Culture Shock!

A major misconception of Americans is that Australia, being English speaking, is very similar to America.  There is an idea that we are perfectly compatible culturally.  I am still only beginning to see the nuances and subtleties which make the cultural expanse so wide, perhaps as wide as the Pacific Ocean.  This is a distance that cannot be spanned except through the power of the Holy Spirit and God's grace.

The Landman family and I have been visiting Sonja in the hospital for about a week now nearly every day.  The hospital is very clean, modern, and the staff is highly professional.  But I saw something yesterday in the medical offices that would never fly in a San Diego hospital!  In the ward where Sonja is staying, there sits a wheelbarrow filled with alcohol:  beer, rum, wine coolers and other miscellaneous alcoholic beverages.  You don't believe me?  But there it is, covered with a net so recovering patients don't help themselves in passing.  I joked with Louis that the state-run hospital is making sure they have future visitors, or at least returning ones!

It turns out that this "Wheelbarrow of Goodies" can be obtained through purchasing raffle tickets.  To me, the entire concept is unthinkable and counter-intuitive.  The negative side-effects of binge drinking is common knowledge, yet here is a hospital supplying a wheelbarrow full of alcohol!  Since it is for a good cause, perhaps the end justifies the means.  I'm seeing the same confusing message among churches here as well.  In talking to a Aussie brother the hyper-Pentecostal movement did much damage in the church and the residual effects are still seen everywhere.

The Aussies do not have the Christian heritage and background that Americans do.  Louis told me about an article he read that reported on the discounts senior citizens can obtain in Australian brothels!  I do not relate these things to say that Australia is wrong and America is right.  To the contrary:  there is no country in the world that has had so much light of the Gospel shone into it as America.  But we have largely failed to allow our light to shine in our Jerusalem and to the ends of the earth.  A lost person is lost.  There are no degrees of salvation.  Had the light from Jesus Christ revealed in America shined with the same luster and brightness in Australia, Australia would no doubt be a different world!

The people of America, Australia, and all the nations of the earth need the salvation wrought only through faith in Jesus Christ.  My prayer is that Australia would be freed from the power of the "Rainbow Serpent" whom the Aboriginal people worship to this day, and be drawn to Jesus Christ through sound doctrine.  May God loose the chains of legalism, crush the head of humanism, and deliver people from the emotionalism that has left people embittered, embattled, and confused.  May Matthew 11:5-6 be fulfilled in this place even now:  "The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. [6] And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me."  Instead of being offended by those who do not know Christ, let us reach out to them.  The cultures of the world are all different, but we all have the same need:  we all need forgiveness, salvation, and righteousness, which are only found in the shed blood of Jesus Christ received through faith.