Saudi Arabia, Photo by Marc Ash. FAI STUDIOS.
It was very confusing to me. I was working in an Asian country when I noticed that whenever an employee would quit working for the company, the people in charge would say they fired him/her. When a person was actually fired, the top people would say, “they quit.” It just didn’t make sense to me. Due to the way I was brought up, they were lying.
Years later, I came to understand what I had experienced in Asia was living in an honor/shame worldview culture. These people weren’t purposefully lying to make someone look bad, in fact it was quite the opposite. They were trying to ease the pain—sometimes for the employee and sometimes for the boss. In a sense, they were honoring the person who was fired by saying he or she left on their own accord to not make them feel bad. Honor and shame cultures are driven by feelings, to the point that feelings and relationships are valued more than truth.
Understanding different major worldviews is extremely important if you don’t want to be frustrated, and if you want to become close friends and allies to people who may see the world and how to respond to issues differently than you do.
God created Adam and Eve perfectly, with three important characteristics. He created them innocent, with honor and power, all in the image of God. All was set to be a great life experience in the garden of perfection. The Bible does not tell us how long Adam and Eve lived in this state before sin entered the world through their disobedience, but however long it was, it must have been magnificent. To never to have experienced guilt, fear or shame is a life we can’t even imagine!
When Adam and Eve sinned, the consequences of that sin pervaded the very way they looked at the world—it infiltrated their hearts, minds and wills. Suddenly, they were fearful instead of powerful, they were guilty instead of innocent, and felt shame instead of honor. Their whole world was tipped upside down and inside out.
It’s just so interesting how different cultures view things so differently. Let’s examine the implications of our worldview on something simple like navigating your way to a new destination:
A person from a guilt/innocence worldview would almost certainly put the address into their GPS and drive directly there.
A person from an honor/shame worldview would stop and ask directions along the way—and if there was anyone they knew between here and there, they would most likely drop in for a visit.
A person from a fear/power worldview would generally pray to the gods for guidance in how to get to their destination.
Each person is going to the same place, but each would differ in their strategy on how they would find their way there. That’s not to say there is anything wrong with any of them; they are just different.
Now, if we don’t understand how the other person is thinking and what worldview is driving them, we may tend to criticize and feel superior to them, and maybe even be frustrated with them.
Let’s take a deeper look at each of these worldviews to better understand their driving force. Understand that everyone has some of each of these worldviews in their mindset, but there is almost always one that primarily drives how we think.
HONOR/SHAME
Honor/Shame societies assume a strong community or group identity.
Honor is equal to a person’s social worth or their value in the eyes of the community. Honor is when people think well of you and results in harmony within the social bonds of the community. Honor comes from relationships.
Shame, on the other hand, is when the public has a negative view of you. You become disconnected or marginalized from the group. Shame can come from many things such as your ethnicity, lack of prominence, or family. Shame quite often comes more from who you are rather than anything you do.
In a Honor/Shame culture, everyone has a proper role which is often based on age, gender, and position. People maintain honor by fulfilling that role well. The community enforces morality externally. When making choices, people will ask themselves, “What is honorable?” or “What will others think?” or “What about my family name?” These cultures do believe in moral right and wrong, but define morality relationally, not legally. What is best for the relationship is morally right.
GUILT/INNOCENCE
The idea of right and wrong are foundational to Guilt/Innocence cultures.
This worldview highly regards truth. Rules and laws define what is acceptable behavior and what is not. Doing what is right keeps you innocent, while doing something wrong makes you guilty. Nobody is above the law. Moral responsibility comes from within the individual. We expect people to listen to their conscience and do the right thing. This system is very individualistic. Seeing justice served is high on the value yardstick. Guilt cultures focus on actions.
Identity is defined by things you do, such as your job or hobby or anything else you are known for. People in this worldview mindset pride themselves by how they behave and how they are different from the group, not by the group itself.
FEAR/POWER
In Fear/Power cultures, people live in constant fear of the invisible world and powers.
They see three dimensions of reality:
The seen world (people, houses, physical objects)
The unseen world (angels, spirits, etc.)
The other unseen world (God, heaven, hell)
To control the spirit world and ward off evil spirits, they use magical rituals to harness dark spiritual powers and invite good spirits with blessing over their lives. They use amulets, curses, charms, fetishes, witchcraft, or an evil eye to have power over the unseen world. They attempt to do things in the seen world to manipulate the unseen world into helping them. Having power over the seen and unseen worlds is paramount.
SUMMARY
You can see how differently people who were brought up in these various worldviews think, and how easily it would be to offend someone or be frustrated with how they respond to a challenge. Just recently, a friend of mine who is from an honor/shame culture asked me where she could get a muffin pan. I asked her if she had one, and she said she did not. Wanting to help her, I stopped at a store and bought one for her. As I was sharing with a mutual American friend about the muffin pan, she looked puzzled. This same lady had asked her the week before about a muffin pan and she had already given her one. As you can imagine, our guilt/innocence worldview thinking came into play, and we felt tricked. But as we digested this scenario, we realized that the pan my friend had given her was old and maybe a bit rusty, and our friend didn’t feel comfortable using it. Instead of dishonoring my friend who gave her the muffin tin, she accepted it with grace and then continued to look for what she wanted. We could have easily just condemned her for lying, without understanding how she was trying to honor another person.
These different worldviews are important to understand if you want to adequately share your faith with people from a different background. If you are from the West, you have most likely learned to articulate Biblical stories from a guilt/innocence worldview—that’s fine if you are sharing with someone from your same culture. They get it. They know what it is to feel guilt, and how to get rid of guilt by confessing and restoring. When you want to share the good news with someone of one of these other worldviews, it is helpful to share the Bible from their worldview. For example, people from an honor/shame culture may not understand or have ever felt guilt before; so if you share with them that Jesus takes away their guilt, they quite possibly won’t identify with that at all. If you share with them how Jesus takes their shame away and gives them an identity of honor, they will more likely relate to and accept the desire to forsake shame and claim honor.
Original sin continues to affect our world, and will until Jesus appears in the clouds. To be innocent, honorable and powerful without a hint of guilt, shame, or fear will be experienced in eternity. Maranatha! Until then, let’s be students of culture and worldview, so we can point people of every tongue, tribe, and nation to the One who created them, died for them, and lives for them. Fear, shame, and guilt were all nailed to the cross—and all people are invited to accept His honor, innocence, and power in their lives. The amazing love of Jesus overcomes culture.
Renee Montgomery and her husband Scott both give leadership to SOAR Global, a non-profit advocating for the unreached by fostering connections between those with resource and those in need, and fundraising for many serving the unreached to stay on the field, unhindered by a lack of resource.
