Because it is just a greeting, right? They don’t really want to hear about the problems I might have—and I don’t really want to overshare.
Those of us in cross-cultural ministry can get around the risk of vulnerability by pretending we were just asked, “How’s your work going?” and jumping into newsletter or church-report mode. “Things are going great! We had two new visitors at our meeting last week and we’re getting ready to host a college team. How are things with you?”
Or we just go silent, with nothing more than a slight smile or shrug. . . .
I’ve written before about our return to Joplin one month after an F5 tornado devastated our Missouri community, and it’s been on my mind again lately. It’s not because of the approaching fourteenth anniversary of the event on May 22. Nor is it because of the recent release of the Netflix documentary focusing on Joplin, The Twister: Caught in the Storm. No, it’s actually because of a March 27 article in Christianity Today titled “Donated Clothes Still Being Sorted in Appalachia.”
“[S]ix months after the disaster,” writes Isaac Wood, referring to Hurricane Helene, “First Baptist Church of Roan Mountain is still swimming in donations.”
“We’ve still got probably 10,000 toothbrushes,” pastor Geren Street tells Christianity Today. “We’ve still got 20-something pallets of water bottles. I can’t tell you how much water we’ve given away, and to look out there and still see 20-something pallets? It’s crazy.”
I understand. While my oldest son was already living in Joplin when the tornado hit, the rest of us came back a few weeks later, in time to experience “the disaster after the disaster.” That’s what a friend who was instrumental in our church’s response efforts called it. So much was given to help the people of our community: the toothbrushes, the bottles of water that we all were drinking months later, the containers of clothing needing to be sorted by sex, by size, and by whether they were even wearable. And then there was the truckload of hundreds of flip flops with soles that would leave behind a picture in wet sand.
I thought my friend had made up the phrase “the disaster after the disaster.” But it turns out he probably heard it from one of the seasoned relief workers who’d shown up to help. Wood’s article points to several experts referring to the massive inpouring of donations—especially used clothing—as “the second disaster,” “a second-tier disaster,” and yes, “the disaster after the disaster.“
People experienced in relief work know to watch for the difficulties that follow natural disasters. They anticipate not only the need to take care of donations that demand huge amounts of time, space, and attention, but they also know to warn counselors, therapists, religious leaders, teachers, and parents to watch for the spiritual, mental, and emotional issues that will arise for months and years to come.
For some of you, who have faced or will face natural disasters in your part of the world, there’s practical advice here. But for all of us, in other areas of our lives and work, we can apply the lesson of looking out for how a solution can bring its own challenges, how an answer can lead to more questions. It’s “the thing after the thing.” . . .
I did not come to this this place with superior eloquence or wisdom, but in weakness and in fear and with much trembling. I became a little child among them. Try as I might, I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.
God, I seek your face but I see in a mirror indirectly.
I started with such lofty goals, but my endurance has expired; I have lost all hope of deliverance from the Lord.
I am absolutely terrified, and you, Lord—how long will this continue? The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. My physical body is wearing away.
I’ve felt this way before. For instance, there was when I was trying to serve people in my host country but often coming up short in my ability to navigate the language and culture and ministry expectations. And now I’m back in my passport home trying to serve people who are new to the US, working on their own navigations. And I frequently get tripped up by the red tape and details and deadlines—even though it’s my system we’re dealing with.
It’s challenging to be in a position where you feel in over your head, and when you’ve put yourself there by choice, it adds to the complicated emotions. It all can easily become overwhelming. It helps, though, to develop an attitude of humility—the kind of humility Christ modeled when “he made himself nothing, by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:7 NIV), and came to our world as a baby, as one of us, even the least of us. He “condescended.”
Today, we warn against condescension, but the meaning of condescend was originally to climb down to be with someone of a lower rank or position. Back then, that was considered a good thing, and the word was used to describe Jesus’ journey to be with us. It was only later that condescend took on the negative connotation of making a show of superiority.
Clearing Customs 