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September 18, 2019
God reverses our status from one of shame to one of honor. Salvation from God overturns previous measures of status. He reverses our identity.
Pragmatically speaking, the theological reality of status reversal must eventually be shaped into a reproducible evangelistic method.
People of honor-shame cultures tend to be oral and concrete learners, so narrative articulations of the gospel resonate better. Lean toward parables and stories. Think imaginatively; convey believer’s transposition from shame to honor visually and concretely using the arts.
The “kotatsu”
A couple modern parables expressing the gospel in terms of honor and shame.
Jabbour’s teaching experience shows the power of simply retelling biblical stories in evangelistic situations. The natural similarities between ancient Jewish culture and daily life in many honor-shame cultures create an easy interpretive bridge. Listeners in the Muslim village naturally understood the honor-shame aspects of salvation intrinsic to the stories.
Since the cultural milieu of the early church was predominantly collectivistic, we should expect New Testament epistles to show concern for group identity. In fact, the group-oriented question, who are God’s people? animates the New Testament writings more than, how can I be saved?
The term “justification by faith” is a shorthand way of declaring whom God now considers his true community; faith in the Messiah, not observing Jewish cultural distinctives, marks a person in God’s family (i.e., “justified”).18
Through Abraham-like faith in the Creator, and not through being ethnic Israel (Rom 9:6-8), we obtain the honorable heritage of Abraham, which is to become the people of God’s promise and possessors of a great inheritance.
Without disregarding the uniqueness of ethnic Israel, Paul says of Gentiles, “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people.’ . . . They shall be called children of the living God” (Rom 9:25-26). In other words, Gentile believers in Christ are “grafted into the olive tree” cultivated by God (Rom 11:17-24). Longtime outsiders are now members of the group!
Salvation in Romans is more about entrance into God’s covenant community than entrance into heaven.
Salvation from God trivializes every group’s false claim to honor, whether based on Jewish Torah observance, Roman imperial power or Greek wisdom.
Sin is fundamentally a relational problem, and salvation is a restoration of broken relationships, so they must be communicated accordingly.
CONVERSION
*****Great chapter******
A community encounter redefines a person’s primary group identity through genuine relationships. Entrance into a new community transforms one’s spiritual status. Conversion means granting loyalty and allegiance to a new group—God and his people. Through a community encounter, unbelievers come to redefine their court of reputation (i.e., who decides which people are honorable) and honor code (i.e., what is truly honorable and shameful) in light of God’s honor.
A community encounter of faith.
Father, Son and Spirit replace family, ethnicity and tribe as the community of honor.
People in honor-shame cultures must come to acknowledge the falseness of social shame, even though initially it may be very painful. With his sword drawn, the Philippian jailer paused long enough to reconsider how God’s honor outweighs all possible social shame.
Church-planting strategies typically proceed as such: evangelism, discipleship and then community.
*****This is the takeaway of the book.*****
Group-oriented people view conversion as transferring loyalty and identity to a new group, so they must experience the group before choosing to join it.
*******So important. How group oriented people experience the gospel.********
So participation in the body of Christ is the first step in the evangelistic process.
As people associate with believers (community) their lives begin to change (discipleship), and then they come to publicly profess Jesus as Lord (evangelism). Or in other word...
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Community is how people experience God’s honor and liberation from shame.
First, simply eat with unbelievers.
Sharing a meal is one effective way to honor others, since it forms a relational bond. Table fellowship was a central way Jesus honored people in the Gospels.
Second, seek opportunities to pray with people ...
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Third, incorporate local proverbs or narratives.
And fourth, speak gracefully; combative rhetoric not only is obnoxious but is also viewed as threatening.
The
Case study 1
The idea of group (or family) conversion might mitigate the shame of social dislocation.
The idea of “group conversion” does not ignore individual faith and repentance but understands that some people prefer to make decisions in a group setting, interdependently and simultaneously.
For example, if a young person indicates interest in Jesus, it may be prudent to invite the entire family into the conversation.
The local pastor, himself from a rural community, explained to me, “If Jatagul leaves her family, then the word Christian in that village will mean ‘someone who dishonors their family and abandons their community.’ That gives Jesus a bad name.”
In Central Asia, we discovered that nearly 70 percent of Christians came to Jesus through a believing relative.
Steven
Case study 2.
dynamic.
How can Steven harness the group dynamic? How can he promote honor and avoid shame?
When reading the Bible with Arabs, he always tried to gather students into groups. Rather than meeting individually, Steven would ask spiritually open students to bring friends along. Doing something without a group can create a sense of anxiety—“What will others think of me doing this?” The group setting created a more comfortable setting to explore the Bible. Students reasoned, “If others are joining me, then it must be okay.”
While Steven adapted his approach to evangelism to account for honor-shame realities, he knew no approach to disciple making among Arabs would avoid all sources of shame. For this reason, he purposefully communicated that suffering shame and persecution were inevitable aspects of following Jesus.
One day he confided to me, “I don’t oppose your preaching. I admire it. But I can’t wipe away a long history of relationships with people I have known for decades by leaving them at once and joining you.”
“Psychology, with its emphasis on emotional and introspective features of human experience, provides the default framework within which the modern West tends to analyze and describe conversion.”15 This psychological perspective of conversion begins with an individual emotionally crippled with a burdened conscience over personal shortcomings; the soul is existentially divided and troubled by guilt.
Western approaches to evangelism presuppose that people must sense a conviction of guilt and dread of impending wrath before converting.
making people in honor-shame cultures feel guilty about their misdeeds is quite challenging.
However, a more common form of false righteousness in honor-shame contexts is “group righteousness”—a claim to superiority over other peoples because of one’s group identity.
Honor-shame cultures are more likely to construct a false and idolatrous identity based on their group associations (e.g., family name, neighborhood, ethnic group, economic class), than on good moral deeds.
Key distinction of works righteousness in honor shame cultures.
People are more likely to acknowledge their need for God when they view their group, and by extension themselves, as honorless and shameful before God.
Their existential problem is not so much a plagued introspective conscience (i.e., internal guilt), but public disgrace (i.e., external shame).
Shame, not just guilt, is God’s piercing voice making people aware of their need for salvation.
To experience the kingdom of God in fullness, Jesus said (in various ways) that people must turn from those warped ideologies of status accrual and begin following him. Repentance involves exclusive allegiance and adherence to Jesus himself.
Definition of repentance .
The call to repentance summons people to desist from the cultural game of exalting their own name and instead to come live under God’s name. Repentance is not so much a change of ideology from one set of beliefs to another, but a change of alliance from one group to another. Jesus’ command to repent could be paraphrased as “Stop trying to accrue honor through that group, and join my group to obtain the glory of God’s kingdom!” This repentance Jesus spoke of “offered membership in the renewed people of the covenant god.”
Repentance in shame honor terms.
While conversion is primarily a transfer of allegiance to Jesus, moral change remains an essential component of conversion. As one becomes a member of the new group, naturally certain behavior is expected of them to demonstrate their allegiance. This is indeed true for believers in God’s family.
Biblical pistis is not primarily internal emotions or cognitive ascent, but a sense of relational loyalty—that is, faithfulness.
Pistis is a pledge to remain faithful to the relational covenant, and purposefully seeks to promote the honor of a superior via obedience to their authority.
