Just Below the Surface
Here is a literal back-translation to English of Psalm 23 (“The Lord is My Shepherd”) as understood by the Khmus tribe of Laos:[1]
The Great Boss is the one who takes care of my sheep;
I don’t want to own anything.
The Great Boss wants me to lie down in the field.
He wants me to go to the lake.
He makes my good spirit come back.
Even though I walk through something the missionary calls the valley of the shadow of death,
I do not care. You are with me.
You use a stick and a club to make me comfortable.
You manufacture a piece of furniture right in front of my eyes while my enemies watch.
You pour car grease on my head.
My cup has too much water in it and therefore overflows.
Goodness and kindness will walk single file behind me all my life.
And I will live in the hut of the Great Boss until I die and am forgotten by the tribe.
We could have used this translation in the chapter on language, because it illustrates well the travails of trying to render the message of Scripture into other tongues. Here, though, we want you to notice how the Khmus people understood the final sentence, “And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” That line brings comfort to millions of Western Christians, and yet it is a terrifying thought to Khmus tribesmen. It’s not the concept of eternal reward that bothers them. Rather, it is the idea of eternal reward presented to them in individualistic terms. You (as an individual) will go somewhere else when you die, alienated from your ancestors and from your living relatives who have not been allowed access to this paradise. For Khmus people, and many others in the world, their first reaction to the idea of spending eternity in heaven is, “What? And leave my family?”
Why do we find the concluding line of Psalm 23—“And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever”—so comforting (Ps 23:6)? What goes without being said in the West is that you have to leave here and go there to get to the house of the Lord. This idea has a history. Ancient Greek mythology described the dead as crossing the cold River Styx to Hades. Plato tweaked this into a migration of souls, as he describes in the Myth of Er, by which our souls cross from “here” to “there.”[2] Over the centuries, Christians gradually adopted this way of thinking. At death we “cross over” to heaven. We leave here (this world) to go there (the land of glory). We even biblicize the old Greek myth. After the Reformation, hymn writers commandeered the Exodus story of Joshua leading the people of Israel into Canaan and mixed it with the Greek myth of crossing the River Styx. “Crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land” became an image of the migration of the Christian soul to heaven. Some of you will remember the old hymn “He Leadeth Me.” The third stanza reads:
And when my task on earth is done
When by thy grace the victory’s won
E’en death’s cold wave I will not flee
Since God through Jordan leadeth me.[3]
Here we see death described as crossing the cold river over to the Promised Land. Other hymns, such as “I Won’t Have to Cross Jordan Alone,” “I’m Just A’Goin’ Over Jordan,” “The Far Side Banks of Jordan,” “I’ll Be Waiting by the Jordan for You” and “When Ol’ Chilly Jordan Calls,” all reinforce this image.
The Khmus tribesperson, for whom leaving his or her tribal home is a terrifying thought, would like the biblical image better: God brings his kingdom here. The New Jerusalem descends down to our current home: “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them” (Rev 21:3). When we superimpose our image of leaving “this world of woe” onto the Christian story, we turn the gospel of good news into bad news for people like the Khmus.
Western individualism affects more than just our view of eternity. One time I (Randy) was browsing in a bookstore in the massive city of Jakarta with an Indonesian colleague. An Indonesian clerk was following us around. Whenever I selected a book, she took it from me. I felt like they were worried I was going to steal something. They thought they were providing quality service. (These days, when I go to a big box store, I wish I could even find a clerk!)
After we had selected several books, we walked up to pay the cashier—or the person I thought was the cashier. He carefully wrote out a receipt, listing all the book titles and prices in triplicate. He handed my books to someone else, who left, and then handed me two copies of the receipt. Another clerk escorted us to the actual cashier in another part of the store. She took my money and stamped two copies of my receipt, and we were then escorted to yet another counter. Upon delivering one of my stamped receipts, I was handed my books, neatly wrapped like a Christmas package. Actually, it had been so long since I’d seen the books that it felt like a Christmas package.
Exhausted, I told my colleague, “I could make this store far more efficient!” He politely asked how, and I explained that only one person was needed for all those tasks. I leaned back in my bus seat smugly.
He looked me in the eye and said, “Your idea would put five people out of work.”
I shrugged and he looked dismayed. I was saving time. He was saving jobs. I was thinking about the situation from my individual point of view. He was thinking of the group. For me, it was an economics problem and certainly had nothing to do with moral right or wrong. I obviously was not even thinking of the other people involved. He thought I should be ashamed.
In this section, we will look at three aspects of our Western worldview in which the differences between cultures are less obvious and, consequently, more dangerous. These perspectives reside just below the surface of our consciousness, out of plain sight. In chapter four, we talk about the differences between collectivistic and individualistic cultures. In chapter five, we talk about the values of honor and shame. In chapter six, we address the tricky concept of time. These concepts can cause big problems because they represent deeper values. We might concede that our mores, views of race and language are culturally subjective, but we will be tempted to believe that the values discussed in this section are universal and objective. You might find yourself asking in these chapters, Why won’t they do it the right way? For us as authors, these differences are increasingly difficult to explain clearly. For all of us as readers, this is where serious misreading of Scripture can occur.