At least once a year there is an event which causes us to gasp aloud. An honor killing is a good example: a girl walking alone is attacked and raped by someone from the next village over, and then killed by one of her own family members out of shame. Bad boys aren’t responsible for their actions, says the culture, but good girls don’t walk alone.
Such an event causes us to gasp aloud, to shake our heads in dismay, to remark upon how terrible a culture it must be to think and do such things.
We might remark about how dangerous and uncivilized such a place may be. We might even go so far as to think—or say!—that they don’t deserve the Gospel.
But perhaps the truth of the matter is this: cultures act without grace because they have not been introduced to grace.
The reason they have not been introduced is that no one has gone to them, to proclaim the Good News.
When we follow it through to its ultimate conclusion, we might come to a very different answer to the question of who is to blame.
{ 0 comments… add one now }