I was sitting in the dorm’s only TV lounge during my freshman or sophomore year. There was a cluster of couches, all facing the television, with over a dozen guys scattered around the room. The couch I was on was full. My new friend George Ashok Kumar Das, recently arrived from Bangladesh, was sitting next to me.

At some point during the movie we were watching, Taupu (that was his nickname) took my left hand in his right. I stiffened. I had no idea that in his culture, as in some African and the Middle Eastern cultures, heterosexual men held hands as a sign of friendship and trust.

Every culture has its own customs. In Thailand, if a coin slips from your hand and you stop it from rolling under your car with your foot, you might cause great offense. The image of the king’s head is on that coin, and to step on his face is a gross insult.

In Vietnam, if you signal to a restaurant server to come to your table, she may pour the soup in your lap because you’ve treated her as if she were a dog. If you are caught selling chewing gum in Singapore, you could be incarcerated for up to two years and be fined $100,000.[1] Kingdoms and countries have their own codes regarding what it means to be a good citizen.

Those codes are sometimes exported. For example, if you were in the Bangladeshi embassy in Washington D.C. and saw two men holding hands, it might signify close friendship. If you stepped outside the embassy onto International Drive and saw the same thing, it might signify something quite different. The culture inside the embassy has been imported from another place with different social codes and values.

Imported cultures are hardly new. The biblical letter to the Philippians was sent to people who lived, worked, and played in a culture that had been imported from Rome. Though Philippi was about 800 miles away by the commonest land-sea route, it had been a Roman colony since the time of Octavius and Marc Antony. Philippi was subject to Roman law, followed Roman customs, and was home to Roman citizens.

Imported cultures have been a reality in America for a very long time. If you had come to Manhattan in 1640, you would have found people living by Dutch laws, following Dutch customs, and eating Dutch foods, even though Amsterdam was almost 4,000 miles away. Had you traveled northeast, you would have found people speaking French, following French customs, and flying the French flag. After the English defeated the Dutch 24-years later, New Amsterdam was renamed New York, and the Union Jack floated over the city. Dutch culture faded and was gradually replaced by English culture.

Imported cultures have something to teach the church, which we can think of as a colony, a culturally distinct pocket within mainstream society. As a colony of the kingdom of God, the church is subject to its rules (the commands of Jesus), speaks its language (the language of love), and trades in its currency (faith, hope, and love).

To enter the church from the majority culture is like walking into the Bangladeshi Embassy from International Drive in D.C. Here people speak differently, have different customs, hold different values, and engage in different practices. The church may feel strange to people coming in from the outside, but it is (or should be) an exciting and inviting strangeness.

It is strange because people show respect to each other. People in a Kingdom of God culture are interested in others and not just in what others can do for them. They go out of their way to help each other and expect nothing in return. Here, the usual status markers – clothing, cars, education, income – are insignificant compared to faith, hope, and love.

It is also (and chiefly) strange because people love their leader and are fiercely loyal to him. They talk about him, talk to him, and regularly praise him. Their leader is Jesus. He is at the center of everything that people in this culture do and care about.

All this is bound to feel strange to outsiders but, when they see the quality of life and the richness of relationships in the church, they might conclude that preoccupation with Jesus is a good thing. They might realize that Kingdom of God culture is not just an alternative to the culture they have known but an extraordinary improvement upon it.

[1] Illustrations from https://www.adventureinyou.com/travel-tips/cultural-differences/