building bridges of cultural understanding

"The dialogue between us and our national colleagues is important in building bridges of cultural understanding. It is also important in helping us develop a more culture-free understanding of God’s truth and moral standards as revealed in the Bible. Our colleagues can detect our cultural blind spots better than we can, just as we often see their cultural prejudgments better than they. Dialogue with Christians from other cultures helps keep us from the legalism of imposing foreign beliefs and norms on a society without taking into account its specific situations. It also helps keep us from a relativism that denies truth and reduces ethics to cultural norms."

Hiebert, G. Paul. 1999. “Cultural differences and the communication of the gospel.” In Perspectives on the world Christian movement: A reader. 3rd ed. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, pg 381.

One of the things I was MOST excited about when I was preparing to live and serve overseas was to have God challenge and strip away beliefs I hold which are more American values than Biblical ones. While I can't give you an itemized list of what those are, I can tell you He has been and continues to answer that prayer and reveal those blind spots... via my own time in His word and in other cultures, and via relationships with brothers and sisters of other nationalities. It's a beautiful thing.

However, I don't believe there is such thing as a "culture-free understanding of God's truth."

As believers seeking to faithfully live out the Christian life in our social context, we must be aware that our formation and formulations are not acultural.