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Bryan: In 1 Corinthians 9:22, Paul says, "I have become all things to all people so that I might save some." When missionaries go to an unreached language group, they will experience some extreme cultural differences. The clothes are different, the food is different, the housing is different. Missionaries must handle the delicate task of immersing themselves into the culture, even if it means eating grubs instead of cheeseburgers. Today, Brooks Buser, who was a missionary to the Yembiyembi in Papua New Guinea, answers Carrie's question. Carrie asks, "What are some of the most difficult cultural differences to overcome? How do you mediate between being different from the native people and adapting to their culture?"
Brooks: This is a really good question. It's not something that's an insurmountable barrier, these cultural differences, but it's something that Christians have always thought through. Paul would speak very clearly about becoming all things to all men for the sake of the gospel, and these cultural differences—be it diets, be it different ways that we see the world (we're not talking about issues that are against scripture, but different ways that we understand the context that we live in)—have always faced Christians. And Christians have done better in some circumstances and poorly in other circumstances.
I think the beginning of your question, Carrie—what are some of the most difficult cultural differences—I'm going to come back to this again: language and culture are intimately intertwined. You cannot understand somebody's language at a high level unless you understand their culture. And the opposite is true. You can't understand somebody's culture at a high level unless you understand their language. And so those two are always going to be intimately tied together, so that you've got to learn both of them simultaneously. You can learn low-level language, low-level culture without the opposite. But to get to those higher echelons, what I would call worldview-level communication, you've got to know somebody's language at a high level. And so that to me is the most difficult barrier because it's so tied to culture. And those two are always going to be just the number one barriers up there, because they are one sort of unit together.
And again, I come back to our brother Paul and he's speaking in 1 Corinthians 14 about tongues. And he's making a case why tongues are an intelligible language. He says this in verse 8 of 1 Corinthians 14: "And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air. There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning. But if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker, and the speaker a foreigner to me." That difference of knowing someone's language at a high level so that when I communicate I know exactly what they're thinking of when I say these words, that's culture. That's not just words transmitting things into the air. It's knowing how they're going to receive it because you know their culture so well. So those two to me are obviously on the high end of the list.
The other things that I would look at would be lifestyle issues that are always challenging, whether you're able to adapt to a new culture well, different life cycles. When we moved into Yembiyembi, they were night owls. They like to stay up till 2:30, 3:00 in the morning. That was a new experience for me. You've probably heard me talk, I think, on one of these podcasts, when we moved in, we found out that Yambi men, when they were boys, have a ritual that when they kill a wild boar at night with a spear by themselves, that's when they change from a boy into a man. If they never kill a wild boar at night with a spear by themselves, they are forever considered a boy. And they're not allowed to marry. They're not allowed to go into this huge house that is just for the men. They are relegated to this small group of men in the tribe who never became true men, they were always boys.
And so when we moved into Yembiyembi, we were thinking about all the things that we cannot change. I'm 6'2. I'm a big white guy. I can't change my skin color. I can't change my height. But man, I can learn how to hunt a wild boar. I can learn how to paddle a canoe. I can learn how to stay up till 2:30 in the morning. And most importantly, I can learn their language and culture. I can get over that barrier to where they don't trip at my pronunciation and my grammar. If they're going to trip on anything, I want them to trip on the gospel. If that's going to be the impediment, I've done my job.
And so those cultural differences, we did everything we could. I learned how to hunt. My wife would let me go out for late night sessions with the guys. By God's grace, I ended up getting a handful of wild boar. So by God's grace I've become a real man. And just making sure that we didn't think our culture, our health and well-being, was so precious that we wouldn't sacrifice even that for the sake of the gospel being clear. The reason I hunted wild boar wasn't just because I wanted to be respected in the tribe. It was because I wanted the gospel to come from a man, to lay down our rights, to lay down our privileges from our own culture, for the people that we are coming to reach.
I worry too often that those from the West are not willing to catch malaria, not willing to go to the places with dengue fever, to put yourself in situations where yeah, you are going to set yourself up for some tough health things, but you've become like your people. There's this famous saying— don't know who said it, it's for pastors and pastors in the West like to say it a lot—that shepherds should smell like their sheep. And I'm of the absolute firm conviction that missionaries should smell like their people. And that's not a metaphor. You should smell like your people. You realize that the food that you eat dictates the odor that comes out of your pores.
When I would go in and check on missionaries in their early stages—I was a language and culture consultant—I would go in and check on them and one of the things was, what were they eating? Were they eating rice? Were they eating some sort of tortilla shells that were not native to Papua New Guinea that they had flown in from far away? Were they on a regular diet of western food? Or had they made the jump to food that was more difficult in the beginning, but they smelled like their people? That's an incredible gift, an incredible amount of credibility we can add to the gospel.
The Yembis, if the Yambi love you, they get you grubworms. So every time Nina and I go back to Yambi, we have these plates of grubworms. Some of them are alive. Some of them have been cooked in bamboo with greens, and those aren't bad. But we endeavor to varying degrees of success. My wife will sometimes eat two or three — that's about all she can stomach. And then she empties her bowl into mine and says, "My husband loves these." And that's not true. But I love my wife. And so for the sake of the Yembis knowing that we love them, I can choke down a few dozen grubs. I can do that every year for the sake of those people, because I want them to not stumble at me and my eating habits for the sake of being a good shepherd to this church.
And so I hope that speaks to some of it. I know that those aren't all of the things, but I think if we can think of the things that we can change and the things that we can't change. There are some things about you that you can't change, but for the sake of the gospel, all of the other things should come under some pretty tight scrutiny for the sake of being known, loved, and becoming Christ in flesh in many ways to these people who have yet to hear the gospel.
Bryan: You can read about other missionaries such as Hudson Taylor and Amy Carmichael who had to deal with major cultural differences at missionary.com/biographies. If you have a question you would like to hear answered on Ask Missionary, drop a comment on this episode, get in touch with us on social media, or send us an email through missionary.com and your question may be featured on this show. Subscribe to the show to get notified when the next episode, about supporting those who go, airs next week. Thanks for listening.