KC
“In a WEIRDER culture, actions are assessed as right or wrong based on two key questions: whether they cause harm to another person, and whether they are fair to everyone. These two questions are used to evaluate morality in almost all cultures, but most societies will add several others. Is this action loyal, or does it reflect betrayal or treason? Does it express appropriate submission to authority, or is it subversive? Does it demonstrate sanctity, purity, and cleanness, or is it filthy, prompting repugnance and disgust?” (p. 24)
How I wish we had learned that 40 years ago! The Baatonu people in Benin are anything but WEIRDER: they are non-Western, not yet educated, not yet industrialised, not rich, with a failing democracy, young Christians (if not Muslims or animists) and non-romantics. And more to the point, they perceive right and wrong entirely on family/clan/tribal loyalty, submission to chiefs, and being honoured by others. The questions of ‘harm’ and ‘fairness’ sound foreign to them. It was we missionaries who were really ‘weirder’ in their eyes.
More to home, when leading young men’s Bible Study – or teaching online courses, my chief concern is whether the students will remain loyal in attendance. Loyalty is entirely optional in so-called ‘civilised societies’. The greatest and most ubiquitous weakness I see around me in our 21st WEIRDER world is ‘abdication’. People walk away or temporarily go AWOL from every deep commitment: marriage, family, church, faith, education, vocation, - you name it and they will consider exiting. How many painful prayers are heard by our heavenly Father because friends, colleagues, or family members have “walked off the reservation”. Of how many do we now observe, “who have abandoned the love they had at first”? And why are most of such prayers coming from the Westernised world?
What is life without loyalty? If we are ‘westernised, educated, rich, living in an industrialised and free democratic world, and culturally ‘Romantic’, but have no loyalty, what is all the former? Rubbish. And what is life for those who lack ‘the world’ but have faith, family and community loyalty? They are wealthier! Indeed, blessed are the poor!
If your prayers are like ours, then you may also be praying most fervently for those who have succeeded in the world but they have also chosen to move on from the church, or have walked away from Jesus, or have exited their family, or again, have retired previous precious loyalties.
We pray. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.