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Sir,

Culture should be countered when it is or has within it elements of evil, oppression and runs against human rights and dignity. But a very worrying trend is that Christians’ response to culture is by ways of condemnation and retreat. Detachment from mainstream culture is their best and common way of representing the authentic Christ. However, Christians fail to realise that true cultural detachment is quite impossible.

This rings true if one considers the tradition of paying lobola, which is part and parcel of Eswatini culture and tradition, the very culture frowned upon by many Christians yet they practice part of it. What this means, therefore, is that not all what is in culture needs to be countered.

While it is true that we have elements in our culture that need to be countered and redeemed, but this, however, should not cloud us as Christians to the extent where we opt to fight against everything culture promotes. Counter-culture should not be a commitment to be removed or to appear relevant, since leaving differently can be hard.

Create

Going against the ebbs and flows of culture can create fiction and sometimes provoke hostile reaction to the good we are trying to create.

Counter-culture has been a result of a conception where Christ is seen as someone who came to counter culture. His encounter with the Samaritan woman in the well, as told by John 4, who by culture Christ should not have spoken to her but went on to defy that dictate, has been seen as an epitome of His mission. While it is true that Christ came to shatter the ethnocentric provinces of His day, we must always be careful about a part of His teachings that remains timelessly applicable to our age. Let us remember that Christ’s call for the Christian community is to be salt on a rotting world and light in the dimmest places. St Paul echoes the same words of the Lord in 1Peter 2:12, where he says; “Live such good lives among pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us.”

Khaya M