Were you to frequent the streets of Shanghai in the mid-1850s, you may have encountered a curious sight: a young British man sporting a pigtail, wearing the clothing of a poor local schoolteacher and speaking in Mandarin to whoever would give him a hearing. The man’s name was Hudson Taylor (1832–1905), the future founder of China Inland Mission (now known as OMF International).

Upon his arrival in March 1854, Taylor soon discovered that the Chinese did not convert to Christianity as easily as his zealous heart desired. He noted that, for many Chinese, the obstacle to faith lay not in the message of the cross itself but in its Western packaging. In his bid to fulfill God’s calling on his life, Taylor committed to lay no stumbling block before potential Chinese converts except Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Messiah.

In today’s Shanghai (and in other major world cities), questions of “what shall we eat” or “what shall we wear” no longer exert quite the same pressure on those aiming to evangelize their neighbors. Walking down the same streets Taylor did, you are just as likely to find people wearing Western clothing and eating at McDonald’s as those reflecting a more traditional life. Even still, the questions Taylor dealt with remain essential as Christians throughout the world consider how to effectively engage their neighbors and proclaim the message that Jesus is Lord.

At Home and at Odds

What Taylor sought to accomplish by changing his clothes and hairstyle is known today by the term contextualization. While the message of the gospel never changes, communicating that message across cultural differences requires wise and patient discernment. Failure to recognize differences in culture might affect how the gospel is heard — in fact, as Taylor discovered, such failure might even add unnecessary stumbling blocks to belief (see The Willowbank Report, 5.D).

All of us belong to multiple layers of culture. We have national cultures (embodied, for example, in holidays and shared folklore), family cultures (such as how your family celebrates Christmas), corporate cultures, city or neighborhood cultures, and more. When Christ calls us to himself, he does not demand that we be shorn of all cultural backgrounds. Rather, he makes us his own — cultural baggage included! As the late missiologist Andrew Walls argued,

The fact . . . that “if any man is in Christ he is a new creation” does not mean that he starts or continues his life in a vacuum, or that his mind is a blank table. It has been formed by his own culture and history, and . . . his Christian mind will continue to be influenced by what it was before. (The Missionary Movement in Christian History, 9)

Thus, while in Christ we are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), we continue to feel at home (to a certain degree) in the cultural conditions within which Christ called us — a dynamic Walls referred to as the gospel’s “indigenizing principle.”

At the same time, we now are decidedly not at home. While Christ calls us within our cultural conditions, he works by the Spirit to transform us so that we begin more and more to reflect him. As we grow in Christlikeness, we discover more and more ways that we are at odds with the layers of culture that have formed us. Walls again:

Along with the indigenizing principle which makes his faith a place to feel at home, the Christian inherits the pilgrim principle, which whispers to him that he has no abiding city and warns him that to be faithful to Christ will put him out of step with his society; for that society never existed . . . which could absorb the word of Christ painlessly into its system. (Missionary Movement, 9–10)

While remaining citizens and participants in the present world, Christians are joyfully aware that our permanent and most precious citizenship is with the fellowship of the saints in the city of God.

Crossing Cultures with Apostles

This tension between being both at home and at odds with our own cultural background puts Christians in a unique position. While we gladly participate in many of the customs that surround us, we also see that some aspects of our cultures are dreadfully opposed to Christ. Having been made part of God’s people, we live in the present as “sojourners and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11), sent on mission across the visible and invisible boundaries of culture to proclaim God’s excellencies (1 Peter 2:9).

But this calling raises the question of how to navigate those boundaries — whether as missionaries living far from our home culture or as Christian pilgrims within our home culture. Should we change our hairstyle and adopt new fashions to reach the lost around us? Maybe. But I doubt Hudson Taylor would say that everyone should follow his example to the letter. He would likely tell us he was merely obeying a principle outlined by another missionary from the even more distant past.

Paul and Idol Meat

Paul the missionary was a culture-crossing pro. The world he grew up in — not unlike ours today — was a mixed bag of clashing cultures. A Jew growing up in the region of first-century Palestine would encounter multiple languages, soldiers and merchants from faraway lands, foreign concepts and worldviews, and much more that did not fit easily with Jewish heritage. In his missionary labors, Paul worked hard to ensure that his own cultural background did not get in the way of the Christ he proclaimed.

“Paul worked hard to ensure that his own cultural background did not get in the way of the Christ he proclaimed.”

Responding to the Corinthians’ question about eating meat offered to idols, Paul explained the principle of Christian freedom he had followed when he ministered the gospel to them. Reminding them that “there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Corinthians 8:6), and therefore that all things are under his rule, Paul argues that food itself “will not commend us to God” (1 Corinthians 8:8). We can eat whatever is placed before us to God’s glory (1 Corinthians 10:31). In fact, we have a right to make our own decisions in such matters.

However, some with weak consciences could be led astray if they saw a fellow Christian eating meat that had been offered to an idol. So, Paul tells the Corinthians that pressing forward with their own rights in such a situation is a “sin against Christ” (1 Corinthians 8:12).

Paul goes on to list more of his rights in the next verses. Doesn’t he have the right to eat and drink what he wants? To get married and bring a spouse along on his journeys? To receive payment for gospel labors? But Paul does not cling to these rights. Instead, he gladly gives them up to better pursue the calling God gave him: presenting the gospel “free of charge” (1 Corinthians 9:18). His goal is to win more to Christ. So, he gladly gives up personal rights and lets go of cultural preferences “that by all means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22).

At the end of chapter 10, he turns the principle into a clear command: “Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved” (1 Corinthians 10:32–33).

Freedom for What?

Christians have been freed from the constraints of culture. We have not become acultural, transcending our God-given nature as enculturated beings. Instead, God has transplanted us into a new cultural heritage, that of his people. We’ve been given new freedom as his children. Significantly, however, he calls us to use this freedom for the sake of others, not for our own private benefit. Closing out the section on meat offered to idols, Paul gives one final command: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). The willingness to flex on personal preferences and cultural predispositions in order to save and serve others is nothing less than following in the very footsteps of the Son of God.

Walking in this path of freedom, however, is difficult. Like a favorite pair of shoes, our own ways of thinking and doing are, well, comfortable. They feel natural. We don’t have to work at them. And as soon as we begin to lay down personal preferences, the strength of our own cultural patterns begins exerting itself. Why do they do it that way? No, I am not going to start wearing those clothes. By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.

Not only is it easier to walk in well-trodden paths; we are also prone to confuse them with the narrow way. This tendency lay at the heart of the question that led to the first church council. After Paul and Barnabas reported to the church at Antioch about how God had “opened a door of faith to the Gentiles,” opposition arose from Judea, for some who came from there were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 14:27–15:1). The Chinese to whom Hudson Taylor ministered in the nineteenth century were hearing a similar message (more or less explicitly) from some Protestant missionaries: “Unless you adopt the forms and dress of Western Christians, you cannot be saved.”

Thankfully, the early church understood how deeply this idea threatened the gospel. They refused to require more than Jesus himself does for salvation. We believe in salvation “through the grace of the Lord Jesus” alone for all (Acts 15:11) — Jew, Greek, Scottish, Chinese, English, Brazilian. And so we aim to follow the principle that guided the apostle Paul’s ministry. Though called within particular cultural circumstances, we are pilgrims on this earth journeying toward the heavenly city, refusing to place stumbling blocks that in any way would hinder others from also receiving the free grace of the Christ.

Now, when our cultural background makes us stick out like a sore thumb, the preferences we need to lay down may be obvious. But what about when we blend in with the people around us? Many Christians will spend all their lives in the culture they were born into, making it difficult to recognize what might present stumbling blocks to the gospel. So we have to ask hard questions — and invite others to do the same — that probe our natural predispositions. Why do I do it that way? I’ve always done discipleship this way, and it feels so natural to me, but am I forcing my culture on others? Do my instincts about how to do family and church life more reflect Scripture or my own preferences?

Bringing Christ Across Cultures

Dear Christian, consider the great calling that you have received. You are a minister of reconciliation, given the glorious task of proclaiming to others the free gift of God’s amazing grace in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of the Father. Your future is bright: eternity in the new Jerusalem, whose light is the very glory of the triune God. With such a wondrous new identity and such hope for the life to come, you can follow the example of missionaries like Paul and Hudson Taylor, joyfully giving up preferences to become all things to all people, eager in every interaction to not let anything stand in the way of the gospel.

So, whether you eat or drink, cut your hair or change your clothes, adopt a simpler lifestyle or use different terminology, decrease the size of your personal bubble or let go of expectations of time, aim in everything to glorify God and point others to the wonder of his gospel.