In the Obama age, racism is supposed to be dead, right? So why is there still tension between people who are different from each other?
While almost everyone would say, “I am not a racist,” the truth is that we’re all culturalists. We tend to look down on people of other cultures (even those who share our race) as inferior in some way. Jesus said that’s because we “judge according to the flesh” (John 8).
In Sunday’s sermon I explored how Jesus overcame extreme cultural differences in his conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4. I had also hoped to explore Paul’s approach to cultural conflict, but I didn’t have time.
I never realized this until I taught through Romans last year, but Paul’s entire letter hints at the culture clash that was present in Rome at the time. The Roman church was planted by Jews who were visiting Jerusalem for Pentecost and heard Peter preach the gospel (Acts 2:10). They brought their new faith in Jesus back to their synagogues in Rome, and a new group of Jesus-followers blossomed there.
For the first fifteen years of its existence, the church in Rome was predominantly Jewish. But in AD 49, the Roman Emperor Claudius expelled all Jews from the city of Rome. Overnight, the church became 100% Gentile.
Five years later Jews were allowed back into Rome, and they slowly started coming back to the church. But now they were the minority. And so, like all newly-minted minorities (e.g. mainlanders who move to Hawaii and are shocked at their first experience of not belonging to the dominant culture), they raised a stink. When Paul wrote to the church in AD 57, he had to address the bitter mix of cultural superiority and victimhood that both Jews and Gentiles felt.
He confronted the arrogant traditionalism of his fellow Jews, who wanted everyone to follow the same rituals as them: “Now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code” (7:6).
At the same time, he confronted the arrogant judgmentalism of the Gentiles, who ridiculed the Jews for their cultural quirks: “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls” (14:4).
Paul’s solution to the problem wasn’t for one side to give up its identity and conform to the other. He encouraged the Jews to continue their rituals and the Gentiles to continue abstaining: “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (14:5).
Instead, Paul’s challenge to both sides was to seek unity in the Holy Spirit rather than cultural conformity: “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (14:17).
Paul’s point seems to be that cultural differences are a good thing (which makes sense, since it was God who created different cultures when he scattered the people of Babel). When we allow the Holy Spirit to reign over our cross-cultural relationships, they sharpen us in a way we never would experience if we were always around people who are just like us.
And the inevitable conflicts that arise from our sinful pride, even in cross-cultural relationships between Christians, make us long for the day when all our relationships will be transformed: “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved” (8:22-24).