Disparity n. A great difference

In his book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn writes, "How can you expect a man who's warm to understand a man who's cold?" Whether or not they realize it, this question pervades the work of every person who tries to reach across cultures. When an American team came here, one of my friends described them as "a bunch of cheeseboys and cheesegirls." The best definition I've heard for that term is, "someone who thinks that cheese comes from the refrigerator," but it basically means that the person doesn't have an idea of what it means to work hard.


Don't get me wrong, I know plenty of Americans who work very hard (I'm related to a few of them). If I had pushed my friend a bit more, I think we would have gotten closer to the truth, that Americans who come here don't understand the life of a Swazi.


When we leave our homes behind and move around the world, there's a natural urge to make our new homes feel like the old ones. And because money is worth more here, a missionary who sells his/her house and moves here can certainly afford to live on a standard equal with home (slightly less so those of us who have a small stipend and big student loans).


The problem is, the standard of living in the US is different than the standard of living here. And the closer we get to our old standard, the farther we get from the people we are here for. We can afford nice cars, beautiful houses behind gates, and gourmet food. But then we go to meet with the average Swazi, who takes public transportation with 19 other people, lives in one room, and struggles to feed her family. And although Jesus does understand her problems, telling her that must sound awfully empty when it's clear that we can't even come close to that understanding.


I think it's a similar lesson to what we're learning in the middle east right now. We go in with guns blazing (or sermons blaring, or care packages flowing), doing everything that makes sense in our world. And to some extent, we succeed. But we don't always reach the roots of the problems, we don't always reach the hearts of the people, because we don't fully understand.


My point isn't that missions are worthless, or that missionaries need to starve to reach people. But I think we do need to rethink our approach. We practically applaud our own arrogance when we waltz into a new culture and start telling them things without taking the time to understand. And that's not an easy thing to remedy. It takes many months to get a basic idea of a culture, and we Americans feel like that's time wasted.


Please don't take this as a critique of American culture from someone who thinks he's superior. It's true that this article reflects Swazi attitudes toward things (prizing relationship over efficiency), but I remain an American. These are simply my thoughts as I reflect on my time here and realize that only now am I starting to have a working understanding of the culture here. If I were to create an internship for Southern Africa, I think I would include a 6-month period where the intern did nothing besides walking the streets and talking to people.

Have a great Wednesday,
-Ben