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Culture comes from the root “to cultivate.”

Based on this definition we can presume that our unique culture comes from the cultivation of our T.R.E.E. – specifically our distinct Tradition, Reason, Experience and Emotion, that has shaped who we are and who we are to be.

So. When we experience different cultural paradigm’s we experience an uprooting of our T.R.E.E., leaving our roots exposed… instinctively our leaves turn inward to extract the remaining nourishment from the core of our experience thus far in life – our rings. As fragile beings, we cannot grow until we are completely transposed into the foreign soil — replanted and nourished by the springs of the culture we’ve been planted into. Only after full immersion can we begin to turn outward and focus on producing fruit that nourishes those lounging beneath our branches.

Less poetically or more bluntly… When we experience another culture, especially one that is offensive to our collected belief about life, religion, government – our first response is to focus inward and remember where we came from, grasping on to what we know to be true. It’s a response of self-preservation, and is necessary to remain centered, especially when we know we are going back to the soil we know and love.

But when we let ourselves be transplanted into a different culture, we let nourishment come from the customs, traditions, and idiosyncrasies of that particular people group. And in participating in their culture, we allow God to be incarnationally present, and many will be nourished not through the shade we provide, but through the fruit of our lives, the physical and relational bonds that occur when we live life with others.

In this light, divergent cultures should not threaten, rather they should spark curious interaction. For we cannot be a T.R.E.E. that is a stagnant effigy of a Christian saint, but we must be, and are called to be — a living, growing organism that must produce nourishing fruit — that is eaten, shared with others, and whose seeds are planted in fertile soil to begin the cycle anew.

How are you interacting with a divergent culture?