Our family moved to Indonesia in 1999 and took our first trip back to the U.S. two years later. After that much time overseas the host culture had done a pretty good job of squeezing our personalities and shifting our values.  We had definitely slogged through the various stages of “culture shock” and after two years felt pretty comfortable in Indonesia.  We were curious upon our homecoming if we would experience, “reverse culture shock,” which people say is worse than the original ailment.  Culture shock you expect in a new country.  Home you know.  You don’t expect to be shocked in this wistful, magical environment you imagine as near perfect.  But you’ve changed, and you don’t even realize it until a cultural glass of cold water is splashed in your face.

Here’s an example.  In Indonesia, the workforce is more labor intensive than in the U.S. A small boutique at the mall may have seven people working in it, all anxiously vying to help you.  When my wife Stephanie would shop at a baby store, two or three small Indonesian ladies would follow her up and down the aisles and ask if she would like to buy this baby bottle or this cute little outfit.  She would say no thank you and feel slightly annoyed at the polite stalking.  But we understood in a certain way—with 110 million people living on an island the size of Tennessee, everybody has to have a job!

By contrast, in the U.S. we more highly value efficiency.  If the job can be done by four people, hire three.  We experienced our first bout of reverse culture shock our first week back at a Super Stuff Mart in Florida.  We went there looking for a baby stroller, and found one we liked, although it had no price tag.  We then began a search for an employee to help us (whistle theme song from lonely, Wild West ghost town here).  We searched the large cavernous store, up and down the aisle ways and byways, diligently looking for a sales associate.  Finally we found one.

“Excuse me, we’re trying to find out how much this stroller cost,” I asked.

“I’m not really sure,” she replied blankly, still engrossed in the task before her.

“Uh….How can I find out?”

“Bring it up to the front and they can scan it for you at the register,” she offered while continuing on with her task, her back now towards us.

“Oh, okay.  Thanks.”

So I went to the front as I was told, and after a small search I found the lone cashier, who price checked my item.   And inwardly I longed for my labor-intensive workforce.

Culture is always bearing down on us, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  It’s shaping us all the time.  The culture of this world, warned Paul, would shape us into its mold.   “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world,” he wrote to Romans living in a godless empire “But be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

As revolutionaries, believers in a non-believing world, it is we who should be shocking the culture, not the other way around.  Forward Culture Shock.  I don’t mean throwing pipe organs at people.  I mean forward shocking the earth with the values of heaven.  When we see injustice, we shock it with God’s value of justice.  The poor we empower.  The lonely we set in families.  The lost we find.  The broken we heal.  Fear is met by faith.  When we encounter the deeds of the flesh, we counter with the fruits of the Spirit.  We are constantly at odds with the culture around us, shocking it with our sheer audacity.  Our lived-out kingdom values will cause the world to take a few reverse steps backwards.

In 1883, a small group of college students in England forward shocked their culture.  A visiting evangelist named Dwight Lyman Moody came to their campus of Cambridge University to bring some revival fire with him from what God was doing in America.  As someone who had never graduated from college, Moody was reluctant to visit such a prestigious school but finally was convinced to come.  The small group of students who came to hear this backwoods preacher mostly came to mock him.  But there were a few in the audience who were riveted by his fiery words, one of them named C.T. Studd.  Something special happened during the course of those revival meetings, and by the end of the meetings 1,800 students were coming out every night.

C.T. Studd, like most of his fellow students, came from the upper crust of English society.  He enjoyed his privileged status, riding thoroughbred horses in the English countryside. He also became a well known athlete on campus. Something gripped him one night during the revival meetings and he was never the same.  Many of his companions were scandalized that this natural-born leader on campus had gotten “saved,” but he shrugged off their condescending remarks.  Eventually Studd influenced a group of them to become as fervent for the things of God as he was.  This group of zealots became a cultural oddity on their campus.

Many expected C.T. to rise to the ranks of other famous English athletes, but instead he felt a call to move to China.  Out of this band of disciples, seven of them committed together to move to China as a mission team together after graduation, a shock to the system of their sub-culture.  How could these seven men throw away their promising lives on a prospect as dim and remote as China?

They did move to China together upon graduation.  They learned a very difficult language.  They adopted the clothing of the local people.  For ten years they labored there and were effective at reaching Opium addicts and other desperate people of society.  They felt through it all that not one drop of their lives had been wasted.

Once C.T. became very ill and was forced to go back to England to recover.  Once there, he started sharing the story of “The Cambridge Seven” which inspired countless college students to also give their live to missions.  Their inspiring story was credited as one of the sparks that ignited “The Student Volunteer Movement.”  On hundreds of campuses, thousands of college students signed a pledge card that read, “I am willing, if God allows it, is to become a missionary in a foreign country.”  This volunteer movement lasted for over 50 years and launched 20,500 missionaries to the nations over the next decades.  Shocking!

One mind was renewed.  Then many.  One culture was forward shocked.  And the world was never the same.

That’s what I’m talking about!

Any modern day examples out there of some forward culture shock?

- Mike O -