Change across Cultures

A Narrative Approach to Social Transformation

Bradshaw, Bruce

• Verlag: Baker Academic
• Jahr: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781441206978
• Thema: Theology & Religion
• Thema: Ethics & Religion

C. S. Lewis compared the task of ethical inquiry to sailing a fleet of ships; the primary task is avoiding collisions. When introducing cultural change, such collisions are inevitable. Bruce Bradshaw provides expert instruction for navigating these cultural clashes. Bradshaw contends that lasting change comes only through altering the stories by which people live. The Bible is the metanarrative whose altering theme of redemption forms a transcultural ethical basis. Aspects of God's redemption story can change how local cultures think and behave toward the environment, religions, government, gender identities, economics, science, and technology. However, effective change takes place only in a context of reconciliation, Christian community, and mutual learning. A must read for anyone engaged in or preparing for cross-cultural ministry, relief, or development work. The book is also relevant to students of ethics, philosophy, and theology. Numerous real-life examples illustrate the inevitable tensions that occur when cultures and narratives collide.

1

Narrative:
The Media of Ethical Inquiry

Stories have wings; they fly from peak to peak.

Romanian Proverb

To be human is to tell stories about ourselves and other human beings.

Tobin Silvers

That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Genesis 11:9

People who read the Genesis account of the Tower of Babel from the perspective of Western culture invariably interpret the story as a curse. It tells how God defeated the human effort to become divine. At the beginning of the story, the “whole world had one language and a common speech” (Gen. 11:1), leading the people to believe that they could transcend human limitations, and they tried to build a tower to heaven as an expression of their power. God knew, however, that if they were successful, nothing they attempted would “be impossible for them” (Gen. 11:6). God, therefore, thwarted their aspirations by confusing their language, scattering the people over the face of all the earth (Gen. 11:9), and making the diversity of human language appear to be an expression of “divine punishment for the human act of arrogance.”[1]

It is possible, however, to interpret the story as having redemptive qualities. Jose Miguez-Bonino, a Latin American theologian, sees the story as an expression of God’s mercy. He writes from the perspective of a people subjugated by another culture, who, as conquered people, had lost their language and were compelled to “deny everything that gave meaning to their lives—stories, traditions, the ‘naming of things,’ the music of words, the sounds of love. To keep their own language, however, meant to be a stranger in their own land.”[2]

Miguez-Bonino suggests that God’s choice to confuse human language was “an act of deliverance”[3] for a subjugated people. The story of Babel, in his view, should not be interpreted as a curse but as a blessing. It reveals “that God’s intention is a diverse humanity that can find its unity not in the domination of one city, one tower, or one language but in the ‘blessings for all the families on the earth’ (Genesis 12:3)”[4] The motive of the people who attempted to build the tower of Babel was to resist the “diversification which God had long before ordained and initiated. . . . Thus, the ‘confusion of tongue’ is not a punishment or a tragedy but the gift of new beginnings, liberation from a blind alley.”[5] The contrasting interpretations of the story of Babel emerge from different cultural narratives, which influence people to perceive truth from various angles.

The What and Why of Ethical Inquiry

The influence that cultural narratives bear on our lives makes them the media of ethical inquiry, particularly as it pertains to managing cultural change, which we do according to the values of some narrative. The central issue for Christians is discerning what that narrative is.

Take, for example, a successful immunization project in an East African village. Its purpose was to reduce infant mortality, and it achieved significant results. The village elders, however, perceived the success of the project in a manner different from that of the development practitioners. While the development practitioners celebrated the survival of infants, the village elders were relieved that they did not have to allow the elderly women in their village to die. The villagers attributed infant deaths to the witchcraft of the older women and required the life of one woman for the death of every child, thus defending the role of justice in the narrative of their community. The project evaluators realized that their efforts to increase the survival rate of children also increased the survival of the elderly, creating a geriatric problem and making more demands on the village’s meager resources. An anthropologist who is committed to functionalism, as we shall later see, might question the benefit of this project, believing that the deaths of the children and the elderly are keeping the population in balance.

The project managers, however, drawing inspiration from the biblical narrative of God’s concern for all human life, affirmed that the survival of both young and old was good. Because of their belief that they were participating in God’s redemptive work in creation, they knew they were engaged in an ethical pursuit and were, thus, working to transform a major moral aspect of the community. As a result, they were challenged to support the villagers in their efforts to sustain the lives of the children as well as those of the elderly. In so doing, they were extending the narrative of God’s redemptive relationship with creation into that village in a comprehensive manner.

All cultural change has a moral aspect and is intimately related to cultural narratives, which contain the values that shape human character and govern ethical action. Ethics, often defined as “theories of morality,”[6] seeks to maintain the integrity of the narratives through which people live. Ethics has to do with character as it is formed by a habitual way of life and demands that people take responsibility for shaping the nature of their cultural narratives. Jack Miles observed that character, not circumstance, governs our lives. He noted that if a wealthy young man chose to dispose of his wealth and live in poverty, his character would remain “that of a man raised in wealth, for he cannot give his history away.”[7] He will have to make intentional efforts to change the narrative of his life if he wants to value poverty. Similarly, many of the people who lived through the economic depression of the 1930s continued to live within a narrative of poverty throughout the economic growth of the late twentieth century. The condition of poverty was embedded into their character, influencing them beyond the scope of their current life situations.

For Christians, ethics is expressing the integrity of God’s redemptive relationship with creation in both words and deeds. Our narratives give us differing understandings of how we engage in this effort, influencing us to interpret Scripture differently and challenging us to discern which interpretations are redemptive: which ones illustrate God’s commitment to reconciling the creation to himself through Christ. Likewise, Christians manage cultural change by supporting projects that nurture the dignity of human life, not because these programs are anthropologically functional or economically efficient, but because they participate in God’s redemptive relationship with creation.

The Polarities of Ethical Inquiry

Narratives are the central media of ethical inquiry, but they do not preclude propositional truth. Instead, narratives and propositions are closely related, and we cannot fully appreciate the contributions narratives make to the ethical task of managing change across cultures until we understand that relationship. In this section, I want to explore the nature of the connection between propositions and narratives.

Toward Understanding Propositions

Propositions are statements about a perceived truth, based on the logic of a particular culture. They contain moral truths, such as “you shall not commit adultery” (Exod. 20:14), and they are generally invoked when people confront moral dilemmas. They usually offer ethicists two or more opposing moral alternatives that appear equally valid and often equally condemning. These alternatives can include refusing to baptize men who have two or more wives (thus requiring polygamists to violate the sanctity of marriage by divorcing second and subsequent wives) or condemning marriage after divorce as a form of adultery.

Norman L. Geisler, a leading proponent of engaging in ethical inquiry through propositions, sets forth six approaches for evaluating the moral implications of human behavior and provides a definitive analysis of categories representative of propositional ethical inquiry. Geisler evaluates each of these approaches according to a variety of theological and ethical propositions. He chooses three that are acceptable for Christians and strongly supports one of the three alternatives as most conducive to facilitating Christian morality.

Geisler’s six approaches to ethical reflection range from antinomianism to unqualified absolutism. Antinomianism denies the existence of any moral laws and allows morality to be evaluated on “subjective, personal and pragmatic grounds, but not on any objective moral grounds.”[8] Unqualified absolutism, the opposite of antinomianism, affirms that “there are many nonconflicting moral laws, and none of them should ever be broken.”[9] The other four options, situationism, generalism, conflicting absolutism, and graded absolutism, fall between the extremes of antinomianism and unqualified absolutism.

Situationism, popularized by Joseph Fletcher’s Situation Ethics: The New Morality, claims that the law of love serves as the only basis of moral decisions. This position postulates that conflicting alternatives in any moral decision can be mediated by discerning which alternative results in the greatest expression of love. Generalism adds to situationism by postulating that there are two or more laws on which moral decisions are based. These laws can include love, but they might also include other values such as increasing happiness or pleasure or reducing pain. For decisions on the polygamy dilemma mentioned later (see p. 24), generalism might consider love in addition to the social and economic issues that are involved in having two or more spouses.

Geisler postulates that antinomianism, situationism, and generalism are insufficient models to support Christian ethical inquiry. He sees the remaining two alternatives, conflicting absolutism and graded absolutism, along with universal absolutism, as the only viable ethical models for Christians.

Conflicting absolutism contends that moral decisions can involve an obligation to fulfill two or more absolute norms that are mutually exclusive. If Christians choose one option, the option they rejected is still a moral obligation, and they have to repent for not choosing it. For example, polygamists who become Christians and decide to divorce their spouses have to repent for acting on this decision.

Graded absolutism is the position that Geisler supports. It claims that while ethical norms are absolute, they are ranked to prevent them from conflicting with each other. Graded absolutism acknowledges a pyramid of objective values determined by God in agreement with his “absolute, unchanging character”[10]: the only subjective aspect of values “is our understanding and acceptance of God’s values.”[11]

Geisler comes close to recognizing the cultural influences on graded absolutism. However, this recognition does not lead him to consider the cultural influences on perceiving the hierarchy of values in graded absolutism. Instead, he compares this subjective factor as “a limitation shared by other Christian views as well.”[12] This limitation suggests that even the strongest approaches to propositional ethics have subjective natures, which questions the importance of propositions. Truth, however, can be communicated through narrative as well as propositions.[13]

Toward Understanding Narratives

Narratives, the “basic and essential genre for the characterization of human actions,”[14] are the stories that govern our lives. They empower people “to organize [their] institutions, to develop ideals, and to find authority for [their] actions.”[15] William J. Bennett’s recent work on the virtues of American culture illustrates that the narratives of American culture, at their best, are blends of Christian and Greek virtues and values.[16] He suggests that Americans become virtuous by living into the narratives of their culture. The apostle Paul expressed a similar thought when he urged the Christians in Rome, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:2). We renew our minds when we transform the narratives that govern our lives; only then can they empower us to live into a different story.

Narratives are both the templates through which we interpret reality and the means through which we seek continuity in our lives. They emerge from our history, and we could not tolerate life without them. They empower us to organize our perceptions of reality and to locate our place within it; they help us to see things not as they are, “but as we are.”[17] They assist us in discerning the things that are important by communicating the truths about life’s mysteries through metaphor and symbol.[18] Because they influence who we are and how we perceive God, they serve as the primary media of engaging in ethical inquiry.

Narratives influence the ethics of managing change, whether within or across cultures. They reveal how values and virtues are developed and shaped over time as well as the nature of the truth that governs them. For example, truth, for Christians, is not “a concept that ‘works’ but an incarnation that lives.”[19] Jesus, in saying, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6), issued an invitation to people to reconstruct the narratives of their lives around a relationship with him. The narrative of Christianity centers on Christ and his redemptive relationship with creation.

The Bible contains many stories of people who reconstructed their narratives by embracing the risen Christ. The story of Stephen (Acts 6:8–7:59), the first martyr of the church, is perhaps the best example. In order to persuade the Sanhedrin that Jesus was their long-expected Messiah, Stephen traced the history of the Hebrew nation from Abraham to the establishment of the monarchy and the building of the temple. The Sanhedrin seemed to agree with Stephen’s account of their narrative until he concluded that they, like their ancestors who persecuted the prophets and “killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One” (Acts 7:52), were a “stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears,” who always resisted the Holy Spirit (Acts 7:51). The Sanhedrin, who interpreted their history as the primary medium of revelation, were so offended by Stephen’s judgment that they stoned him to death.

History, which is composed of narratives, reveals God’s being and will[20] and is the arena of his activity; people confess their faith “by reciting the formative events of their history as the redemptive handiwork of God.”[21] In so doing, they graft themselves and their communities into the narratives of their faith. Christianity has the power to transform history and thereby to transform cultures. God’s redemptive work through Christ gives people another filter through which they can interpret their history.

Narratives lie at the heart of inspiration. According to Jacques Ellul, “all errors in Christian thought” began when Christianity shifted the center of theology from history to philosophy.[22]

People live in history as fish live in water, and “what we mean by the revelation of God can be indicated only as we point through the medium (history) in which we live.”[23] Christian truth is revealed through the history of God’s redemptive work in creation, giving God’s relationship with creation a historic foundation. We know God, not through abstract philosophical propositions, but through our ability to interpret our history to reveal God’s redemptive relationship with humankind, a relationship that is revealed through our personal and communal narratives. Historical evidence, however, is meaningless without interpretation. We study history through the context of some narrative, seeking ways to understand our present and future from the context of the past. “God’s ‘hand’ in history is not found in the evidence and traces of the material past themselves, but in the interpretation and meaning of the past.”[24]

Because history is the medium through which human beings realize the redemptive work of God, faith cannot get to God save through historic experience.[25] Without being integrated in narrative, history loses its meaning, its symbolic value, and its redemptive theme; it becomes nothing but “one damned thing after another.”[26] In the thought of Lesslie Newbigin, Christian faith is itself an interpreta...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Narrative: The Media of Ethical Inquiry
• 2. Scripture: From Narrative to Metanarrative
• 3. Culture: From Functionalism to Redemption
• 4. Environment: From Gnosticism to Biblical Holism
• 5. Religious Practices: From Power to Truth
• 6. The Powers: Transformation through Subordination
• 7. Gender Equality: From Participation to Leadership
• 8. Economics: From Exploitation to Empowerment
• 9. Science and Religion: Two Different Leading Functions
• 10. Reconciliation: A Commitment to a Better Future
• 11. Community: One Narrative with Many Cultural Dimensions
• 12. Toward Constructing the Narrative: From Teaching to Learning
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• Notes
• About the Author