Saturday, July 8, 2017

Culture Shock

It was almost two years ago that we (temporarily, at least) remigrated to the Netherlands. We left as young family with two little children in 1983, and now we're back again... even in my home town.

In the meantime we have learned by experience a number of essential things.
First, the global church of Christ is much wider than one particular denomination, and there is not one denomination which can lay claim on the perfect truth. Therefore, I have not apriori rejected or condemned Christians from other denominations; rather I have learned from them.
Second, in this process I learned to look at biblical teachings and denominational doctrines from multiple perspectives. This is how I could also identify wrong teachings in "our" churches in Canada.
However, in this process I also discovered some serious abberations from the biblical truth in other churches and cultures. (In other words, I have not drifted from an ecclesiastical ethnocentrism to a doctrinal relativism.)
In these blog posts I have discussed a number of these dangerous movements and trends, such as: a shift in hermeneutical methods whereby our cultural mindset of today is used as a governing template for reading and applying the Scripture (Shelob's Web: August 20, 2014) and for instance: how Satan manages to infiltrate the evangelical churches with New Age beliefs and practices. (The Last Battle, and Beauty and the Beast: January, 2015).
In China we worked well with Christians from Jewish, Roman Catholic, Baptist and Pentecostal backgrounds and not because we watered down the truth; in fact in my preaching and teaching I always tried to learn from them and to respectfully show the differences and explain why some of these really mattered.

After eight years of service there, we had a real sense that God wanted us to wrap up our work in China and to move to The Netherlands. My parents had experienced some medical crises and my mother was beginning to struggle with dementia, which in turn made life for my father rather stressful. This sense of calling was further confirmed in events such as government intervention with our (officially illegal) ministry and the fact that I was offered a job (even though I had no residence or workpermit yet) in a town close to the place my parents lived. The job was at a "Christian" school, but outside the fact that I had a few sincerely Christian colleagues, there was nothing visibly Christian about it. The 'devotional material ' we were to use was clearly humanistic, pluralistic, and at times vaguely spiritual. The Gospel (that is: the reality of our sinfulness and the only redemption through faith in the crucified and resurrected Christ) was carefully cut out from the religious messages which tried to ensure that (the teachings of) all religions would be equally respected.

For various (mysterious) reasons my contract was not renewed, so I had to look for another job. In the meantime we had felt led to join a GKv (Liberated Reformed Church) with evangelical tendencies. The new pastor was a 'follower' of John Piper and Tim Keller, so we were very hopeful that this was indeed the place for us to be.
Well, as it happened, the Reformed Junior High School in my home town (where my father had been one of the first two teachers when it was instituted) had a vacancy in my subject areas that year, so I found a new job, much closer to home. An (official) condition for employment was that I'd be a member of a GKv church, but that was no problem anymore. I am now finishing up my first year at this school, and I have enjoyed a very good year. I am looking forward to another good year with wonderful colleagues and students!

Now, as we started to get absorbed into the GKv community and culture, we began to experience a 'culture shock'. I will share two events here, and in the next post I will address a third issue.

1 Undoing the Reformation
2 No Need for Missions
3 From Traditionalism to Feminism and Postmodernity

1 Undoing the Reformation
The same week that I was to start my teaching job at the Reformed Junior High School I also had a start a seven-week track of daily (5 times/week) radiation sessions to combat the prostate cancer which had been found in me. As a result I had to miss a multi-day spiritual retreat with the staff. The school leaders had registered this retreat with a Roman Catholic monastry (Dominican monastery at Huissen).
At first I was not too overly apprehensive. We had come to know evangelical Christians from a RC background, and we had found that with them we had a common base of faith on which we could work well together. Note that we never shunned the discussion about important differences. (Report from China: the catholic connection: July, 2015)
When I got to read more detailed information about the place and the program some alarmbells started to go off.
First, the monastery and chapel are dedicated to Maria, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary. In China we had made it a point not to tour the pagan temples. But, was this not another temple, dedicated to another non-god? Okay, it would not have stopped me from joining the colleagues, but I became somewhat reluctant.
Second, we would be invited to join the local monks at the Eucharist. Now, this became more serious. I had to be "Reformed", and in the "Reformed confessions" it states that the Popish Mass is an accursed idolatry. In the past I did object to such strong, condemning language, but in China I learned to draw a clear line between Worship of the Living God and Idolatry. So, as I sat down with a cup of coffee in the staffroom, I challenged my beloved colleagues, "Who will participate in the accursed idolatry of the Popish Mass?" Nobody had discussed this; the leadership thought it was a good thing, and they assumed we would readily agree to it. Well, most of them saw no problem. I asked them, "Do they not bow before the 'bread' and worship it as if it were their God?" The response was, "Well, we don't have to agree on all the aspects of their doctrine; it would still be wonderful to celebrate the union of our faith!" I was not impressed. When I brought up this concern with the leadership, they responded: "Why, Roman Catholics are Christians, too! Is it not wonderful to celebrate our union in Christ?
Third, as part of the program there was a workshop on meditation, as I found out later. I questioned several colleagues about this: "What kind of meditation was it? Was it meditating on the Word of God? Or was it emptying our minds to become receptive for spiritual oneness?" They agreed that it had nothing to do with the Bible. Now I got very concerned. The Bible urges us to put on God's full armor in the battle against the forces of darkness, and our Christian leaders tell us to shed all armor to open up to whatever spirits? Anybody, who -like Paul- takes the raging spiritual battle very serious would freak out about such developments in the church!
This year is the 500 year anniversary of Luther's protest against the corruption in the Roman (Catholic) Church(es). The Nederlands Dagblad newspaper is still read by many GKv members as it used to be a leader in the doctrine of the church. Today the paper sees little reason for celebrating the Reformation. According to many contributions, we must no longer see the Reformation as God's way of preserving the truth among a righteous remnant; rather, it was an unholy breaking-up of what God had put together!

2 No Need for Mission
Since the day that we met two Chinese women at the (GKv) church have we not only joined that church but we have also been active in assisting those who seek to settle in this land as refugees. A number of programs were in place already, some of which are organized by an interdenominational team of women. One of their programs is to assist (annabe) refugee women in the learning of the Dutch language. Marioka (my wife) was quite involved with this and other programs.
A few months ago she asked me (several times, I must admit) if I could not start such a program for the men. One of my colleagues at school had also shown interest in helping out. Since we had done similar courses for ESL (English as a second language) in Canada and China, I thought, "Big deal! Let's go!"
We already knew a group of men, who received biweekly Bible instruction at another GKv church in town, and they were quite interested in language help. So, we had teachers and students, but we still needed a building. The church building (of the other GKv congregation) seemed to be a natural, but the person-in-charge insisted we do this through the proper channels so that the church would not have to pay for extra heating costs and such. Apparently, an interdenominational fund existed to which various churches donated to share the expenses. Well, I was not used to such an overly structured way of helping others. First I contemplated bearing the cost myself and then deducting it from my monthly church contribution. But another option was suggested. There was a PKN church (building) nearby, and they had very good facilities for this work. Besides, they already worked closely together with the GKv church in search of greater unity. So, I approached their pastor and another elder. A few weeks later, I received a reply, asking, "Who are you? and, With what organization do you work?" I replied something like, "We are born-again believers, who seek to show the love of Christ in helping the stranger and the sojourner among us. We need no organization to do the will of God." A couple of weeks later I received a letter of response. There were two practical concerns, especially about the income of their caretaker and the supervision of their facilities during our presence. But, these were followed by a policy-objection. "Church council does not support Bible study for non-Christians. Especially Muslems experience threats and exlusion when they associate with Christians. Therefore it is not right to isolate such people from their own people and faith as their future is already one of uncertainty."
Wow! This response at least suggests that these church leaders do not think they ought to present the Gospel to Muslems, and that their troubles here should be of greater concern than the judgment of God that might well await them later, and that our greatest expression of love is not to teach them about salvation through the sacrifice of Christ. To me this suggests that they fail to see or accept the essence of the Gospel! And 'our' church sees no obstacle to work on closer unity with them!? Scary!


No comments:

Post a Comment