Family Driven Faith
The mail just arrived and in it was Family Driven Faith by Voddie Baucham. I'm very excited to read it (and you will probably get quotes from it on this blog), as I have found Voddie to be one of the most articulate African American Christians on church, family and culture. (I first heard him speak on The Supremacy of Christ and Truth in a Postmodern World and was very impressed with his clarity of understanding and communication.)
If you're interested in a review, Ray Van Neste, the author of The Children's Hour has posted a good one.
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4 comments:
"I have found Voddie to be one of the most articulate African American Christians on church, family and culture."
I'm curious why Voddie being African American is relevant. I understand that the Kingdom will represent great diversity (and am excited about that). But it seems to me that any writer that clearly, accurately, and helpfully presents gospel truth is to be embraced regardless of ethnicity? Why is hearing from Voddie any better than hearing from John Piper (Caucasian) or Francis Chan (Chinese ethnicity) or any other person?
Help expand my thinking!
Thanks,
Dylan
Great question! I think that there are several answers:
1. When a person of another culture expresses something clearly, accurately and helpfully, it is a witness to the truth of the Gospel in every culture.
2. A person's personal and cultural history inevitably shape what they have to say and how they say it. Voddie relates, "In fact, over the past two generations on both sides of our family there have been twenty-five marriages and twenty-two divorces . . ." (p15). When a person is redeemed out of dysfunction, they have can testify to personal, powerful redemption in a way that someone (like myself) who comes from a healthy family background simply can't.
3. Relatedly, a person has unique authority within their own culture because members of their culture can identify with them. When I was a white teacher of black students, as hard as I tried, I could never be the kind of role model to them that a black man could be. My color, culture and experiences make things truly different for me than for them. [For this reason, I pray for ten thousand courageous, holy black men to witness to Christ's redeeming power and call African Americans back to their rich heritage in the Gospel.]
4. Finally, it takes singular courage as an African American man to champion the family. The most recent statistics I could find from the National Center for Health Statistics in 2003 put the rate of birth out of wedlock among African Americans at 72.5%. For an African American man to say the these things takes far more courage than a white American man.
Point 1 perhaps needs to be rephrased for me to understand. While I would love to see things expressed "clearly, accurately and helpfully" by people of all races, ethnicities, and to varying degrees, cultures, I'm not clear how any one specific such book would be any better or worse for having been written from a certain person's ethnicity.
As part of the whole, I understand, I think. As a standalone book, I'm not clear. Except insofar as the book is written from a certain perspective or for others from the same culture. If it's a more universal work, I'm left a bit confused.
Points 2-4 discourage me. I was at a church for a few years as a youth pastor and we had a "missionary" speaker every fall. One fall, we had a Native American who lead an outreach ministry to Native Americans. While some neat things were happening, it wasn't all that encouraging because there was a strong sense that we could not be effective missionaries in that culture because of our skin color and the cultural baggage of the past 400+ years.
Thanks for the pushback.
Let me try again on point 1. One specific book is not better or worse for having been written by a person of a particular ethnicity; the book is better or worse for its clarity, literary beauty and truthfulness. Yet if there are five good books on a subject by people who share the same culture, and someone from another culture writes a book on the same subject, she or he can make a unique contribution to the dialogue, and likely will elucidate things that the first 5 didn't, or couldn't, see. For example, Lesslie Newbigin has given me penetrating insights into Western culture from an outsider's perspective (in insider language!) that I have NEVER seen a Westerner observe or articulate.
So as a standalone book, unique perspective should make a unique contribution. Yet it does not stand alone, but contributes to a whole.
I understand your discouragement with points 2-4, and want to offer another perspective: The only way cultures initially receive the Gospel is from outsiders. To say that an outsider cannot influence is theologically and empirically wrong; to say that their influence differs from an insider is true - both theologically and empirically. For that reason, I don't oppose white Christian teachers in entirely black schools or missionaries of any culture to any other culture. They can influence and the influence that they seek is for the Gospel to take hold in the receiving culture and the ongoing transmission first-culture transmission of the Gospel in that society.
As to the statement that certain people "could not be effective missionaries . . . because of our skin color and the cultural baggage of the past 400+ years", I think that he's wrong. There are countless stories of Christians confessing and repudiating the evils of their ancestors, through which the Holy Spirit brought salvation to a people.
Cultural differences and historical sin are barriers, but the Holy Spirit can conquer both!
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