Six Weeks Later

 Well, it turns out this Lenten season has been awful, just awful. I am normally a fairly disciplined guy; but of the 35 days of Lent thus far, I’ve completed my Lenten discipline on exactly 7 of them. I have felt “out of sync” – out of sync with God, with myself, with my surroundings. I have no doubt that these feelings are simply a function of where I am in the process of cross-cultural adjustment, and therefore nothing more than a storm to be weathered. But storms are just no fun, when they are happening inside you! It has been helpful to me to express my theological reflections, though. I’ve been pondering “The Cosmic Riddle” in the Scriptures for many years, and it’s encouraging to me to be able to see myself living it out in a small way. And for me, I often haven’t really thought about things until I’ve either spoken or written them … comes with the territory of being an extrovert, I guess. 

I wish I could lose my American cultural identity completely, honestly, for mixed reasons – some of which are healthy, some of which are not. I often feel like I’m a critical person, and I struggle with feeling critical of American culture. Part of this is just because of how the way things are, kind of like how Jesus said that a prophet isn’t without honor except in his own country. We are often most critical of things (and people) that are the most familiar. Part of this is from ways that I have felt hurt or misunderstood by American culture, which I think is common for Americans who are highly creative and artistic. On the grand scale of things, I don’t think that creativity and artistry are high American values. 

At the same time, there is much about American culture that draws just criticism. American culture values highly things like individualism, independence, efficiency, merit-based rewards, and, frankly, money. None of these things are exactly wrong, but I think they have all become too important within the culture. In my opinion, these values have gone amok and have made American culture arrogant and self-absorbed. People around the world tend to dislike Americans as a group, although people I’ve met who have made friendships with Americans generally don’t feel quite so strongly. I’m really not trying to pick on America, every culture has deeply-embedded problems. I’m only trying to be as honest as I can be about the problems in American culture. 

But strange as it may seem, this process of adjusting to cross-cultural living has been slowly changing my perspective toward American culture. I think I am healing, actually. There are some truly, truly wonderful things about American culture, and by being gone, I appreciate those things more and more. Thanksgiving is a thoroughly good and beautiful American tradition. I usually feel rather disgusted with politics in America, but the American political system is a sound one. I am profoundly thankful for the American judicial process of trial by jury. Living in Baltimore, I worked two jobs where I was one of the only light-skinned people around, and I was (and continue to feel) amazed at how genuinely welcomed I was into those communities despite my obvious differences, differences that went deeper than just skin color. I have worked several jobs in America where I got to know people vastly different than myself, and this is largely due to the American application of capitalist economic principles. There’s lots to like about America, and I’m learning to better appreciate the good things in addition to criticizing the bad things. 

The fact of the matter is, that regardless of how much I would like to shed my American cultural identity and assume an African identity, I can’t do either in totality. I will always have my light skin. American English will always be my mother tongue. My childhood memories will always be American memories. There are some American patterns of thinking that are so deeply ingrained in my synapses that I will never be able to change them. I will always be different than Africans. This is the plain truth, and I think I am learning to accept that.