Lausanne World Pulse – Total Recall: Staying Faithful by Being Relevant

June 2006

By Krish Kandiah

I had my eye on Arnold Schwarzenegger as I travelled by bus from Singapore to Thailand in the summer of 1994. At that time, instead of using standardised, mass-produced film posters, each cinema would hire an artist to paint picture billboards to advertise the movies. One of the film star’s blockbusters was on general release and in Chinese-majority Singapore Schwarzenegger had distinctly Chinese facial features. On our way through Malaysia our bus passed many cinemas, all of which depicted him with a more Malay-looking disposition. When I finally made it to Thailand Schwarzenegger had a noticeably Thai appearance! It seems we want our heroes to look like us!

Upon coming home to the UK I looked through a book of images of Jesus Christ and it soon became apparent that Western Christianity had been doing the same thing for centuries with the greatest hero of all. The majority of the images of Christ, whether on canvas or on film, depict the Son of God as a blue-eyed, blonde-haired, Western male. It has sometimes been said, “God created us in his image and we have returned the compliment.” Indeed, this is what has happened.

These images of Jesus are an illustration of the very complex relationship between our cultures and the gospel. And we must consider this subject if we are going to relate the faith relevantly and faithfully to contemporary culture. The missiologist Andrew Walls has neatly summarised this relationship into two historical trends: the “Indigenising Principle” and the “Pilgrim Principle.”¹

Indigenising Principle
The indigenising principle is demonstrated when the Church seeks to connect with its host culture. For example, when the early Church, empowered by the Spirit, took the gospel to the nations, they were not afraid to translate the message into the Greek language and its thought forms. The brilliant prologue of John’s Gospel shows the author reappropriating the philosophical concept of the logos to help Greek speakers understand the truth about the person of Christ. However, when this indigenising principle is taken too far, as we have seen with the images of Christ, it simply co-opts Christianity into the norms and social mores of the host culture. For example, in a materialistic Western culture, Jesus Christ is often marketed as the fulfilment of a dream of health and wealth. This danger is called syncretism.

Pilgrim Principle
To take advantage of the indigenising principle without falling into the trap of syncretism, we need Walls’ counterbalance: the pilgrim principle. The gospel is a prophetic message and Christ and his Church are never fully at home in any culture. Each culture is a mix of the grace of God and rebellion against God; the gospel calls every culture to repentance and Christians are called to be “resident aliens” who both affirm and confront the culture. But again when this is done without sufficient humility or reflection, the gospel can be exported from one culture to another, along with the cultural baggage of the missionary. The West has a history of planting churches that exported their hymn book, dress codes, leadership structures and social norms along with the gospel. This danger is called cultural imperialism. 

Every genuine communicator of the gospel seeks to make the message both faithful to God’s revelation and relevant to the culture they are communicating to. Yet historically and from our contemporary experience we often fail in both areas. What help is there?

Jesus Christ
Jesus is God in human flesh, but not just generic human flesh; God became Jewish flesh. Jesus abided by Jewish customs and laws, spoke Aramaic and used the local idioms. Jesus used the everyday experiences of his audience (agriculture, fishing, eating) as a means to communicate the good news of the kingdom. Jesus’ message connected with people because he connected with their culture. Yet Jesus’ message is prophetic; Jesus finds safe language to deliver a dangerous message. He is criticised for getting too close to the outcasts of his society, to the social misfits and moral failures; and yet, even his enemies can find no sin in him. Jesus models for us a relationship with our cultures; he demonstrates a way to be in the world but not of it.

Dr. Krish Kandiah is the director of the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and lecturer in mission at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University. He is married and lives in Oxford with his wife and three children.