Latest / Centrally Speaking / Are We Imposing Our Christian Values on Them?: A Missionary's Response to the Question

Transcript

Are We Imposing Our Christian Values on Them?: A Missionary's Response to the Question · Centrally Speaking

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Centrally speaking, is the Central Schweinfelder Church's podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It speaks about issues that would be of interest to our society.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, it addresses how a Christian worldview intersects with Western secular culture.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: In the spirit of the church's founder, we take the perspective of the middle way, which is in agreement with the historic Christian Church.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Dr.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: Drake Williams, Minister of Mission and Theology at the Church.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Our website is www.cscfamily.org.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: We're very pleased today to have Clay and Becky Walter join us to discuss the topic: Are we imposing our Christian values on them?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: A missionary's response to the question.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: Clay and Becky Walter are missionaries with Mission Aviation Fellowship.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: They have served 16 years with this organization that is involved with flying people and supplies into remote places around the world.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: Walters have served for six years in Central Asia, then four years at Mission Aviation Fellowship headquarters in Nampa, Idaho.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: They served three years in Papua, New Guinea, and now they've returned to be working in Nampa, Idaho.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: Clay is serving as the maintenance control manager, supporting Mission Aviation Fellowships many programs around the world.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: He helps to make sure that all the planes and the mission aviation fleet are being correctly maintained, and he also gives support to mechanics on the field where maintenance issues arise.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: His wife Becky is serving as a ministry partnership coach, helping to prepare and guide pre-fielders toward their initial support raising journey and supporting about 40 of Mission Aviation Fellowships missionaries around the world and continuing to maintain their support level.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: Clay and Becky have three children.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Centrally Speaking.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: We're glad to have you.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for having us.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: I want to ask you questions particularly today about uh your time in Papua New Guinea.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: And my guess is many who are listening to this podcast might not even know where Papua New Guinea is.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: So can you please uh locate it for us?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: So many people know where Australia is.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: If you basically go to the eastern side of Australia and go north, there's an island up above that, kind of the bigger island in the midst of a bunch of smaller islands.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: That big island is split in half.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: One side is Indonesia, and the other side is Papua New Guinea.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: So the eastern side, the island is Papua New Guinea.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: All right, it's a fairly remote location, at least as many would Americans would consider that to be.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: My guess is many have never met someone from Papua New Guinea.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: What would be an initial impression for an average American if they met somebody from Papua New Guinea?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: So many people from Papua New Guinea aren't very tall people, but they great big smiles, very warm, friendly, yeah, very fun-loving people.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: They speak pidgin English.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_03: So there are some English words that you'll hear from them with an Australian accent.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm sure that they also speak other languages too.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: So the Tok Pisin, which is the trade language, was developed because the country has over 800 indigenous languages and people groups.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: So most people, if they've had contact with the outside world, if their tribe has begun to interrelate with the rest of the country, then they will speak Tokpusin, but they will also speak their talk place or their uh tribal language.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: There are many, many of those hundreds.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Many of the people that we spent time with in our neighborhood came from the Chimbu province, and so they spoke a Chimbu dialect and then also would speak Tokpisan with us.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: And during your time in Papua New Guinea, did you pick up some of these languages?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: Mostly our language training was with uh Tokpusin.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, trying to learn some of those dialects would be quite challenging, I think.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think the most words I learned were what we shout during a volleyball game.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, what was that?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: The big exclamation for that would set you apart as somebody who was from Chimbu is when you're trying to holler at somebody and get their attention, you say I yo, and then you change your inflection with that if um if something goes wrong, aio.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: And you use this same word in a whole bunch of different um circumstances.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: And how would an average, let's say, person from Papua New Guinea live?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: It kind of depends on where you land.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_03: If you were to land in one of the major cities, especially Port Moresby, it would not be very different from probably a more traditional city we would be in.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: There's there's houses of mostly of concrete and wood, very open air.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: The climate there is very temperate.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: Definitely in Port Moresby, it's quite warm and humid.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: So you want air circulation through the house.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_03: You would have access to electricity, though it may not be very steady.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_03: Water is available as far as running water and sanitations there.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: You would go to grocery stores and buy a local produce.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Where we lived in Mount Hogan was more of a town life.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Most people would have access to city water, although in some neighborhoods it was just one tap that everybody could access in the neighborhood to get buckets of water.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: We used rain collection tanks for our water because city water would turn off at the most inconvenient of times.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't really depend on that for our main water supply.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: We would collect rainwater and it rained nearly every day.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that was pretty steady for us.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: A drought would be maybe we'd go a week without rain, and everyone is just desperate for water at that point because it's just a day-to-day collection.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: Very different than how an average uh American lives, certainly.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_03: If you were living out bush, most of the houses out there are built up onto like a platform type of a house.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_03: So wooden posts that are kind of sunk into the ground with a platform and then walls constructed, usually have a bamboo mat with a thatched roof.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of times you would have a fire in the house, so you see the thatched roof looks like it was quite sooty.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_03: Occasionally they would put pythons up in the or snakes up in the up in the ceiling so that they could eat the rats that are in the house.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, definitely no running water in a house, usually no electricity.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_03: If you had a generator in the town village, you might have access to a little bit of that.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where everyone goes to charge their cell phones.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Even out in the bush, you have guys with cell phones.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: So very communal living, very much, you know, a tribe.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: So there's cities like Port Moresby, and then there are villages, and then there's how much bush land is there in Papua New Guinea?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_03: Majority of the country is bushland.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: So the majority of people are living on platforms uh with pythons and the uh uh and the roofing uh and all that.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: What are some special holidays that people in Papua New Guinea might celebrate?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_03: So the main one I can think of offhand is independence day.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_03: Papua New Guinea is a fairly young country.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: I think they celebrated 45 years recently.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: I don't remember what it is currently.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: They take their independence fairly seriously, they appreciated their you know connection to Australia and how they were a colony for a while.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: They love their country.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: Very proud of it.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: So they're very proud of their independence.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's coming up 16th of September.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the other major things that would be countrywide is they often have regional cultural festivals called a sing sing, where different tribal groups will come in, they'll be dressed in their traditional clothing and um all painted and decorated, and they will each perform what is their unique tribal sing or dance, uh, which is really exciting to see because there's so many and they're all different.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the Garoka tribes come in and they're painted in mud and they have these special mud masks.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: They call them the Goroca mudmen.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's another tribe that comes in and they paint their whole body to look like a skeleton, and they have a special dance that goes with that.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody uses feathers from birds.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: Large feathers, I assume.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, because there's not a natural ground predator for birds.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: There are there are so many varieties of bird life in Papua New Guinea, and that's why they call themselves the people of the bird.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: And um talk pizza means uh the language of the bird.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: I assume in these areas that would be bushland that they might not even know that there's a national holiday.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: Are there certain rituals or certain festivals that those out in these uh bush lands would celebrate?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: Have you seen any of these?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: There are, and very unique to each tribe, uh unique sorts of rituals that they will carry out.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: One of the most common that I think almost every tribe has is the house cry, which is a funeral ritual.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And for almost everyone, they would celebrate that by gathering everyone, everyone smeared with mud, and they have a long wailing song that goes on and on and on for that, and they gather.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: And if there's any vehicles or animals, those are smeared with mud as well, and handprints.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that the house cry is a very common ritual to almost every because of the bush areas being so far away from civil, you know, a lot of places death is very much part of their life.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_03: Life is very much part of their life.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: However, they they don't hold their babies real close until they reach a certain age.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, death being a very common theme.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: The the moo moo is also another common thing that is done among most of the groups, and that it would be a gathering for food, and they usually cook a pig if it's gonna be a really good one.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if it's if it's a cheaper one, they'll cook chicken.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: But if it's gonna be a really good gathering, they they'll kill a pig, which is the prime currency among different tribes.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Pigs are worth a lot.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Some people consider their pigs worth more than their women, and so they are prized, they are used as trade items or currency.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: They're also used when someone has to offer a payback price uh for some kind of wrong that was committed.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: They'll say how many pigs one tribe has to give to the other to pay them back.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: So when you cook a pig, it's a really big thing for the whole tribe, and they will dig a big pit in the ground.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: They've been heating rocks in a fire and they put those down in the pit.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: They put the meat in and all the other vegetables and cover it and then keep track of it for a while, pull it all out and eat it.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_03: Marriages are a big celebration, so there's a lot of holiday events that happen with that.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_03: Many of the people in Papua New Guinea do not know their birthdays, so that's not something they celebrate.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: That's not a big deal.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Would they know their uh wedding dates?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_03: Probably not the date.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: So they might know like roughly how long they've been married, but not very accurately.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: But an anniversary is not a thing that that they would really consider a big deal.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: Is it a polygamous society?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: It depends on the tribe.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, some tribes would say yes and some would say not.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: And some tribes, many of the tribes are patriarchal up in the highlands, and then down in the lowlands, you'll find many tribes that are matriarchal where the the land is passed from uh on down the female line.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: Mission Aviation Fellowship flies out to some of these areas.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm wondering how these areas were discovered, how they were reached beforehand, were there any roads?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: What do you do to be able to take a plane into some of these remote areas in the bush?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_03: So much of the country is only accessible by air.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: There are helicopters within the country, there's airplanes as well.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: Airplanes are cheaper to operate, which is why MAF uses airplanes solely.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: Many of the tribes have at least had some sort of contact where they've seen a plane flying overhead.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes that tribe will send out a delegate to go find another place that has an airstrip.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_03: They'll request to have one possibly placed in their village so they have access.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_03: That can be anywhere from a day's height to a couple week height, depending on what he has to go over.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_03: That could be, you know, rivers or it could be mountains he's got to climb.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, some of the missionaries that we support, if they are not able to get a flight, they'll be taking a two-week or even more canoe trip through some of the rivers and tributaries to get to the tribes that they're aiming to reach.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it can be a very, very arduous trek.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say a lot of the tribes that that have been reached were discovered, a lot of them during World War II, when there were military planes flying in and over.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And Papua New Guinea was contested for quite a while.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: There are some really treasured stories between the Australians and the Papua New Guineans about some of the Australian forces that were rescued and carried by Papua New Guinean men through the country as they were being pursued.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: So in the in the 40s, a lot of those tribes were reached or discovered.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: But now, as Michi Aviation Fellowship flies into these areas, I assume you have to clear space for a runway.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: How does that happen?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: Most of the time we will work with the local people so that they understand that it's their airstrip.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_03: We give them guidance on what size and how firm the runway should be built.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_03: There is a agency called the Rural Airstrip Agency that is government funded through Papua New Guinea who helps supply some fueling, some equipment as far as keeping them the runways mowed, and also given guidance on hey, do we need to work on drainage here?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: Do we need to redo some of this part of the strip?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: MAF does give feedback to that agency for them to help the local communities improve airstrips as needed.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes we'll help source some sort of a larger piece of equipment as far as a tractor, and sometimes they will carry that in piece by piece and put it back together once they reach the location.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes they can get it dropped in by helicopter.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: It depends a lot on what has to happen to make an area usable for an airstrip.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of it's done by hand, weeks, months, years sometimes it'll take for a village to create an airstrip.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_03: Meanwhile, they may be traveling to another airstrip where they can get supplies or where they can get out to take care of medical or or health issues.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: Better could be a bumpy ride going into some of these uh airstrips.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, as if you've been on one of the planes going in.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_03: Many of the strips are probably considered one way.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: In other words, when you land, you're committed.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: There's no aborting the landing and taking back off.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_03: You have an aboard point that you make probably before you're even close to touching down, saying, hey, does it all look good before they come in?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: And there are some airstrips that are, you know, you take off and you're instantly have a couple thousand feet of airstrip uh altitude because you're taking off over a valley.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure it's a rush of adrenaline.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: It is it's very interesting to fly over the country, uh Papua New Guinea, because you're just looking down at all the mountains, the valleys, and you're just seeing a lot of the of the trees or what I call broccoli as you're going across the country.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden you'll see one little airstrip.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: You just have to look for that little light green patch, and it's it's very hard to find.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: The pilots go through an astonishing amount of training to do this sort of flying because it is really is hard, hard flying and requires a lot of skill.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: They have to check out on each airstrip to make sure that they know all of the peculiarities of that airstrip, the hidden dangers, and all that they need to know to land there.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's a long process.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's also amazing to see various houses kind of clinging to you know top of a mountainside.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: You'll see all this, all these trees, and all of a sudden you'll see a small clearing and you'll see a couple houses kind of joined around, wondering how did they get the sheet metal for the roofing out there?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_03: How did they how they get that water tank that's collecting all that rainwater out there?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_03: You have to say, hey, these guys carry this stuff in sometimes days, stuff's not light.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: No, and I assume that MAF even does help with some of that too.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we've talked a lot about the culture of those in uh Papua New Guinea, but in some of your discussions that you've had at the church, you also spoke about envy and revenge in the society of Papua New Guinea.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: I wonder if you could comment on that.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and that's a very key part of the culture, regardless of which tribe we've talked about, such a vast range of people groups and tribes that are present in the country, but the overarching people group that is there, that is a very common thread running through all of the tribes.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is you have one tribe that has a grudge against another, and they don't even always know what the origin of that grudge is, but they have been back and forth for centuries on killing raids, always keeping track of how much revenge they need to carry out against another tribe.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: So this trickles down into daily life where you come and live in a town and you have a mix of people from many different tribes.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: But if you happen to get somebody who is from a tribe that has a deep grudge against another mixed up in town, and you uh they will get what we call bell hot, uh, their belly gets hot, they get angry, and they there will be fights that break out just because of old grudges from times past in the tribe.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be careful.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say if you're driving down the road, when I would drive from where we lived at the airport into town to go shopping, I would go through residential areas and kids run across the road, chickens run across the road.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: And if you hit someone's chicken, you are liable not just for the price of that chicken, but for the life of that chicken.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: What kind of benefit could that chicken have been to this family?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: How many eggs do you think it might have laid?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: You need to pay back all of that, or you then are subject to revenge.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to be very careful in making sure that that you don't bring something like that down on yourself.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm hearing from you that this this could go back generations, right?
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Beyond memory, yeah.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: And people don't forget.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: Am I assuming that's correct?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: They have a long memory on these things.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Very long memory.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: One of the biggest challenges I think the Papua New Guinea government has is there's a highway that goes, and I say highway very loosely.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's a two-lane dirt road made mostly, mostly uh connects Leigh from the coast all the way up through Mount Mahogan, and I don't remember exactly where it ends.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Up along the highland, they call it the Highlands Highway.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: The government has purchased land for that highway, and very frequently they'll go out in and have to repair it.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: There'll be people who will cause roadblocks, and that's because, hey, the government hasn't paid their dues or their agreement, or we want to renegotiate that agreement for the land that they are using that belongs to us as a tribe.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: So that ownership, it's got a long memory.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Very long memory.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: You don't you don't ever buy land from a tribe, you can pay for the use of it, but in their mind and in the entire national mindset, land still belongs to the tribe.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's never going away from them.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: So that concept of ownership is also very, very ingrained.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: A deep part of society there.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let's get to the question of missionaries imposing Christian values on a culture.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: You certainly share with us a very different culture that is found in Papua New Guinea.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: Some of our listeners might be uh very drawn to that, something more uh remote, I should say, less entangled with technology of today.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: Some might be really pleased with that.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: But then you've also shared some things that might not be so good, such as revenge and and jealousy that could build up for uh for generations.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: How would you respond to some of the criticisms that missionaries might be imposing something upon a culture that's very different than ours?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a few points that we wanted to make on that.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: I would love first to just read you an excerpt from a prayer letter.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: This is one of our pilots who flies over on the Papuan side of the island, same island as Papua New Guinea, same sort of people groups, just happens to be on the other side of the line.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: But she she was trying to answer that question in her prayer letter because we have been in Papua New Guinea for 75 years as MAF and serving there.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: And you can see cultural changes as missionaries have been there and made changes.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: And this was her response.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: She says, before anyone objects to Christians or Westerners changing the way other people live, it's important to know that Papua was not a tropical paradise before the arrival of Christian missionaries.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Papu and tribes lived to kill one another.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, and this is a quote: their ancestors told them that waging war was a moral obligation.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Peace wasn't waiting on the far side of war.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: A lifetime of war was an inheritance every child could count on.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: People lived in constant fear of other tribes and the spirit world.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: They feared the ghosts of their ancestors.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: They hacked off girls' fingers to honor dead relatives, to satisfy the dead person's ghost.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: By the time a girl reached marrying age, her hand might be only thumbs.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: So you just talk about the transformative power of the gospel.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the point is not to change a culture from the valuable things that are unique to that culture, but rather to release people who are living in fear and to change things like these young girls having their fingers tacked off as children just to please a dead ancestor.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: You look at a missionary like Amy Carmichael, who went in and the biggest thing she changed in the culture of India was rescuing children who were sold into temple prostitution.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: What things about a culture are we looking to redeem is what we would like to think of it as.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Has been redeemed but retains its value for its own identity.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the goal.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's why missionaries will go in and they want to translate scripture into the local language because the value is we want these people to be able to draw near to God through their own culture, through their own language, through what is the way they've been created.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's something that we want to see.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: We want to see that positive change.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want to make every culture to look like America.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's the goal at all.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: But we have to remember too that culture is not a static thing.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Anytime that a culture engages with what we would call the outside world or even the West, there is going to be change.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: We have seen, like we said, we've seen men in Papua New Guinea in these far-out bush tribes.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: They've got a cell phone, they have access to the internet.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so their culture is not a static thing.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: It is changing and it's being influenced by the ideas that come in.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so if we disengage and leave that space empty, it is going to be filled by YouTube, K-pop, Justin Bieber, all of the other wonderful things we have to offer.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's not going to stop.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to march forward regardless of what we do.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: So what we want to do is engage as believers, as Christians, and bring positive and redeeming change to a culture that changes these things that we would say are killing off the culture and allows people to experience abundant life.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's a very good point.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: That culture isn't static.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: And if you've got these cell phones and you're out in the bush, I mean, you can be importing things that most of us would recognize would be dangerous.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: Internet pornography, the dark aspects of the web also can be influencing, let's say, even if it was an idyllic culture.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's a very, very good point.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe I'll ask you this final question then.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think your missionary really has to offer someone, even from a remote place as Papua New Guinea, that is not culturally bound, that would truly be redemptive, to use your word?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to share another thing from this prayer letter.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: One of the best things about this pilot's short time in Papua has been talking to missionaries that MAF serves.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: These missionaries have embedded themselves in Papuan villages, literally in the middle of nowhere.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: One thing that has been transformative for the villagers is the understanding that God's love casts out fear.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: A missionary shared a letter the villager had written to her saying that before the missionaries came, they lived in constant fear of evil spirits.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: But after hearing and accepting the gospel, they were released from that cycle of fear and violence and could live with hope and peace.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is arguably one main effect that Christianity has, although it may come with some side effects, but we will take that good influence.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: So you look at how the gospel changes a culture, you see that the gospel leads us to fight human trafficking, to look for healthy solutions to poverty, to be good stewards of our physical environment.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: These are things that if we are living out the gospel, if we were living out Christ's love and the transformative power of that, that that is what we seek to look to change in a culture.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: And these would be very valuable things indeed to have in any culture.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you so much for answering some questions for us today on Centrally Speaking.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: We appreciate you taking the time.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have any final word that you'd like to pass on about this question or anything about your mission work?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we so appreciate you tuning in and listening and also just the support and just amazing encouragement that we receive from the Central family.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: We appreciate you so much.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, thank you very much.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: And thank you for the work that you're doing in uh Papua New Guinea and other places around the world.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: We're very blessed to be able to be involved with you both.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.