A while back, I was talking with another Christian worker living and working in Southern Asia, and I mentioned to them that I had been suffering from intestinal problems for a while.

“Do you eat food outside of your house?”

“Yeah, all the time. I visit people in their homes a lot, and they almost always offer me tea or coffee and something to eat.”

“Oh, I never eat food in people’s homes because I know how dirty they are. And sometimes they want to give you meat or spicy food, or caffeinated beverages.” The Christian worker went on to explain how sinful it is to eat meat, spicy food, tea and coffee, and how they don’t want the local people to think they condone sin. Sadly, in South Asian culture, not accepting food or drink in someone’s home is a terrible insult. It’s like saying you don’t want to have a relationship with them.

Another time, I was visiting with some local Christian young men. As we sat and talked, one young man was plucking out a simple Nepali tune on a guitar. “I know that tune,” I said as I pulled out my cell phone and started playing an old Nepali folk song that had been modernized and given to me in MP3 form by a neighbor. The song was about a Nepali man who was a soldier in the army, and he was singing about how much he missed his wife and son who were far away from him.

Within a few seconds after I began playing the song on my phone, a couple of the young men left the room, clearly uncomfortable. “Is something wrong?” I asked.

“Well, we don’t listen to worldly music.”

Thinking I might not have understood the Nepali lyrics correctly, I asked, “Oh, are some of the words in the song bad?”

“Uh, no, but we just don’t listen to worldly music.”

Music, especially folk tunes, is an important part of the Nepali culture and heritage. Somewhere along the way, these Nepali young men were told that in order to follow Christ they had to abandon their cultural heritage without any thought or reason; that in order to be Christian, they had to sacrifice everything that makes them Nepali.

I’ve realized it’s easy for people, in their misguided zeal to protect themselves from the world, to throw up barriers to ward off what they consider evil influences. Unfortunately, those barriers often keep them from forming authentic relationships with people they might otherwise reach for Christ.

Like Jesus, who broke down the barrier between heaven and humanity and became human to save humans, or Paul who became all things to all people, we are willing to sacrifice our personal comfort and patterns of thinking for the sake of the unreached.

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