Francis Chan and Objectivity

Globe. Image source.

Last week I posted Culture, Objectivity, God, and the Real Reason I Moved to China, a blog post where I finally put into words my thoughts about the mistaken notion that anyone can or should be an objective outside observer of the world. We are not objective; we have our own culture, and that is the lens through which we experience everything. Your experiences and your idea of "normal" are not universal- they are just one tiny little subculture in this giant diverse world.

So now that I've laid all that out in a blog post, I've decided to continue to point out this attitude of "we look at the world from an objective outside perspective" wherever I see it, because it's EVERYWHERE. Most people don't even notice, because it's everywhere and it feels so normal. And that's why I have to point it out. (You're welcome.)

So, I would like to present this article: Francis Chan Is Moving to Asia to Be a Missionary. For those of you who don't know, Chan is a pastor and is a big deal among young cool evangelicals who care about missions and saving the world. (In other words, me 10 years ago.) Here's an excerpt from the article:

Chan used an extended fishing metaphor in his address to the Asuza students explaining his decision to move. “I feel like I’ve been fishing in the same pond my whole life,” he said. “And now there’s like thousands of other fishermen at the same pond, and our lines are getting tangled and everyone’s fighting over stupid things, and one guy tries some new lure and we go, ‘Oh, he caught a fish, let’s all try his method!’ And it just feels like, what are we all doing here?”

I happened upon this article just days after publishing my whole big post about objectivity and the world, and I was just FASCINATED. What an informative example of exactly this fallacy! Let's take a closer look.

I hear this metaphor, and I interpret it to mean something like this: "Here in the US, we have all these Christian leaders trying to share the gospel and get people saved, such a high concentration of us that it's not effective and we end up fighting with each other. Meanwhile the whole rest of the world is out there. It doesn't make sense that we all stay here. Results would be much better if we went somewhere else to spread Christianity."

So many incorrect assumptions in there! Here, let's see how many we can find:

• Everyone in the world needs to hear about Christianity.
• The United States is where the Christians are, so we're in charge of sending people out to the rest of the world.
• Other countries don't have many Christians. They don't send missionaries.
• Our brand of (white American evangelical) Christianity is something the entire world needs, not something specific to our tiny subculture.
• American Christians are the objective outside observers of the world. We are the authority figures who know what everyone else in the world needs.

Even though Chan didn't say any of these things, his statement doesn't make sense without them. When you realize that in reality, every group of people in this world is doing their own thing in their own culture, just like we do our own thing in our own culture, and we know nothing about how they live or what they need if we haven't done extensive research... When you realize all that, Chan's whole point sounds like complete nonsense.

But this brings up an interesting question: In last week's post, I said God is objective and relates to every person and every culture in the world equally. But here's a question: Is Christianity also objective and applicable to everyone, or is it culture-specific?

Ooooh. Well that's a question. I'm not even sure what my answer is to that.

Here are a few thoughts though:

I'm a Christian, and I'm very happy about being a Christian. I believe Jesus really did live and die and resurrect- so you could categorize that as "objective" in the sense that [according to my ideology] those things really did happen. But the part that's not "objective" is our interpretation of those events- how much importance we place on them, how they affect us today. A lot of things happened in the world in 33 AD [or whenever it was]; the reason I am specifically interested in Jesus' resurrection and not any of those other things has EVERYTHING to do with my cultural background.

Also, even though I believe those things literally did happen, that's not really the main point of my Christian belief. I'm more interested in the big concepts of incarnation and resurrection. Yes, I believe in the Incarnation- but more importantly, I believe in incarnation. God is with us right now. God lives in every person in the world. Yes, I believe in the Resurrection- but more importantly, I believe in resurrection. God will resurrect the whole world and bring justice.

And big abstract ideas like incarnation and resurrection can certainly be meaningful to people from any culture. (Or not meaningful. That's also fine.) But the religious system built up around those ideas is extremely culture-specific. And all of my background as a white American evangelical is extremely culture-specific.

Furthermore, I recognize that the reason I'm still a Christian now has EVERYTHING TO DO WITH the fact that I was raised evangelical. If I had been raised in a different religion, then no, I don't think it would benefit me to convert to Christianity. But I am happy being a Christian because I've always been a Christian- and even though I feel that my entire religious ideology has changed, I'm still glad that I can keep or reclaim a lot of the language and symbols. Which, again, is all about culture.

And one more point I would like to make: I do not believe everyone needs to be a Christian. I do not believe everyone would benefit from becoming a Christian. I do not believe non-Christians go to hell. I believe going to heaven or hell has nothing to do with what religion you belong to; instead, it's based on "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink," and so on, "whatever you did for the least of these."

And I have a huge problem with the Christianity that says "everyone needs to believe what we believe, in order to not go to hell." Seeing yourself and your beliefs as something objective and universal that applies to everyone. You believe you have a personal relationship with God- who is objective and outside of culture- you believe you know Them so well, so closely, spending time with God every day, making your relationship with God the highest priority in your life. You're so closely tied to a truly objective being, so then you believe you are objective as well. Or at least, the parts of your life that are most influenced by your relationship with God are necessarily the most objective and correct and applicable to everyone in the whole world. "God agrees with me."

The whole concept of a "personal relationship with God" leads us to believe very wrong things about our own objectivity. (For me personally, one of the biggest factors in ending my relationship with God was when I found out about systemic racism. People of color in the United States are constantly dealing with this- it affects job opportunities, education, voting rights, where they can live, interactions with police, and so on and so on, while I benefit from white privilege, and God never thought to mention it to me? God, who supposedly loves all people of all races equally. God, who I prayed to every day. I would sit and listen for what God wanted to say to me, every day, for years- and NOT A PEEP about systemic racism.)

And also, I would like to say this: Me, a person who is a member of a very specific tiny subculture at a very specific time in the history of the world, in a "personal relationship" with a God who knows every person and every culture and every time period completely intimately. That alone is a huge power imbalance, before you even get to the whole omnipotence thing. Which is why I am no longer willing to be in a relationship like that ever again. I thought I knew Them so well, but now I see that's impossible. And maybe it would be okay to have an all-knowing being like that as just an acquaintance, but to build every aspect of my life on that relationship, to commit myself to Them 100%, "he must become greater, I must become less", bringing every single aspect of my entire life under Their control, "I surrender all", no, there's no way that can be healthy.

So. Well I started out talking about Francis Chan and now we're here, at the intersection of objectivity, culture, and a "personal relationship with God." I plan to continue to write blog posts pointing out when Americans are talking as if we are the objective observers of the world. Chan is basically saying, "There are so many Christian leaders right here in this little geographic area, compared to the rest of the world, which doesn't make sense because what we have here is equally applicable to everyone in the entire world. So I'm moving to Asia." On the one hand, I wish him good luck, because I also moved to Asia and it's great but it's hard to be an immigrant. But on the other hand, he has some very misguided ideas because he's talking as if culture doesn't exist.

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Related:
Culture, Objectivity, God, and the Real Reason I Moved to China
God Is With Us (a post about autism)
They Prayed About It (a post about the #NashvilleStatement)