cultural strongholds

It has taken the whole of last month to settle back into our California home, with all of the unpacking and reconnecting and catching up on the duties of property ownership. Now school, and temporary work, and the sketching of plans that come next but still remain too uncertain to sit comfortably in them.

There was certainly some culture shock upon reentry to our old lifestyle, and I am finding that as the stereotypes suggest, everything is indeed bigger in America. We can't find enough laundry for a full load in these luxurious washing machines. Many trips to Costco have not filled up my giant refrigerator. And my daily errands feel a lot farther away than they used to... can I possibly be remembering wrong? We miss walking to the grocery store every other day, but we are also happy to be sleeping in our own beds after eating a delicious plate of Mexican food.

While the "shock" portion of reentering American culture is already fading, I am fighting desperately to hang onto all of the cultural revelations. We had a rare opportunity to have our eyes opened to the way things have always been done. I don't want to forget what I see now that I have never seen before.

Often as a discipline of embracing new or renewed truth in my own life, I write about it. Processing all that I have learned about myself as a follower of Jesus over the course of this past year has taken longer than I expected, but finally, I am reaching some articulate thoughts. Over the next month or so I am challenging myself to write a little bit more, sharing here a series of cultural strongholds that my eyes have been newly opened to. These are a few aspects of our culture that now stand out in sharp contrast to the way that we were living overseas, and I can see how they are crippling to our culture.

Ancient strongholds were fortresses set up against the attack of enemy armies. I picture some of the crumbling castles that we visited in the medieval towns of Europe, often on the crest of a hilltop, surrounded by a fortified wall. It was a good defense and took a lot to tear those walls down. When the whole land surrendered to invaders, these strongholds firmly resisted.

When God invades our life we can surrender it to Him willingly and still withhold areas for ourselves, like strongholds. Within that surrendered life, we manage to maintain a lot of fortified walls... some out of self-protection, some out of fear of the unknown, or some walls that we simply refuse to see because they blend in so smoothly with our surroundings. It has never been His way to take our lives by force.

Cultural strongholds are unsurrendered areas that appear repeatedly among person after person in a particular culture. They stem from aspects so accepted in our culture that when a person turns her life over to Jesus, the cultural stronghold remains unnoticed, just like that well-disguised fortified wall. And yet, living a surrendered life means that every piece of it should get turned over when God invades.

The saying goes that "ignorance is bliss", but I wouldn't feel convicted about sharing all of this if I believed we were better off not knowing. Withholding some areas from heavenly influence might sound tempting, more comfortable, easier, but it doesn't make our lives better.

We have a lot of growing problems in the U.S. like anxiety, and addictions, and the break down of the family unit, and teen suicide. Big and broken things that often affect Believers as statistically often as non-Believers. I can't help wondering if we could change that by revealing and surrendering some of our strongholds.

Our life overseas living in foreign countries was very simple, full of humbling and hard experiences, and challenging on every level. It included many adventures but lacked any frills. The part I miss the most is our utter dependence on God for each decision that we made.

There are four specific areas of my own life where strongholds were revealed and broken, and I am fighting to keep them from succumbing to cultural norms now that we are once again living in a setting where they are completely acceptable. Join me (in what I hope is a weekly post) over the next month to read a little more about these areas as I see them. And pray for me as I put them into words as I will pray for those who read this.

Next time: The cultural stronghold of being in control