Being in another culture helps me to see my own

There is nothing quite like being in another culture in order to see your own. I suppose it is just easier to see the assumptions others take for granted.  I count it pure grace to then be willing to ask “what assumptions do I take for granted?” 

I hold this opinion carefully as I have been here for such a short period of time but it seems to me that racism is endemic in life here.  The indigeneous peoples are clearly on the bottom of the social and economic pile. 

The way I experience it is that racist assumptions are like an invisible net of assumptions and hidden attitudes that covers the entire planet.  Another assumption is that violence gets you what you want.  I don’t know about any statistics about violence here in Ecuador but from what I see and hear from volunteers at El Centro, there is a lot of violence within families directed, of course, against women and children.  Just last week, Tony, one of the volunteers here accompanied parents to the house of a relative in one of the provinces, on their trip to return their 14 year old son home after the father had beaten him up.  Dan, another volunteer, has told me of a mother who beat her son to the point of pushing him to the ground and kicking him in front of her.  A volunteer who had been here longer than he had been at the time, intervened to stop Dan from stopping the mother telling Dan that if he intervened, the boy would get it worse at home. 

Violence works.  Dark skin is bad.  Indigeneous culture is expendible. 

Feel familiar? 

These invisible “taken for granted” assumptions join societies together and are so endemic that we only notice them with difficulty and recognize them with defensiveness. 

Only, there is another net, the net of the Gospel that joins people together without violence. Somedays it feels like a Herculean task to even imagine replacing one net of assumptions with the other net of the Gospel. Faith for me now means realizing that God has already drawn the liberating net of the Gospel  all over God’s good world so that all I need to do is to fall into it.