Christian culture shock

Before leaving America, everyone told me I would get culture shock in Asia, but I had no idea what that actually meant, so I brushed it off and moved on. What does culture shock even look like, and how can you possibly prepare yourself for that? I assumed culture shock mostly had to do with time zone changes, but boy was I wrong. :) I want to take this blog post to talk a little about what culture shock has looked like for me, not only as an American adjusting to an Asian country, but as a Christian adjusting to a primarily Hindu culture. I want to share with you what I am experiencing for the first time in a Hindu and Buddhist country, and I want your heart to break with mine as we consider together the spiritual darkness of the 10/40 window.

Last semester, I took a class on world religions and was able to study Hinduism and Buddhism from the safety and comfort of an American classroom. But now that I am here, the realities of the textbook definitions that I have memorized are coming to life. I’m no longer reading about the different Hindu gods, but I’m in a bus lined with printed cartoon pictures of various gods that the

driver put up. I’m no longer writing essays on Buddhist practices, but I’m walking under hundreds of Buddhist prayer

flags that line the streets here. I’m no longer looking at pictures of grand Hindu temples, but I’m stopped while crossing the street when the scooter in front of me stops in the middle of the road to say a 5 second prayer at the tiny Hindu temple on the corner.

In America, we like to joke that there’s a different church on every street corner. Here, that’s also a reality, but for Hindu temples. In a five minute walk, you can pass at least one or two tiny Hindu temples with a tiny stone god covered in chalk and flowers inside. Last weekend, I was on my way to a coffee shop when I realized that the woman in front of me was making an offering on the sidewalk in front of me—she was burning incense and flower petals for a tiny metal god. I was immediately stunned. I don’t think I realized before that people literally still bow down to idols; that’s not just some strange thing from Old Testament times.

Later that same day, I was at a bookstore when it hit me that although there were whole sections for Hinduism and Buddhism, there was not a single book on Christianity in the whole store. Even if a Christian believer here wanted to grow in their faith, they don’t even have the same access to Christian resources that we

have in America. How many different English translations of the Bible do we have in America, when there are hundreds of language groups all over the world that do not even have a single Bible translation in their language?

After a long day of exploring this beautiful but dark country, I came home and went straight to the roof to sit and process it all. I let the tears come as my brain went through the mental images I had gathered that day of temples, offerings, prayer flags, beggars, and not a single Christian memoir. As I cried over this country, I felt as if Jesus were beside me, crying with me over the brokenness of this world. In Matthew 23:37-39, Jesus laments over Jerusalem’s unbelief, and I don’t ever want to deaden my heart to something that Jesus lamented. Please join me in praying for a softer heart for the 10/40 window, where less than 2% of the people are Christians. For me, this isn’t a statistic anymore, but my daily life, and it’s the daily life of so many people in the world. Allow your heart to hurt with Jesus’ for that, and pray for change!