By Laura Rector
Starting out in ministry to Korean churches, I made inevitable cultural mistakes — like taking my Korean-American youth group on a mission trip and bringing along 10 pounds of American rice. The teenagers refused to eat it. “No, no, Laura, that’s not what my mom cooks!”
I would forget to remove my shoes at the door when entering a home — or worse, forget that I would be doing so when I got dressed on the morning that I was down to ugly socks with holes in the toes.
Working in a Korean-American church the majority of time I was doing my M.Div. program, my best friends in seminary became a group of Korean international students who helped me learn their culture, even as I answered questions about American culture. I also spent six months in South Korea.
Gradually, cultural components became part of my identity. It became so natural to take my shoes off at my Korean friends’ doors that sometimes I started to remove them at other friends’ doors. It became natural to cover my mouth when I laughed or to stoop down if I had to walk between folks conversing. Words from the language became such a permanent part of my vocabulary that I had to be careful not to use them around people who didn’t speak Korean.
Was I Korean? No, my Korean friends would laugh at the idea — although some of them might tease, “Laura, you are almost Korean.”
Culture gets at the core part of our identity. It is more than simply customs or habits, although those practices can help us grow in our cultural identities.
As a woman in ministry, I often hear people from both sides of the aisle throw around the word “culture” to scapegoat one another. Egalitarians talk about “patriarchal culture,” while complementarians criticize “feminist culture.” It explains in part why we are so passionate about the subject. Issues related to gender justice aren’t simply power struggles or scriptural struggles; they’re identity struggles.
“Culture” also helps explains why we deal with the related issues so ineptly. We “battle” gender justice at an intellectual level, but not the identity level of culture. One level plants seeds, but the identity level in where we see a harvest.
Jesus came to form a kingdom culture. We are “clothed with Christ” (Gal. 3:27). Clothing is often a cultural marker. When we put on Christ, we put on a culture that treated women in unprecedented ways.
To me, this culture matches up most clearly with the culture of egalitarianism. Yet, egalitarians have cultural obstacles to overcome. It’s not enough to simply get our ideas right if we still operate out of our old culture.
We sometimes have men who believe “women are equal,” but who forget to include women in their groups or who work in environments where women aren’t welcome.
We have churches that say, “Women are equal,” but they make only token gestures like having a woman preach once a year on a special occasion.
Jesus accepted the worship of women as disciples (John 12:1-8) and blessed them by allowing them to lead their communities into his kingdom (John 4:39) and proclaim the Resurrection (Luke 24:9-10). He honored women.
As in all areas of discipleship, we must do more than simply get our ideas right. We have to put on this Christ every day, adapting not just our occasional habits, but developing a new identity.
In other words, we must leave our shoes at the door — not because it’s a rule, but because it’s become who we are.