Kobayashi Maru and Social Relevance

by Virgil Vaduva
“But we want to go to hell, if it is a hot place,” the Bano’o people of the French Camerouns assured the first missionaries, for the Bano’o idea of a proper place after death is one which is always hot – never subject to chilling winds with accompanying sickness and suffering.[1] This kind of reaction from the Bano’o illustrates the near-impossible scenarios Christians encounter frequently when trying to be relevant in an ever-changing, and now a post-modern culture.“But we want to go to hell, if it is a hot place,” the Bano’o people of the French Camerouns assured the first missionaries, for the Bano’o idea of a proper place after death is one which is always hot – never subject to chilling winds with accompanying sickness and suffering.[1] This kind of reaction from the Bano’o illustrates the near-impossible scenarios Christians encounter frequently when trying to be relevant in an ever-changing, and now a post-modern culture.The Kobayashi Maru was such an impossible scenario in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan when Star Trek cadets were placed on the Kobayashi Maru test starship and were being presented with a no-win scenario which would always result in an unwinnable situation or death. This kind of a scenario particularly came to my mind in light of Jeremy Lile’s fantastic article titled Cultural Relativity and the Evil Eye. Jeremy also mailed me a copy of what quickly is turning out to be one of my favorite and best books in my library, Customs and Cultures by Eugene A. Nida. Working through Nida’s book helped me put into perspective many of the things I have been thinking regarding the inability of modern Christianity to be socially and culturally relevant, so I am very thankful to Jeremy for the free copy he sent me. This new journey into Anthropology has helped me understand even more the need for conversation and openness especially between those who do not share the same skin color or religion.

Shame and Ontology

Struggles for social and cultural relevance in the lives of Christians are no doubt a more common occurrence today. We all want to have meaningful lives and struggle to be and matter and make a difference, yet we (or at least I) often find ourselves in no-win situations, unable to communicate, speak, share, listen and learn from others. Furthermore, the post-industrialized world is providing yet more and newer challenges, leaving old ones unsolved and filling up our lives with the overwhelming sense that we are just happening; and with lives that are just happening, one is hard pressed to find coherence to life and find some ontological relevance to our existence. Yes, yes, we know that God cares about us, we are aware of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, we profess faith (most of the time) yet essentially we are letting culture and society give us our ontological sense, and as Alan Mann suggested, this leads directly to the “inability to maintain interpersonal relationships…and is linked to the post-industrialized phenomenon of chronic shame.”[2]

This brings to my mind another example from the very first few pages of Nida’s book, where an elder in the Ngbaka church in northern Congo told missionaries that “we are not going to have our wives dressed like prostitutes”[3] when confronted by American missionaries regarding the bare breasted women attending church. You see, in the context of life in Congo at that time, only prostitutes would wear blouses because only they had the money to spend on fancy clothes to cover their breasts. It seems then, as Nida later suggests, that the tribes who wear little or no clothing “have no such sense of shame, but on the other hand, regard the wearing of clothes as being exceedingly peculiar.”[4]

Nida readily recognizes that when such people become Christians they do tend to put on clothing for instance, but they do not do so out of a sense of shame, rather out of obligation and respect for the foreign missionaries influencing their thinking: “Clothing provides social acceptance and a feeling of identification with the prestige-laden foreign culture, but it may or may not be a response to spiritual convictions.”[5]

Shame therefore gives birth to one’s new ontological sense while killing the old. In a Christian framework this is somewhat a positive change, however Christianity has become so much out of touch with society and culture that shame is hardly a motivator for improvement for anyone out there, and instead it more than often silences those in need of help rather than opening avenues for genuine help and conversation. Specifically those shamed by sin and error are instead often belittled by the more righteous members of the community. We have seen Jesus condemn this behavior and embracing the shame presented unabated by some of his followers: awareness and self-identification of their shame brought about their healing; it brought them further into Christ’s presence and embrace.

Now I do realize that this may be an overly simplistic approach to the problem of social and cultural relevance, however I am hoping it provides a good start and some insight and new possibilities for post-modern Christians seeking to repaint and reframe Christianity today.

Prayer and Labyrinths

In that same vein of thinking, someone brought to my attention the criticism coming from some regarding the re-emerging practice and use of the prayer labyrinth within Christianity. It appears that especially American Christians are utterly ignorant to Christian use of the prayer labyrinth. Like several other Christian practices, the prayer labyrinth is rooted in Greek mythology. The myth of the Minoan labyrinth tells the story of Minos the king of Crete who created a labyrinth in which he placed the Minotaur, a half man and half bull monster. After Crete conquered Athens, every year seven young people from Athens would be sent into the labyrinth to be killed by the Minotaur. But one year, Theseus, the Athenian hero entered the labyrinth and killed the Minotaur, putting a stop to Athen’s pain.

The Greeks had deep symbolism associated with the story of Minos’ labyrinth. The annual sacrifice of young people indicated a continuous conflict that carries a costly toll of guilt and fear.[6] It is evident that early Christians saw something very beneficial in this story and took on the creation of cross-like labyrinths across churches and cathedrals in Europe. Early on, when pilgrimage to Jerusalem was a nearly salvific event in a believer’s life, those unable to afford or make the trip substituted walking the prayer labyrinth with their pilgrimage to the holy city. Eliade writes: “It is interesting, from this point of view, to recall some of the popular names of labyrinths currently used in Europe, like the Scandinavian “Ruins of Jerusalem,” “City of Niniveh,” “Walls of Jericho,” and “Babylon,” as well as the frequent names meaning “the castle of Troy,” like Trojin, Trojeburg, Troburg, Treiborf, Truberslot, and so forth. This suggests that popular imagination sees the labyrinth as the symbol of a legendary town doomed to destruction. The labyrinths that can still be seen on the floor of European churches and cathedrals, where penitents used to walk on their knees as the equivalent of a pilgrimage to the holy places were called other names, among other names, Le Lieue De Jerusalem (“the Jerusalem mile”). We find them a clear symbol of the archetypal town, taken now as the promised celestial bride, the Heavenly Jerusalem glorified by the apostle John, as opposed to the doomed City of Destruction of the biblical apocalypse.”[7]

Here we have at one extreme the ancient Christian symbolizing the presence of the New Jerusalem on earth through the use of the prayer labyrinth embedded in the floor of the Notre Dame Cathedral (which has one of the most famous prayer labyrinths in the world), and using the prayer labyrinth as a walk of penitence that makes him identify with his Savior; and at the other extreme we find the arrogant modern Christian, culturally disconnected entirely from the use and practice of the prayer labyrinth, even mocking its use and symbolism, criticizing something he does not understand. The disconnect is powerful, but does it serve as an excuse for attacking another, especially a believer? Nida offers some very helpful advice in this context. When encountering new cultures, customs or people, a Christian should:[8]

1. Adapt oneself to local customs of etiquette.
2. Show a vital interest in the beliefs of others.
3. Seek ways to heal tender susceptibilities and feelings.
4. Seek to find matters of essential agreement and identity of attitudes between people of different cultural background.

Nida’s advice is crucial to our interaction not just with critics, but those who are completely outside of our circles of interest. He quotes Redfield in defining cultural relativism: “Cultural relativism means that the values expressed in any culture are to be both understood and themselves valued only according to the way the people who carry that culture see things.”[9] He also gives comparative examples to illustrate how westerners often miss the point by superficially making judgment calls on other cultures and their practices: British troops were infuriated when they entered Sudan because local chiefs refused to stand in the presence of British officers; yet they failed to realize that in the Shilluks culture only the king may stand, and the highest display of respect was paid by remaining seated.[10]

The example of the Chols of southern Mexico is even more shocking, in that when they were told the sad story of John the Baptist and his death they “broke in riotous laughter” to the shock and dismay of the missionaries. However the missionaries soon learned that it is customary for the Chols to laugh when hearing tragic or sad news, explaining that upon hearing John’s story “they just had to laugh to keep themselves from crying.”[11] The examples are numerous and often un-winnable, but in light of apparent impossibilities, there are some things that can help reframe the way we view other people, cultures and behaviors should we understand their implications:[12]

1. The behavior of people is not haphazard, but conforms to a pattern.
2. The parts of the pattern of behavior are interrelated.
3. The life of a people may be oriented in many different directions.

Changing the Framework

So while we all recognize that there are differences, the problem is that modern Christians often equate cultural differences with sinful behavior and judge accordingly, creating un-winnable scenarios where only the bullies and those with the loudest voices win, shaming the others into silence and obedience, destroying any relevant ontological sense one may develop in the process. This is where we stand as post-modern believers, submitting a new framework in which Christians should preach, write, teach and live. The problem in this framework is not with Truth itself, rather with our perception of it, and as I have said in the past, the problem is with our utter inability to quantify, measure and express Truth without ruining it in the process.

In Star Trek history, only James T. Kirk beat the Kobayashi Maru scenario. He did so by hacking into the test and changing the framework and the parameters of the scenario, thus making it possible to win in an un-winnable scenario. Kirk changed the rules of the game and the commonly understood framework in such a way that his actions became relevant and allowed him to win the scenario. Christians could learn a valuable lesson from Kirk.

The reasons we should offer to Africans in justifying the wearing of clothing should therefore be presented (if at all) in a completely new framework. Rather than demanding blouse wearing because civilized people do it, we should make an effort an understand why African women do not wear blouses. Does it aid in the feeding of their infants? Are there specific cultural reasons for doing so? Are they sinning by not wearing blouses? And if wearing blouses would brand them as prostitutes in the eyes of the community, do we have any right at all to even ask them to wear blouses? Would their tacit agreement to wear blouses bring about shame that was not there before? If so, would satisfying our demands cause them to sin? Just in this instance alone, without some cultural insight into the lives of women from Congo, we lack the cultural relevance to make any demands of these women to adapt to what we think is right or wrong in this specific situation.

What is the solution then? Should we perhaps laugh at the women in Congo? Mock the Christians who continue to walk the Prayer Labyrinth? Would that be beneficial to our lives as Christians? Would it serve as a good example to those watching us, seeing us as the bare-breasted strange-looking westerners, or as the ones laughing when it is time to cry? As Christians wishing to be relevant socially and culturally we cannot continue to demand shame from a society that knows no shame. If we do so we will continue to be irrelevant to them, in essence speaking a different language that can never be understood. Serving as messengers of Christ in this world has little to do with enforcing western standards on other people’s lives – it has a lot more to do with creating a culturally relevant framework for Christ’s message of love and sacrifice; sacrifice and love transcending most cultural and social differences between people.

The modern framework in which “God loves the sinners but hates the sin” is a bankrupt model. It makes too many assumptions that ignore the cultural context of “the sinner” and is in reality concerned more with the sin rather than the sinner. May God help us all become more relevant in an ever-changing world and help us always create the appropriate framework for a people in dire need of his presence and love! May we all find a reason to be rather than happen!

[1] Eugene A. Nida, Customs and Cultures, Harper & Row Publishers, New York and Evanston, p. 24

[2] Alam Mann, Atonement for a ‘sinless’ society, J. H. Haynes & Co. Ltd., Sparkford, p.. 40

[3] Eugene A. Nida, Customs and Cultures, Harper & Row Publishers, New York and Evanston, p. 1

[4] Ibid. p. 90

[5] Ibid. p. 91

[6] Mircea Eliade, Encyclopedia of Religions Vol. 8, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, p. 412.

[7] Ibid. p. 414

[8] Eugene A. Nida, Customs and Cultures, Harper & Row Publishers, New York and Evanston, p. 71-72

[9] Robert Redfield, The Primitive World and its Transformation, Cornell University Press, 1953, Ithaca p. 144.

[10] Eugene A. Nida, Customs and Cultures, Harper & Row Publishers, New York and Evanston, p. 21

[11] Ibid. p. 4

[12] Ibid. p. 52